FrankenSurf

[Frankensurf]

Frankensurf

Access 96% of the web, cheaply and accurately.
A free, self-hosted alternative to Firecrawl: one container, the same API, and every page checked before your agent reads it.

[PyPI] [Python] [License] [GitHub stars] [MCP server]

Website · Docs · Quick start · Benchmark · Why I built it

Most scrapers count a 200 as a success, so your agent ends up reading challenge pages, empty app shells and menus, and answering anyway. Frankensurf reads each page with the cheapest tool that works, checks it's the real page, and climbs to stealth browsers (or paid APIs, if you allow them) only when a site pushes back. It speaks Firecrawl's API, so anything with a Firecrawl URL setting can point at it.

[Share of 150 sites read correctly: Frankensurf 96%, Zyte 86%, Firecrawl 85%, free tools only 88%]

On 150 sites picked blind: 96% read right with paid fallbacks against 85% for Firecrawl's cloud on its own, and 88% with free tools only. On a harder blind set of 148 less-known sites: 88.5% against 70.3%, and 81.8% free. Against a self-hosted Firecrawl on the same sites, 126 read against 89 (details, losses included).

Quick start

As a Firecrawl-compatible server (one container, free tools inside, no account needed):

docker run -d -p 3002:3002 --shm-size=1g -e FRANKENSURF_API_KEY=pick-a-key ghcr.io/yail259/frankensurf

Then point your tool's Firecrawl URL at http://localhost:3002 with that key (which tools, and how).

As a Python package and CLI (Python 3.12+, on Linux, macOS, or Windows through WSL):

pip install "frankensurf[mcp]"frankensurf install        # every free tool: browsers, stealth browsers, local search, Crawl4AIfrankensurf read "https://www.walmart.com/search?q=air+fryer" --explain

The read climbs until it gets the real page:

https://www.walmart.com/search?q=air+fryer  ✗ http                   CAPTCHA                0.4s  ✗ local                  CAPTCHA                1.5s  ✓ camoufox               got the page           15.6s
air fryer - Walmart.com24,192 characters via camoufox, complete (107 results), free

frankensurf install works like playwright install: name just the tools you want (frankensurf install search chromium), add --with-deps for the browsers' system libraries on Linux, --list to see what's installed where, and frankensurf uninstall all to remove it. No Docker needed. Each release is installed from PyPI on fresh Ubuntu and macOS machines and checked.

Use it

From an agent, as an MCP server (setup for each client):

claude mcp add frankensurf -- frankensurf-mcp

From Python:

import frankensurf as fs
page = fs.read("https://example.com/pricing")if page.ok:    print(page.title, page.text[:500])else:    print("couldn't read it:", page.failure)    # {"code": "CAPTCHA", "message": ...}
pages = fs.batch(urls, links=True)               # paced per site, in orderhits = fs.search("playwright python tutorial", recency="month")page = await fs.aread(url)                       # aread, abatch, asearch inside async code

For a long-running service, keep one Runtime open: async with Runtime() as web: await web.read(url).

Map and crawl: fs.map(url) lists a site's URLs; fs.crawl(url, limit=50) reads a section of it as markdown.

Agent mode (pip install "frankensurf[agent]", any LiteLLM model): fs.ask("question") searches, reads and answers with sources, and says what it couldn't read; fs.extract(urls, schema=...) and fs.summarize(url). Agent mode.

In Docker, one install for your whole network: docker run -p 3002:3002 -e FRANKENSURF_API_KEY=... ghcr.io/yail259/frankensurf (Docker).

From any tool that takes a Firecrawl URL (GPT Researcher, Hermes Agent, OpenClaw, Open WebUI, Dify, LibreChat, n8n, LangChain, LlamaIndex and others): frankensurf serve, then point it at http://127.0.0.1:3002 (setup).

From the command line:

frankensurf read https://example.com --markdownfrankensurf search playwright python tutorial --recency weekfrankensurf watch https://news.ycombinator.com/ --link-pattern 'item\?id=\d+'

In Claude Code as a plugin (the MCP server plus the skill that teaches Claude to use it):

/plugin marketplace add yail259/frankensurf/plugin install frankensurf@frankensurf

From LangChain, the OpenAI Agents SDK or CrewAI (pip install "frankensurf[langchain]", and so on):

from frankensurf.agent_tools import langchain_tools   # or openai_agents_tools, crewai_toolstools = langchain_tools()                              # frankensurf_read, frankensurf_search

You get raw page data, not answers: text or markdown, JSON-LD, the page's own JSON, images, and the receipt. Your agent decides what the page means. If it isn't what it wanted, it asks again with retry_of=<trace_id> and Frankensurf skips every tool it already tried.

