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 v1.4.0

● 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:

• Search - No specific URL yet. Find pages, answer questions, discover sources.

• Scrape - Have a URL. Extract its content directly.

• Map + Scrape - Large site or need a specific subpage. Use map --search to find the right URL, then scrape it.

• Crawl - Need bulk content from an entire site section (e.g., all /docs/).

• Browser - Scrape failed because content is behind interaction (pagination, modals, form submissions, multi-step navigation).

Need Command When

Find pages on a topic search

No specific URL yet

Get a page's content scrape

Have a URL, page is static or JS-rendered

Find URLs within a site map

Need to locate a specific subpage

Bulk extract a site section crawl

Need many pages (e.g., all /docs/)

AI-powered data extraction agent

Need structured data from complex sites

Interact with a page browser

Content requires clicks, form fills, pagination, or login

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 only when scrape fails because content is behind interaction: pagination buttons, modals, dropdowns, multi-step navigation, or infinite scroll.

• 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" → find the pagination button browser "click @e12" → click "Next Page" browser "scrape" -o .firecrawl/products-p2.md → extract page 2 content

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" # see the page structure 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:

Command Description

open <url>

Navigate to a URL

snapshot

Get accessibility tree with @ref IDs

screenshot

Capture a PNG screenshot

click <@ref>

Click an element by ref

type <@ref> <text>

Type into an element

fill <@ref> <text>

Fill a form field (clears first)

scrape

Extract page content as markdown

scroll <direction>

Scroll up/down/left/right

wait <seconds>

Wait for a duration

eval <js>

Evaluate JavaScript on the page

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

Options: --ttl <seconds> , --ttl-inactivity <seconds> , --session <id> , -o

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