AnyCrawl MCP Server

🚀 AnyCrawl MCP Server — Powerful web scraping and crawling for Cursor, Claude, and other LLM clients via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Features

• Web Scraping: Extract content from single URLs with multiple output formats

• Website Crawling: Crawl entire websites with configurable depth and limits

• Search Engine Integration: Search the web and optionally scrape results

• Multiple Engines: Support for Playwright, Cheerio, and Puppeteer

• Flexible Output: Markdown, HTML, text, screenshots, and structured JSON

• Async Operations: Non-blocking crawl jobs with status monitoring

• Error Handling: Robust error handling and logging

• Multiple Modes: Support for STDIO and Cloud modes with integrated Nginx proxy

Installation

Running with npx

Manual installation

Configuration

Set the required environment variable:

Optionally set a custom base URL:

Get your API key

• Visit the AnyCrawl website and sign up or log in: AnyCrawl

• 🎉 Sign up for free to receive 1,500 credits — enough to crawl nearly 1,500 pages.

• Open the dashboard → API Keys → Copy your key.

• Copy the key and set it as the ANYCRAWL_API_KEY environment variable (see above).

Usage

Available Modes

AnyCrawl MCP Server supports the following deployment modes:

Quick Start Commands

Docker Compose (MCP + SSE with Nginx)

This repo ships a production-ready image that runs MCP (JSON) on port 3000 and SSE on port 3001 in the same container, fronted by Nginx. Nginx also supports API-key-prefixed paths /{API_KEY}/mcp and /{API_KEY}/sse and forwards the key via x-anycrawl-api-key header.

Environment variables used in Docker image:

• ANYCRAWL_MODE: MCP_AND_SSE (default in compose), or MCP, SSE

• ANYCRAWL_MCP_PORT: default 3000

• ANYCRAWL_SSE_PORT: default 3001

• CLOUD_SERVICE: true to extract API key from /{API_KEY}/... or headers

• ANYCRAWL_BASE_URL: default https://api.anycrawl.dev

Running on Cursor

Configuring Cursor. Note: Requires Cursor v0.45.6+.

For Cursor v0.48.6 and newer, add this to your MCP Servers settings:

For Cursor v0.45.6:

1. Open Cursor Settings → Features → MCP Servers → "+ Add New MCP Server"

2. Name: "anycrawl-mcp" (or your preferred name)

3. Type: "command"

4. Command:

On Windows, if you encounter issues:

Running on VS Code

For manual installation, add this JSON to your User Settings (JSON) in VS Code (Command Palette → Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON)):

Optionally, place the following in .vscode/mcp.json in your workspace to share config:

Running on Windsurf

Add this to ./codeium/windsurf/model_config.json:

Running with SSE Server Mode

The SSE (Server-Sent Events) mode provides a web-based interface for MCP communication, ideal for web applications, testing, and integration with web-based LLM clients.

Quick Start

Server Configuration

Optional server settings (defaults shown):

Available Endpoints

• GET - Health check endpoint

• GET - SSE connection endpoint for MCP clients

• POST - Message handling endpoint for SSE clients

Health Check

MCP Client Configuration

The SSE server provides a web-based MCP interface that can be used with various MCP clients.

Available Endpoints:

• GET /sse - SSE connection endpoint for MCP clients

• POST /messages - Message handling endpoint for SSE clients

• GET /health - Health check endpoint

Cursor Configuration for SSE Mode

For Cursor v0.48.6 and newer, you can configure Cursor to connect to the SSE server:

Note: The API key is set when starting the server, not in the Cursor configuration.

Generic MCP Client Configuration

For other MCP clients that support SSE transport, use this configuration:

Environment Setup:

Key Features

• Web-based MCP interface for easy integration

• Real-time communication with Server-Sent Events

• CORS-enabled for cross-origin requests

• Health monitoring with built-in endpoints

• Session management with automatic ID handling

Running with HTTP Streamable Server (stateful)

Run the HTTP server that maintains MCP sessions via Mcp-Session-Id header.

Optional server settings (defaults shown):

Health check:

Initialize MCP session (expects Mcp-Session-Id in response headers):

Open SSE stream using the returned session id:

Cursor configuration for HTTP modes (streamable_http)

Configure Cursor to connect to your HTTP MCP server.

Local HTTP Streamable Server:

Cloud/Remote deployment:

Note: For HTTP modes, set ANYCRAWL_API_KEY (and optional host/port) in the server process environment. Cursor does not need your API key when using streamable_http.

Available Tools

1. Scrape Tool (anycrawl_scrape)

Scrape a single URL and extract content in various formats.

