Crawl4AI vs Firecrawl
Firecrawl leads on trust: 89.1/100 (Grade A) against 71.3/100 (Grade B), a 17.8-point gap. Crawl4AI rests on broader evidence; Firecrawl leads on supply-chain integrity and provenance. Note: Firecrawl's evidence coverage is thinner (coverage B vs A) — its score rests on fewer independent signal types.
Open-source web crawler and scraper for LLMs and AI agents: any website into clean, LLM-ready Markdown. Run it yourself, or use Crawl4AI Cloud with one key. Join our Discord https://discord.gg/VuxzM8mtf
Choose Crawl4AI if breadth of evidence matters most.
- A vs BEvidence coverage: 4 of 5 independent signal types, against 3
Supercharge your AI agents with data from the web and beyond. Building the library for superintelligence. 🔥
Choose Firecrawl if supply-chain integrity and provenance matter most.
- +12.5Safety / Integrity: 98% of recent commits signed, against 28%
- +7.2Identity / Provenance: package provenance attested, against none
- +1.0Transparency: OSSF Scorecard 6.1 against 4.9
- +0.7Maintenance: last push today, against 1d ago
Where they differ
An independent, evidence-based trust comparison of Crawl4AI and Firecrawl, two Research & Data projects in the HVTracker registry. Scores come from public, checkable signals — supply-chain provenance, OSSF Scorecard, maintenance, and adoption — not popularity.
Full evidence
| Signal | Crawl4AIunclecode/crawl4ai | Firecrawlfirecrawl/firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| HVTrust score | 71.3 | 89.1 |
| Evidence grade | B | A |
| Coverage grade | A | B |
| Overall rank | #339 | #37 |
| Rank in Research & Data | #7 | #2 |
| GitHub stars | 86.8k | 198.0k |
| Last updated | 1d ago | today |
| Build provenance | No | Yes |
| OSSF Scorecard | 4.9 / 10 | 6.1 / 10 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Downloads | 358k/wk | 2.9M/wk |
| Trust dimensions (points earned) | ||
| Safety / integrity / 25 | 7.5 | 20.0 |
| Identity & provenance / 18 | 10.8 | 18.0 |
| Transparency / 17 | 12.7 | 13.7 |
| Maintenance / 20 | 19.3 | 20.0 |
| Adoption / 20 | 19.3 | 20.0 |
| Runtime capability surface (full matrix) | ||
| MCP server | — | — |
| External providers | 1 — OpenAI | 7 — Anthropic, Firecrawl, Groq, … |
| Requires API keys | Yes | Yes |
| Plugin surface | marketplace | — |
| Provenance drift | Match | Match |
How to read this: HVTrust (0–100) weighs supply-chain signals (provenance, OSSF Scorecard, signed commits, open license) alongside real-world adoption, scaled by an evidence-confidence factor. Grade bands: A ≥ 80, B ≥ 65, C ≥ 50, D < 50. Signals refresh daily. Full methodology v4.4 →