Benchmark

Cost per 1,000 correct pages: Frankensurf's free tools $0 in fees, about $0.01 of a $5/month server (87–88% right); with paid fallbacks $0.22 (96%); Firecrawl on its own $0.71 on its Scale plan, $0.98 on Standard (85%). How that's worked out.

scripts/toolbench.py runs each tool on its own, then Frankensurf, on the same pages with the same content checks. The newest set: 148 less-known sites in 15 categories, picked before any was read, every tool on its own, paid ones included (28 October 2026, rows and corrections in benchmarks/2026-10-28-heldout9/).

• Frankensurf read 28 sites Firecrawl missed; Firecrawl read 1 it missed.
• Every tool's reads put together come to 84.5%; Frankensurf reads more than that, through retries and rescues.
• Its slowest tenth takes 33.0 s against Firecrawl's 10.9 s.
• This set is harder than the last: every tool read 10 to 20 points less. A rerun the same evening gave 87.2% and 79.7%.

The set before (150 sites, 11 October 2026, rows in benchmarks/2026-10-11/):

• Frankensurf read 17 sites Firecrawl missed; Firecrawl read none it missed.
• With no paid tools at all it is level with the best paid tool on its own (88.0% against 86.0% and 84.7%; at 150 sites that gap is within the noise).
• Its slowest reads are slower: the slowest tenth takes 25.7 s against Firecrawl's 10.6 s, when a read climbs several tools.
• Not a one-off: 95.3% vs 85.3% on the set the day before; 89.5% vs 80.3% and 88.5% vs 74.1% on earlier fresh sets.

Against self-hosted Firecrawl

Firecrawl is open source too, so the fair question for anyone running their own is how the Firecrawl you'd self-host does. Its docs say self-hosted instances don't get Fire-engine, the anti-bot layer of its cloud. Same 150 sites, 23 October 2026, both servers in Docker on one machine, each site read by both with the first reader alternating site by site:

• Frankensurf read 38 sites the self-hosted Firecrawl didn't; Firecrawl read 1 it didn't.
• The slower tail and slower give-ups are the cost of the extra pages: where self-hosted Firecrawl tries once and stops, Frankensurf climbs to stealth browsers and checks each page before handing it back.
• Rows, scripts and setup: benchmarks/2026-10-23-self-hosted-firecrawl/. Run it on your own pages with frankensurf compare urls.txt --against http://localhost:3002.

Search

search uses free sources first and checks every result: on topic, the right kind of page, inside the date window. Exa, Brave, Tavily, Serper and other paid sources join only when you allow paid tools. Judged blind (results pooled and shuffled, which tool found them hidden), useful results in the top five:

Free, it beats Firecrawl's search: better on 35 queries, worse on 5. With paid allowed it is level with Exa. The local search engine (frankensurf install search, SearXNG without Docker) makes the free tier much stronger. v0.41 improved free search again: on a fresh blind set of 120 queries it beat v0.40 on 41 and lost on 12 (3.42 against 2.71 useful results of 5, benchmarks/2026-10-14-search-v041/). Details in benchmarks/2026-10-13-search/.

What else is in the box

How it works

Every way to fetch a page is a rung: plain HTTP and markdown negotiation, browsers, stealth browsers and signed requests, hosted browsers, paid APIs, and finally a person clearing the wall in a visible browser. A read starts at the cheapest rung and climbs only when a page pushes back. Every tool is a plugin, so new ones slot in as another rung.

[One read of Crunchbase: plain HTTP, headless Chrome, Steel and Camoufox were blocked; Firecrawl got through]

See How escalation works and the full list of integrations.

Known walls

It's an alpha, and some sites still win:

• Need the paid tools: in a free-only spot check, Etsy, Home Depot, Yelp, Crunchbase and G2 blocked every free tool.
• Beat everything so far: Shopee, Temu and Idealista.
• Social sites without a login: LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Threads, Bluesky and Reddit read fine. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Pinterest show only the public shell; the posts need a login.
• Logged-in pages (your feeds, your orders) need a profile.
• A slow tail: most reads take a few seconds, but one in ten climbs several tools and takes 25 s or more.

Found a site it can't read? Report it; every report becomes a test case.

Develop

python3 -m venv .venv.venv/bin/pip install -e '.[test,mcp]'.venv/bin/frankensurf installPYTHONPATH=.:src .venv/bin/pytest -q

The product design is in SPEC.rst and contributor rules in AGENTS.md. New tools are plugins, never branches in Core: see Writing a plugin and the example in examples/frankensurf-plugin-example. The website and docs live in site/.

Licence

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.