firecrawl scrape
Scrape one or more URLs. Returns clean, LLM-optimized markdown. Multiple URLs are scraped concurrently.
When to use
- You have a specific URL and want its content
- The page is static or JS-rendered (SPA)
- Step 2 in the workflow escalation pattern: search → scrape → map → crawl → interact
Quick start
# 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://example.com https://example.com/blog https://example.com/docs
# Get markdown and links together
firecrawl scrape "<url>" --format markdown,links -o .firecrawl/page.json
# Ask a question about the page
firecrawl scrape "https://example.com/pricing" --query "What is the enterprise plan price?"Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
-f, --format <formats> | Output formats: markdown, html, rawHtml, links, screenshot, json |
-Q, --query <prompt> | Ask a question about the page content (5 credits) |
-H | Include HTTP headers in output |
--only-main-content | Strip nav, footer, sidebar — main content only |
--wait-for <ms> | Wait for JS rendering before scraping |
--include-tags <tags> | Only include these HTML tags |
--exclude-tags <tags> | Exclude these HTML tags |
--redact-pii | Redact personally identifiable information from output |
-o, --output <path> | Output file path |
Tips
- Prefer plain scrape over
--query. Scrape to a file, then usegrep,head, or read the markdown directly — you can search and reason over the full content yourself. Use--queryonly when you want a single targeted answer without saving the page (costs 5 extra credits). - Try scrape before interact. Scrape handles static pages and JS-rendered SPAs. Only escalate to
interactwhen you need interaction (clicks, form fills, pagination). - Multiple URLs are scraped concurrently — check
firecrawl --statusfor your concurrency limit. - Single format outputs raw content. Multiple formats (e.g.,
--format markdown,links) output JSON. - Always quote URLs — shell interprets
?and&as special characters. - Naming convention:
.firecrawl/{site}-{path}.md
See also
- firecrawl-search — find pages when you don't have a URL
- firecrawl-interact — when scrape can't get the content, use
interactto click, fill forms, etc. - firecrawl-download — bulk download an entire site to local files
