Firecrawl CLI

Web scraping, search, and browser automation CLI. Returns clean markdown optimized for LLM context windows.

Run firecrawl --help or firecrawl <command> --help for full option details.

Prerequisites

Must be installed and authenticated. Check with firecrawl --status.

  🔥 firecrawl cli v1.8.0

  ● Authenticated via FIRECRAWL_API_KEY
  Concurrency: 0/100 jobs (parallel scrape limit)
  Credits: 500,000 remaining

• Concurrency: Max parallel jobs. Run parallel operations up to this limit.
• Credits: Remaining API credits. Each scrape/crawl consumes credits.

If not ready, see rules/install.md. For output handling guidelines, see rules/security.md.

firecrawl search "query" --scrape --limit 3

Workflow

Follow this escalation pattern:

1. Search – No specific URL yet. Find pages, answer questions, discover sources.
2. Scrape – Have a URL. Extract its content directly.
3. Map + Scrape – Large site or need a specific subpage. Use map --search to find the right URL, then scrape it.
4. Crawl – Need bulk content from an entire site section (e.g., all /docs/).
5. Browser – Scrape failed because content is behind interaction (pagination, modals, form submissions, multi-step navigation).

See also: download — a convenience command that combines map + scrape to save an entire site to local files.

Scrape vs browser:

• Use scrape first. It handles static pages and JS-rendered SPAs.
• Use browser when you need to interact with a page, such as clicking buttons, filling out forms, navigating through a complex site, infinite scroll, or when scrape fails to grab all the content you need.
• Never use browser for web searches – use search instead.

Avoid redundant fetches:

• search --scrape already fetches full page content. Don’t re-scrape those URLs.
• Check .firecrawl/ for existing data before fetching again.

Example: fetching API docs from a large site

search "site:docs.example.com authentication API"  →  found the docs domain
map https://docs.example.com --search "auth"        →  found /docs/api/authentication
scrape https://docs.example.com/docs/api/auth...    →  got the content

Example: data behind pagination

scrape https://example.com/products                 →  only shows first 10 items, no next-page links
browser "open https://example.com/products"         →  open in browser
browser "snapshot -i"                               →  find the pagination button
browser "click @e12"                                →  click "Next Page"
browser "scrape" -o .firecrawl/products-p2.md       →  extract page 2 content

Example: login then scrape authenticated content

browser launch-session --profile my-app  →  create a named profile
browser "open https://app.example.com/login"        →  navigate to login
browser "snapshot -i"                               →  find form fields
browser "fill @e3 'user@example.com'"               →  fill email
browser "fill @e5 'password'"                       →  fill password
browser "click @e7"                                 →  click Login
browser "wait 2"                                    →  wait for redirect
browser close                                       →  disconnect, state persisted

browser launch-session --profile my-app  →  reconnect, cookies intact
browser "open https://app.example.com/dashboard"    →  already logged in
browser "scrape" -o .firecrawl/dashboard.md         →  extract authenticated content
browser close

Example: research task

search "firecrawl vs competitors 2024" --scrape -o .firecrawl/search-comparison-scraped.json
                                                    →  full content already fetched for each result
grep -n "pricing\|features" .firecrawl/search-comparison-scraped.json
head -200 .firecrawl/search-comparison-scraped.json →  read and process what you have
                                                    →  notice a relevant URL in the content
scrape https://newsite.com/comparison -o .firecrawl/newsite-comparison.md
                                                    →  only scrape this new URL

Output & Organization

Unless the user specifies to return in context, write results to .firecrawl/ with -o. Add .firecrawl/ to .gitignore. Always quote URLs – shell interprets ? and & as special characters.

firecrawl search "react hooks" -o .firecrawl/search-react-hooks.json --json
firecrawl scrape "<url>" -o .firecrawl/page.md

Naming conventions:

.firecrawl/search-{query}.json
.firecrawl/search-{query}-scraped.json
.firecrawl/{site}-{path}.md

Never read entire output files at once. Use grep, head, or incremental reads:

wc -l .firecrawl/file.md && head -50 .firecrawl/file.md
grep -n "keyword" .firecrawl/file.md

Single format outputs raw content. Multiple formats (e.g., --format markdown,links) output JSON.

Commands

search

Web search with optional content scraping. Run firecrawl search --help for all options.

# Basic search
firecrawl search "your query" -o .firecrawl/result.json --json

# Search and scrape full page content from results
firecrawl search "your query" --scrape -o .firecrawl/scraped.json --json

# News from the past day
firecrawl search "your query" --sources news --tbs qdr:d -o .firecrawl/news.json --json

Options: --limit <n>, --sources <web,images,news>, --categories <github,research,pdf>, --tbs <qdr:h|d|w|m|y>, --location, --country <code>, --scrape, --scrape-formats, -o

scrape

Scrape one or more URLs. Multiple URLs are scraped concurrently and each result is saved to .firecrawl/. Run firecrawl scrape --help for all options.

# Basic markdown extraction
firecrawl scrape "<url>" -o .firecrawl/page.md

# Main content only, no nav/footer
firecrawl scrape "<url>" --only-main-content -o .firecrawl/page.md

# Wait for JS to render, then scrape
firecrawl scrape "<url>" --wait-for 3000 -o .firecrawl/page.md

# Multiple URLs (each saved to .firecrawl/)
firecrawl scrape https://firecrawl.dev https://firecrawl.dev/blog https://docs.firecrawl.dev

# Get markdown and links together
firecrawl scrape "<url>" --format markdown,links -o .firecrawl/page.json

Options: -f <markdown,html,rawHtml,links,screenshot,json>, -H, --only-main-content, --wait-for <ms>, --include-tags, --exclude-tags, -o

map

Discover URLs on a site. Run firecrawl map --help for all options.

