firecrawl vs OpenCLI
firecrawl is much bigger: 176.7k stars against 29.0k. Over the days we have tracked them firecrawl moved +16.3% and OpenCLI +21.6%, so OpenCLI is growing faster right now.
They split the axes: firecrawl leads on context depth, OpenCLI on privacy and model freedom.
Stars and commit dates come from our own daily tracking. The six axes are read off each project's documentation by our review pipeline, so they describe what a project says about itself, not what we measured in its code.
Where they stand today
Provides an agent-ready web context API that scrapes JS-heavy pages into LLM-ready Markdown/JSON and supports actions (click/scroll/write) plus large-scale crawling — a combination many scrapers don’t offer.
- Stars
- 176.7k
- Tracked growth
- +16.3%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 4h ago
- Language
- TypeScript
- License
- AGPL-3.0
- Cost to run
- Hosted service — API key required
Converts any website into a deterministic CLI and lets AI agents drive your logged-in Chrome via a local Browser Bridge and reusable adapter skills.
- Stars
- 29.0k
- Tracked growth
- +21.6%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 5d ago
- Language
- JavaScript
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Cost to run
- Free, local runtime
Six axes, head to head
Each axis runs 0 to 5. The label under a score is what that project's own docs claim, not a category average.
| Axis | firecrawl | OpenCLI |
|---|---|---|
Context depth How much of your codebase it sees before it answers: the open diff, the diff plus related files, or the whole repository. | ●●●●● Whole-site crawling | ●●●●● Site & related files |
Noise control How it keeps output volume down — severity thresholds, deduplication, incremental runs over new commits only. | ●●●●● Structured output | ●●●●● Basic diagnostics |
Customization How far it bends to your team: custom rules, prompts, style guides, per-path config. | ●●●●● Prompt & schema | ●●●●● Plugins & adapters |
Privacy Whether your code stays on your own infrastructure: fully local, self-hostable, or cloud API only. | ●●●●● Hosted API key | ●●●●● Runs locally |
Model freedom Whether you can point it at any provider, or it is wired to one. | ●●●●● Firecrawl models | ●●●●● Multiple providers |
Setup ease What it takes to get a first useful run out of it. | ●●●●● API key required | ●●●●● Install + extension |
Which one to pick
Pick firecrawl if…
Agent-ready — connect agents to live web data with a single API, get structured LLM-ready output, and interact with pages (click/scroll/write) at scale.
- Context depth: Whole-site crawling (5/5 against 3/5)
Pick OpenCLI if…
Local browser control — use your logged-in Chrome and a lightweight local daemon/extension so agents operate real pages and you can author reusable adapters and plugins.
- Privacy: Runs locally (5/5 against 3/5)
- Model freedom: Multiple providers (3/5 against 1/5)
What people want from each one
firecrawl/firecrawl
jackwener/OpenCLI
Hacker News: OpenCLI – Turn any website into a CLI, reusing your Chrome login drew 6 points and 3 comments.
Questions people ask
Is firecrawl better than OpenCLI?
They split the axes: firecrawl leads on context depth, OpenCLI on privacy and model freedom. firecrawl is worth picking when agent-ready — connect agents to live web data with a single API, get structured LLM-ready output, and interact with pages (click/scroll/write) at scale.
Which of firecrawl and OpenCLI keeps my code private?
firecrawl: Hosted API key (3/5). OpenCLI: Runs locally (5/5).
What does each one cost to run?
firecrawl: Hosted service — API key required. OpenCLI: Free, local runtime.
Full profiles: firecrawl/firecrawl and jackwener/OpenCLI. Everything else in Browser agents.