Best for:

• Extracting content from a single page

• Quick data extraction

• Testing specific URLs

Parameters:

• url (required): The URL to scrape

• engine (required): Scraping engine (playwright, cheerio, puppeteer)

• formats (optional): Output formats (markdown, html, text, screenshot, screenshot@fullPage, rawHtml, json)

• proxy (optional): Proxy URL

• timeout (optional): Timeout in milliseconds (default: 300000)

• retry (optional): Whether to retry on failure (default: false)

• wait_for (optional): Wait time for page to load

• include_tags (optional): HTML tags to include

• exclude_tags (optional): HTML tags to exclude

• json_options (optional): Options for JSON extraction

Example:

2. Crawl Tool (anycrawl_crawl)

Start a crawl job to scrape multiple pages from a website. By default this waits for completion and returns aggregated results using the SDK's client.crawl (defaults: poll every 3 seconds, timeout after 60 seconds).

Best for:

• Extracting content from multiple related pages

• Comprehensive website analysis

• Bulk data collection

Parameters:

• url (required): The base URL to crawl

• engine (required): Scraping engine

• max_depth (optional): Maximum crawl depth (default: 10)

• limit (optional): Maximum number of pages (default: 100)

• strategy (optional): Crawling strategy (all, same-domain, same-hostname, same-origin)

• exclude_paths (optional): URL patterns to exclude

• include_paths (optional): URL patterns to include

• scrape_options (optional): Options for individual page scraping

• poll_seconds (optional): Poll interval seconds for waiting (default: 3)

• timeout_ms (optional): Overall timeout milliseconds for waiting (default: 60000)

Example:

Returns: { "job_id": "...", "status": "completed", "total": N, "completed": N, "creditsUsed": N, "data": [...] }.

3. Crawl Status Tool (anycrawl_crawl_status)

Check the status of a crawl job.

Parameters:

• job_id (required): The crawl job ID

Example:

4. Crawl Results Tool (anycrawl_crawl_results)

Get results from a crawl job.

Parameters:

• job_id (required): The crawl job ID

• skip (optional): Number of results to skip (for pagination)

Example:

5. Cancel Crawl Tool (anycrawl_cancel_crawl)

Cancel a pending crawl job.

Parameters:

• job_id (required): The crawl job ID to cancel

Example:

6. Search Tool (anycrawl_search)

Search the web using AnyCrawl search engine.

Best for:

• Finding specific information across multiple websites

• Research and discovery

• When you don't know which website has the information

Parameters:

• query (required): Search query

• engine (optional): Search engine (google)

• limit (optional): Maximum number of results (default: 10)

• offset (optional): Number of results to skip (default: 0)

• pages (optional): Number of pages to search

• lang (optional): Language code

• country (optional): Country code

• scrape_options (required): Options for scraping search results

• safeSearch (optional): Safe search level (0=off, 1=moderate, 2=strict)

Example:

Output Formats

Markdown

Clean, structured markdown content perfect for LLM consumption.

HTML

Raw HTML content with all formatting preserved.

Text

Plain text content with minimal formatting.

Screenshot

Visual screenshot of the page.

Screenshot@fullPage

Full-page screenshot including content below the fold.

Raw HTML

Unprocessed HTML content.

JSON

Structured data extraction using custom schemas.

Engines

Cheerio

• Fast and lightweight

• Good for static content

• Server-side rendering

Playwright

• Full browser automation

• JavaScript rendering

• Best for dynamic content

Puppeteer

• Chrome/Chromium automation

• Good balance of features and performance

Error Handling

The server provides comprehensive error handling:

• Validation Errors: Invalid parameters or missing required fields

• API Errors: AnyCrawl API errors with detailed messages

• Network Errors: Connection and timeout issues

• Rate Limiting: Automatic retry with backoff

Logging

The server includes detailed logging:

• Debug: Detailed operation information

• Info: General operation status

• Warn: Non-critical issues

• Error: Critical errors and failures

Set log level with environment variable:

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+

• npm

Setup

Build

Test

Lint

Format

Contributing

1. Fork the repository

2. Create your feature branch

3. Run tests: npm test

4. Submit a pull request

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details

Support

• GitHub Issues: Report bugs or request features

• Documentation: AnyCrawl API Docs

• Email: help@anycrawl.dev

About AnyCrawl

AnyCrawl is a powerful Node.js/TypeScript crawler that turns websites into LLM-ready data and extracts structured SERP results from Google/Bing/Baidu/etc. It features native multi-threading for bulk processing and supports multiple output formats.

• Website: https://anycrawl.dev

• GitHub: https://github.com/any4ai/anycrawl

• API: https://api.anycrawl.dev