# Find a specific page on a large site
firecrawl map "<url>" --search "authentication" -o .firecrawl/filtered.txt

# Get all URLs
firecrawl map "<url>" --limit 500 --json -o .firecrawl/urls.json

Options: --limit <n>, --search <query>, --sitemap <include|skip|only>, --include-subdomains, --json, -o

crawl

Bulk extract from a website. Run firecrawl crawl --help for all options.

# Crawl a docs section
firecrawl crawl "<url>" --include-paths /docs --limit 50 --wait -o .firecrawl/crawl.json

# Full crawl with depth limit
firecrawl crawl "<url>" --max-depth 3 --wait --progress -o .firecrawl/crawl.json

# Check status of a running crawl
firecrawl crawl <job-id>

Options: --wait, --progress, --limit <n>, --max-depth <n>, --include-paths, --exclude-paths, --delay <ms>, --max-concurrency <n>, --pretty, -o

agent

AI-powered autonomous extraction (2-5 minutes). Run firecrawl agent --help for all options.

# Extract structured data
firecrawl agent "extract all pricing tiers" --wait -o .firecrawl/pricing.json

# With a JSON schema for structured output
firecrawl agent "extract products" --schema '{"type":"object","properties":{"name":{"type":"string"},"price":{"type":"number"}}}' --wait -o .firecrawl/products.json

# Focus on specific pages
firecrawl agent "get feature list" --urls "<url>" --wait -o .firecrawl/features.json

Options: --urls, --model <spark-1-mini|spark-1-pro>, --schema <json>, --schema-file, --max-credits <n>, --wait, --pretty, -o

browser

Cloud Chromium sessions in Firecrawl’s remote sandboxed environment. Run firecrawl browser --help and firecrawl browser "agent-browser --help" for all options.

# Typical browser workflow
firecrawl browser "open <url>"
firecrawl browser "snapshot -i"                       # see interactive elements with @ref IDs
firecrawl browser "click @e5"                         # interact with elements
firecrawl browser "fill @e3 'search query'"           # fill form fields
firecrawl browser "scrape" -o .firecrawl/page.md      # extract content
firecrawl browser close

Shorthand auto-launches a session if none exists – no setup required.

Core agent-browser commands:

Session management: launch-session --ttl 600, list, close

Options: --ttl <seconds>, --ttl-inactivity <seconds>, --session <id>, --profile <name>, --no-save-changes, -o

Profiles survive close and can be reconnected by name. Use them when you need to login first, then come back later to do work while already authenticated:

# Session 1: Login and save state
firecrawl browser launch-session --profile my-app
firecrawl browser "open https://app.example.com/login"
firecrawl browser "snapshot -i"
firecrawl browser "fill @e3 'user@example.com'"
firecrawl browser "fill @e5 'password123'"
firecrawl browser "click @e7"
firecrawl browser "wait 2"
firecrawl browser close

# Session 2: Come back authenticated
firecrawl browser launch-session --profile my-app
firecrawl browser "open https://app.example.com/dashboard"
firecrawl browser "scrape" -o .firecrawl/dashboard.md
firecrawl browser close

Read-only reconnect (no writes to session state):

firecrawl browser launch-session --profile my-app --no-save-changes

Shorthand with profile:

firecrawl browser --profile my-app "open https://example.com"

If you get forbidden errors in the browser, you may need to create a new session as the old one may have expired.

credit-usage

firecrawl credit-usage
firecrawl credit-usage --json --pretty -o .firecrawl/credits.json

Working with Results

These patterns are useful when working with file-based output (-o flag) for complex tasks:

# Extract URLs from search
jq -r '.data.web[].url' .firecrawl/search.json

# Get titles and URLs
jq -r '.data.web[] | "\(.title): \(.url)"' .firecrawl/search.json

Parallelization

Run independent operations in parallel. Check firecrawl --status for concurrency limit:

firecrawl scrape "<url-1>" -o .firecrawl/1.md &
firecrawl scrape "<url-2>" -o .firecrawl/2.md &
firecrawl scrape "<url-3>" -o .firecrawl/3.md &
wait

For browser, launch separate sessions for independent tasks and operate them in parallel via --session <id>.

Bulk Download

download

Convenience command that combines map + scrape to save a site as local files. Maps the site first to discover pages, then scrapes each one into nested directories under .firecrawl/. All scrape options work with download. Always pass -y to skip the confirmation prompt. Run firecrawl download --help for all options.

# Interactive wizard (picks format, screenshots, paths for you)
firecrawl download https://docs.firecrawl.dev

# With screenshots
firecrawl download https://docs.firecrawl.dev --screenshot --limit 20 -y

# Multiple formats (each saved as its own file per page)
firecrawl download https://docs.firecrawl.dev --format markdown,links --screenshot --limit 20 -y
# Creates per page: index.md + links.txt + screenshot.png

# Filter to specific sections
firecrawl download https://docs.firecrawl.dev --include-paths "/features,/sdks"

# Skip translations
firecrawl download https://docs.firecrawl.dev --exclude-paths "/zh,/ja,/fr,/es,/pt-BR"

# Full combo
firecrawl download https://docs.firecrawl.dev \
  --include-paths "/features,/sdks" \
  --exclude-paths "/zh,/ja" \
  --only-main-content \
  --screenshot \
  -y

Download options: --limit <n>, --search <query>, --include-paths <paths>, --exclude-paths <paths>, --allow-subdomains, -y

Scrape options (all work with download): -f <formats>, -H, -S, --screenshot, --full-page-screenshot, --only-main-content, --include-tags, --exclude-tags, --wait-for, --max-age, --country, --languages