head to head · open source
crawlee vs firecrawl-mcp-server
crawlee has 25,823 GitHub stars, 1,673 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped yesterday. firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,477 stars, 888 forks, 136 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crawlee leads on adoption by 245% (25,823 vs 7,477 stars). crawlee is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; firecrawl-mcp-server is written in TypeScript under MIT. crawlee has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, firecrawl-mcp-server 12%. firecrawl-mcp-server was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| crawlee | firecrawl-mcp-server | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 888 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick crawlee if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick firecrawl-mcp-server if
- You want the firecrawl-mcp-server feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and firecrawl-mcp-server fits your workflow better
About crawlee
Crawlee is a web scraping and browser automation library for Node.js, written in TypeScript and published on npm as the crawlee package. It lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem, and it covers crawling and scraping end to end: fetching pages, following links, extracting data, and storing the results to disk or to the cloud. The project also has a Python counterpart, Crawlee for Python, maintained alongside it by Apify.
read the full crawlee overview →
About firecrawl-mcp-server
Firecrawl MCP Server is the official Model Context Protocol server that gives Cursor, Claude, and other MCP compatible AI clients search, scraping, and page interaction against the live web.
read the full firecrawl-mcp-server overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is crawlee or firecrawl-mcp-server more popular?
crawlee has 25,823 GitHub stars and firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,477. crawlee has the larger community by that measure.
Are crawlee and firecrawl-mcp-server free?
Both are open source. crawlee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and firecrawl-mcp-server under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between crawlee and firecrawl-mcp-server?
crawlee is written in TypeScript and firecrawl-mcp-server in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, crawlee or firecrawl-mcp-server?
Choose crawlee if you want the larger community (25,823 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose firecrawl-mcp-server if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.