head to head · open source
firecrawl-mcp-server vs fess
firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,761 GitHub stars, 927 forks, 136 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fess has 1,142 stars, 177 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. firecrawl-mcp-server leads on adoption by 580% (7,761 vs 1,142 stars). firecrawl-mcp-server is written in JavaScript under MIT; fess is written in Java under Apache-2.0. firecrawl-mcp-server has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, fess 15%. firecrawl-mcp-server was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (mcp), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| firecrawl-mcp-server | fess | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.8K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 927 | ⑂ 177 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick firecrawl-mcp-server if
- You weight community size — 7.8K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick fess if
- You want the fess feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and fess fits your workflow better
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 →
About fess
Fess: Enterprise Search Server Overview Fess is an enterprise search server that you can install and run on any platform with a Java runtime. It is built on OpenSearch, but prior OpenSearch knowledge is not required: Fess is configured through a browser based administration UI. A built in crawler collects documents from web sites, file systems, and data stores such as databases and CSV files. Many file formats are supported, including Microsoft Office, PDF, and ZIP archives. Fess Site Search is a free alternative to Google Site Search that you can embed in your own website. For details, see the FSS JS Generator…
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Frequently asked questions
Is firecrawl-mcp-server or fess more popular?
firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,761 GitHub stars and fess has 1,142. firecrawl-mcp-server has the larger community by that measure.
Are firecrawl-mcp-server and fess free?
Both are open source. firecrawl-mcp-server is licensed under MIT and fess under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between firecrawl-mcp-server and fess?
firecrawl-mcp-server is written in JavaScript and fess in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, firecrawl-mcp-server or fess?
Choose firecrawl-mcp-server if you want the larger community (7,761 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose fess if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.