---
title: "Exa MCP vs Firecrawl MCP: Search or Scrape?"
url: "https://mcpshelf.co/compare/exa-vs-firecrawl"
description: "Exa is search built for models; Firecrawl scrapes, crawls and extracts. We compare tools, cost model and setup to help you pick one, or both."
updated: "2026-10-27"
site: "MCP Shelf"
---

# Exa vs Firecrawl

Exa answers "find me pages about this": it is a search engine whose results come back with the page text attached. Firecrawl answers "get me everything on these pages": it scrapes, crawls whole sites and pulls structured data. For an assistant that needs to look things up, start with Exa; for reading or extracting from known sites, Firecrawl.

## Side by side

|  | Exa | Firecrawl |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Made by | Exa Labs | Firecrawl (Mendable) |
| Main job | Search with page text included | Scraping, crawling and extraction |
| Tools | Two by default: search and fetch | Many: scrape, crawl, map, search, extract, monitors |
| Whole-site crawls | No | Yes, with limits and path filters |
| Hosted URL | Yes, no install | Yes, though our config runs the npm package |
| Pays by | Exa credit | Firecrawl credits per page, crawl or search |
| Runs on | Your computer or hosted | Your computer |
| You need | An Exa API key for the local server | A Firecrawl account and API key (there is a free tier); Node.js 18 or newer |
| GitHub stars | 5.2K | 7.7K |

## Pick Exa if

- You want search with sources in ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor in two minutes
- Questions are open-ended and you do not know which sites hold the answer
- You want a small tool list that does not crowd the model

## Pick Firecrawl if

- You already know the site and need its pages as clean Markdown
- You want structured fields (prices, specs, listings) pulled out of pages
- You need to map or crawl a docs site or a whole domain

## Can you run both?

They pair well: Exa to find the right pages, Firecrawl to read a site in depth once you know where to look. If you only add one, Exa covers more everyday questions with less setup.

Setup for each: [Exa](https://mcpshelf.co/servers/exa), [Firecrawl](https://mcpshelf.co/servers/firecrawl).

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From [MCP Shelf](https://mcpshelf.co/): A short shelf of MCP servers that are worth installing. Index for agents: https://mcpshelf.co/llms.txt