Firecrawl vs Apify: Which MCP should you use?
Firecrawl
LLM-ready web scraping API
Apify
Scraping platform with 2000+ actors
TL;DR
Firecrawl is the new LLM-era scraping API — hit one URL, get back clean Markdown ready for RAG. Apify is the veteran platform with 2000+ pre-built 'actors' for specific sites (LinkedIn, Amazon, Google Maps, etc.) and more general workflow tooling. Firecrawl wins for 'crawl a site and feed an LLM'; Apify wins for 'scrape LinkedIn profiles at scale'.
Pick Firecrawl
Pick Firecrawl when you want LLM-ready Markdown from arbitrary URLs with minimal code.
Pick Apify
Pick Apify when you need battle-tested actors for big sites (LinkedIn, Amazon, TikTok, etc.).
Feature-by-feature comparison
| Feature | 🔥Firecrawl | 🕷️Apify | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| LLM-ready output | Markdown / JSON | Raw HTML + configurable | A |
| Pre-built site actors | No | 2000+ | B |
| JS rendering | Yes, default | Yes | Tie |
| Proxy rotation | Built-in | Residential + datacenter | B |
| Crawl entire site | Native /crawl endpoint | Web Scraper / Puppeteer Scraper | A |
| Price per 1000 pages | ~$2-5 | ~$1-10 depending on actor | Tie |
| DX / API simplicity | Simple REST | REST + actor store | A |
| Advanced workflow | Limited | Full orchestration | B |
LLM-ready output
AFirecrawl
Markdown / JSON
Apify
Raw HTML + configurable
Pre-built site actors
BFirecrawl
No
Apify
2000+
JS rendering
TieFirecrawl
Yes, default
Apify
Yes
Proxy rotation
BFirecrawl
Built-in
Apify
Residential + datacenter
Crawl entire site
AFirecrawl
Native /crawl endpoint
Apify
Web Scraper / Puppeteer Scraper
Price per 1000 pages
TieFirecrawl
~$2-5
Apify
~$1-10 depending on actor
DX / API simplicity
AFirecrawl
Simple REST
Apify
REST + actor store
Advanced workflow
BFirecrawl
Limited
Apify
Full orchestration
Best for
Firecrawl
- LLM-ready output: Markdown / JSON
- Crawl entire site: Native /crawl endpoint
- DX / API simplicity: Simple REST
Best for
Apify
- Pre-built site actors: 2000+
- Proxy rotation: Residential + datacenter
- Advanced workflow: Full orchestration
Migration path
Most of the time you'll use both. If migrating Apify → Firecrawl: replace actor calls with firecrawl.scrape_url() — works great for generic sites, worse for sites with heavy anti-bot (LinkedIn, Amazon) where Apify's actors have accumulated anti-detection tricks. Firecrawl → Apify: wrap Firecrawl calls in your own actor, or pick a specialized actor for known sites.
Frequently asked questions
What is the main difference between Firecrawl and Apify?
Firecrawl is the new LLM-era scraping API — hit one URL, get back clean Markdown ready for RAG. Apify is the veteran platform with 2000+ pre-built 'actors' for specific sites (LinkedIn, Amazon, Google Maps, etc.) and more general workflow tooling. Firecrawl wins for 'crawl a site and feed an LLM'; Apify wins for 'scrape LinkedIn profiles at scale'. In short: Firecrawl — LLM-ready web scraping API. Apify — Scraping platform with 2000+ actors.
When should I pick Firecrawl over Apify?
Pick Firecrawl when you want LLM-ready Markdown from arbitrary URLs with minimal code.
When should I pick Apify over Firecrawl?
Pick Apify when you need battle-tested actors for big sites (LinkedIn, Amazon, TikTok, etc.).
Can I migrate from one to the other?
Most of the time you'll use both. If migrating Apify → Firecrawl: replace actor calls with firecrawl.scrape_url() — works great for generic sites, worse for sites with heavy anti-bot (LinkedIn, Amazon) where Apify's actors have accumulated anti-detection tricks. Firecrawl → Apify: wrap Firecrawl calls in your own actor, or pick a specialized actor for known sites.
Do Firecrawl and Apify both work with MCP-compatible AI agents?
Yes. Both have MCP servers installable via MCPizy (mcpizy install firecrawl and mcpizy install apify). They work identically across Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, and any other MCP-compatible client. You can install both side by side and route queries in your agent's prompt.
More Scraping & Search comparisons
Firecrawl vs ScrapingBee
Firecrawl is scraping optimized for LLMs — it returns clean Markdown/JSON and has a /crawl endpoint that walks a site. ScrapingBee is a general-purpose headless-browser scraping API that returns raw HTML. Firecrawl wins for RAG pipelines; ScrapingBee wins when you want to parse HTML yourself with flexibility.
Meilisearch vs Algolia
Algolia is the enterprise hosted search — highest polish, best A/B testing, typo tolerance, ranking, analytics. Meilisearch is open-source, self-hostable, and developer-friendly with a free managed Cloud tier. For a fast build with SDKs and enterprise support, Algolia. For open-source / cost control, Meilisearch.
Meilisearch vs Elasticsearch
Meilisearch is a lean, developer-friendly search engine with instant-search and good typo tolerance. Elasticsearch is the heavyweight — fully featured search, analytics, logs, aggregations, and geospatial. For small/medium product search, Meilisearch is faster to adopt; for complex analytics + search + logs, ES.
Install both with MCPizy
Not sure? Run both side by side — swap between them in your AI agent with a single config line.