Web scraping MCP Claude Code

Results

Claude Code 2.1.280, claude-sonnet-5, headless, built-in WebFetch and WebSearch off, one MCP server per side. Right = the final answer matched the known one; right answers also found in a tool result: Firecrawl 51/51, FATSEARCH 50/51. Tokens = Claude Code’s own usage count. Cost = the Claude bill at list price plus the tool: Firecrawl credits at the Hobby rate ($16 per 5,000 credits), FATSEARCH = the Oxylabs price as fats prints it.

Speed: the same on most tasks, slower on blocked pages

A typical task took about as long on both: FATSEARCH 5.3 s, Firecrawl 6.7 s. The slowest runs took FATSEARCH 43.8 s and Firecrawl 21.5 s.

Slowest runs = the slowest tenth. FATSEARCH had 5 runs over a minute, the worst 191 s with 31 MCP calls. On blocked pages it waits for the paid render, and a known retry bug makes the agent wait again; we are fixing it. Firecrawl’s server cache already held most pages; FATSEARCH started empty, so Firecrawl’s times are a best case.

Why the token gap

Most of it is Firecrawl’s tool list. Claude Code sends it with every model call: 10,977 extra tokens per call.

Firecrawl registers 16 tools, FATSEARCH 1. The first model call, before any page, is 12,044 tokens with Firecrawl and 1,069 with FATSEARCH; that difference, resent on every call, is 87 % of the input-token gap. The rest is page size: 10 Firecrawl runs returned more than Claude Code keeps in context, so it saved the result to a file and the agent read it back.

Where Firecrawl is better

• Spotify. The one task only Firecrawl got right. FATSEARCH got a bare JS shell, and Oxylabs’ render failed.
• Search rescue. When its scrape refused a site (Reddit, Instagram, Yelp, the New York Times), the agent searched with Firecrawl and found the answer in a result snippet.
• Speed on blocked pages, see above.

Firecrawl’s paid lookups

On LinkedIn the agent used Firecrawl’s paid data lookups. That one run cost 57 credits, 50 of them from one call.

Firecrawl calls these Alexandria enrichment; the costly call went to people-data-labs. All runs together: 203 credits ($0.65 at Hobby). FATSEARCH’s Oxylabs bill: $0.025.

Setup

Firecrawl, from their Claude Code quickstart:

claude mcp add --transport http firecrawl https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp-oauth

Then run /mcp in Claude Code, pick firecrawl and sign in in the browser. Without an account, a keyless mode covers scrape, search and parse. Checked 2026-10-19.

FATSEARCH, from the installation guide:

claude mcp add --scope user fats -- fats mcp

A local stdio server with 1 tool. Reading pages needs no key; search needs an Oxylabs or Bright Data key (key setup). Full setup with checks: web search MCP for Claude Code.

Method

One run per side on the same tasks, 2026-10-19, from one machine in Lithuania. We ran FATSEARCH twice more on the same tasks to check stability: 99/102 right.

The scorecard with every number: benchmarks. One page through every reader: Firecrawl alternatives and the comparison hub. We make FATSEARCH; these are our runs.