head to head · open source
dots vs firecrawl-mcp-server
dots has 32,383 GitHub stars, 4,739 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,761 stars, 927 forks, 136 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dots leads on adoption by 317% (32,383 vs 7,761 stars). dots is written in TypeScript under MIT; firecrawl-mcp-server is written in JavaScript under MIT. dots has attracted 15% 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| dots | firecrawl-mcp-server | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 7.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-31 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.7K | ⑂ 927 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick dots if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT 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 JavaScript
- You evaluated both and firecrawl-mcp-server fits your workflow better
About dots
dots Every AI agent is a model and a browser. You can swap the model with one flag. The browser is what the website sees. Windows, in PowerShell: Linux: Then open The conversation on the left, the browser on the right, live. It all comes down to the browser When a web agent fails, the model is rarely why. The page never loaded, a challenge appeared, the login expired, the click did not land. All of that happens in the browser, before the model gets to think. So dots is built around one: A real Firefox engine, patched in C++. The fingerprint is decided inside the engine, not painted over with JavaScript that a…
About firecrawl-mcp-server
Firecrawl MCP Server A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that brings Firecrawl to MCP compatible AI agents — search, scrape, and interact with the live web for clean, agent ready context. Big thanks to @vrknetha, @knacklabs for the initial implementation! Features Search the web and get full page content Search an index built for coding agents: GitHub issues, merged pull requests, READMEs, and docs Scrape any URL into clean, structured data Interact with pages — click, navigate, and operate Deep research with autonomous agent Automatic retries and rate limiting Cloud and self hosted support SSE support Play…
read the full firecrawl-mcp-server overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is dots or firecrawl-mcp-server more popular?
dots has 32,383 GitHub stars and firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,761. dots has the larger community by that measure.
Are dots and firecrawl-mcp-server free?
Both are open source. dots is licensed under MIT and firecrawl-mcp-server under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between dots and firecrawl-mcp-server?
dots is written in TypeScript and firecrawl-mcp-server in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, dots or firecrawl-mcp-server?
Choose dots if you want the larger community (32,383 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose firecrawl-mcp-server if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.