Firecrawl vs Tavily
Firecrawl vs Tavily on the same Wikipedia page: Firecrawl returned 112,517 tokens, Tavily 97,504, and FATSEARCH answered the same question in 1,384. All three found the answer.
We make FATSEARCH. The numbers below are our own runs, dated. Where another reader is the better pick, we say so.
| One page, | 38 hard pages, | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reader | Tokens in context | Answer found | Model bill | Answer in the text | Agent answered right | Tokens per question |
| FATSEARCH | 1,384 | yes | $0.0028 | 35/38 | 26/38 | 2.6k |
| Firecrawl | 112,517 | yes | $0.23 | 24/38 | 24/38 | 2.8k |
| Tavily | 97,504 | yes | $0.20 | 19/38 | — | — |
One page: Wikipedia “Rust (programming language)”, default settings, one run each. Tokens = Anthropic’s own counter; fats = outline + one filter + one section. Model bill = tokens × $2 per million input tokens (Claude Sonnet 5.5, ); reader fees not included.
Hard pages: Social, news, shops, travel, classifieds, search: pages a built-in fetch can’t read. FATSEARCH 0.1.0, 2026-10-16, one run each; Firecrawl’s copy was cut to fit the agent run. “—” = not in that run.
What each returned
Firecrawl’s /scrape endpoint converted the page to Markdown: the entire article with tables, images, footnotes and navigation: 112,517 tokens. Tavily’s /extract did the same: a full Markdown copy at 97,504 tokens. FATSEARCH returned an outline first, then a filtered view, then one section: 1,384 tokens across three reads.
The model bill reflects this. At $2/M input tokens, reading Firecrawl’s output costs $0.23, Tavily’s $0.20, and the FATSEARCH reads cost $0.0028 combined. Method and raw files: benchmarks.
Different tools for different jobs
Both now do a bit of everything: Firecrawl has a search endpoint and Tavily has a crawler. They still lean different ways. Firecrawl is a scraper first: crawls, batch scrapes, structured JSON, screenshots, DOCX. Tavily is a search API first: your agent searches and reads pages under one key.
On 38 hard pages, Firecrawl found the answer 24/38 and Tavily 19/38. Firecrawl ran an agent loop that answered 24/38 at 2.8k per question; Tavily was not in the agent run. The broader alternatives for each: Firecrawl alternatives, Tavily alternatives, or the full comparison hub.
In Claude Code
We ran Firecrawl’s hosted MCP against the FATSEARCH MCP in Claude Code on a separate task set (Sonnet, headless, built-in web tools off), the same tasks for both, one run each. Tavily was not in this run, so there is no Claude Code comparison with it yet. Firecrawl got every task right and FATSEARCH all but one. FATSEARCH used far fewer tokens, a wider gap than on the single Wikipedia page above, and was slower on blocked pages. Measured run: web scraping MCP Claude Code.
Reader by reader
FATSEARCH
Local CLI + MCP server, your own provider key. Measured: outline, then one filter, then one section (plain HTTP, $0).
1,384 tokens across three reads. First lines:
= j11.u46 Rust (programming language) - Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · 57 sections · 6 photos · 2 videos · 40.9ktok · pl… u46#0 info | author Contributors to Wikimedia projects · published 2010-10-30T22:30:54Z · modified 2026-10-15T20:56:59Z m1 photo 250x167 png | A bright orange crab icon → https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Rustacean-or… m2 photo 250x314 png | (no alt) → https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Rust_standard_libraries.svg/5… m3 photo 250x193 png | (no alt) → https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Cargo_clippy_hello_world_exam… … +10 media → fats u46 media u46#1 (top) (9) | Jump to content u46#9 Syntax and features (9.2k, 27 sub) | [edit [l175] ] Main article: Rust syntax [l176] Rust's syntax [l177] is simil…
Price: $0.001–0.0065 per hard page, $0 plain pages (github.com, checked )
Firecrawl
Hosted scrape, crawl + search API (AGPL core), MCP server. Measured: v2 /scrape, markdown, default settings.
112,517 tokens, 81× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
[Jump to content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)#bodyContent) [ | - [Multi-paradigm](https://en…
Price: Free: 1,000 credits a month (one scraped page = one credit). Hobby: $16 a month billed yearly ($19 monthly) for 5,000 credits. Standard: $83 a month billed yearly for 100,000. (firecrawl.dev, checked )
When it’s better: You want a whole site, not one page. Firecrawl crawls a site in one request, maps its URLs, batch-scrapes many pages and returns structured JSON or screenshots. It can also search, click through a page, and turn PDFs and DOCX into Markdown. Its core is open source under the AGPL and can be self-hosted, though some features are Cloud-only. FATSEARCH has no crawler and no DOCX yet.
Tavily
Hosted search + extract API, MCP server. Measured: /extract, basic depth.
97,504 tokens, 70× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
[Jump to content](#bodyContent) [   ## Contents * [1 History](#History) + [1.1 2006–2009: Early years](#2006–2009:_Early_years) + [1.2 2009–2012: Mozilla sponsorship](#2009–2012:_Mozilla_sponsorship) + [1.3 2012–2015: Evolution](#2012–2015:_Evolution)
Price: Free: 1,000 API credits a month. Pay as you go: $0.008 a credit. A basic extract costs 1 credit per 5 successful URLs (advanced: 2). (tavily.com, docs.tavily.com, checked )
When it’s better: Search is the main job. Tavily is built as a search API for agents and can return page text with the results, so one call often covers it. Firecrawl can search too, but it grew up as a scraper.
Questions
Is Tavily better than Firecrawl?
They lean different ways. Both search, scrape and crawl, but Tavily is built around search and Firecrawl around scraping. On 38 hard pages, Firecrawl found the answer 24/38, Tavily 19/38. Pick Tavily when search is the main job, Firecrawl when you scrape or crawl many pages.
How much does Firecrawl cost to use for scraping data?
Free: 1,000 credits a month (one scraped page = one credit). Hobby: $16 a month billed yearly ($19 monthly) for 5,000 credits. Standard: $83 a month billed yearly for 100,000. On our Wikipedia page, Firecrawl's output cost $0.23 to read at $2/M input tokens. Tavily's cost $0.20. FATSEARCH: $0.0028.
Which scraping service is the best?
No single service wins everywhere. On one Wikipedia page, FATSEARCH used 1,384 tokens, Tavily 97,504, Firecrawl 112,517. On 38 hard pages, FATSEARCH found the answer 35/38, Firecrawl 24/38, Tavily 19/38. The comparison hub has every reader side by side.
Try FATSEARCH on your own pages
Free and open source. Bring any one key, or none.
curl -fsSL https://fatsearch.com/install.sh | shnpm i -g fatsearchbrew install fatsearch/tap/fatsearchcargo install --locked fatsearchor let your agent do it
Read and follow fatsearch.com/agent-setup/SKILL.md