head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs firecrawl-mcp-server
Crawl4AI has 83,892 GitHub stars, 8,679 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,489 stars, 891 forks, 136 open issues and last shipped today. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 1,020% (83,892 vs 7,489 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; firecrawl-mcp-server is written in JavaScript under MIT. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% 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
| Crawl4AI | firecrawl-mcp-server | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 84K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 891 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Crawl4AI if
- You weight community size — 84K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 Crawl4AI
Crawl4AI is an open source web crawler and scraper designed to prepare website content for large language model (LLM) workflows. It lives in the Python ecosystem and targets data extraction for RAG, agents, and AI pipelines. Unlike many tools that require API keys or paid subscriptions, Crawl4AI provides direct, self hosted access to web content with output structured specifically for LLM consumption.
read the full Crawl4AI 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 Crawl4AI or firecrawl-mcp-server more popular?
Crawl4AI has 83,892 GitHub stars and firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,489. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and firecrawl-mcp-server free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and firecrawl-mcp-server under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and firecrawl-mcp-server?
Crawl4AI is written in Python 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, Crawl4AI or firecrawl-mcp-server?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (83,892 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.