> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.webrayn.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# webrain vs Firecrawl

> Honest comparison of webrain and Firecrawl — a local open-source MCP scraping server vs a commercial scraping API and SDK platform.

# webrain vs Firecrawl

**Firecrawl** is a **commercial scraping platform** — a hosted API plus
Python/Node SDKs, with an open-source self-host option and an MCP server.
**webrain** is an open-source **local MCP server** — install one binary, no API
key, no cloud.

| Dimension       | webrain                                       | Firecrawl                    |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- |
| Model           | Open source, local, free                      | Commercial API (+ self-host) |
| MCP             | Native server                                 | MCP server available         |
| Browser engines | Chrome, Lightpanda, Obscura + no-browser HTTP | Managed headless browsers    |
| Extraction      | Autoschema/schema/regex/table/JSON-LD/BM25    | Markdown/structured extract  |
| Auth sessions   | Vault + TOTP, cookie transfer                 | Supported                    |
| Cost            | Free (your machine)                           | Usage-based / credits        |
| Video/PDF       | `watch`, PDF extract/render                   | PDF (limited)                |

**Pick Firecrawl** when you want a **managed API** — no infra, per-request
billing, high-scale crawling as a service.

**Pick webrain** when you want **free, local, MCP-native** scraping with full
control (engines, stealth login, sessions) and no data leaving your machine.

## Related

* [Overview](/overview) · [Scrape at Scale](/guides/scrape-at-scale)
* [webrain vs Playwright](/comparisons/playwright) · [webrain vs Browser Use](/comparisons/browser-use)