Firecrawl Build Scrape

Use this when the application already has the URL and needs content from one page.

Use This When

• the feature starts from a known URL
• you need page content for retrieval, summarization, enrichment, or monitoring
• you want the default extraction primitive before considering /interact

Default Recommendations

• Return markdown unless the feature truly needs another format.
• Use onlyMainContent for article-like pages where nav and chrome add noise.
• Add waits or other rendering options only when the page needs them.

Freshness and Liveness

• Firecrawl reuses recently indexed content, which is what makes repeat reads of the same URL fast. Set maxAge (milliseconds) to bound how old a reused copy may be, or maxAge: 0 to skip index reuse for a freshness-critical read.
• Read metadata.cacheState and metadata.cachedAt to see what you actually got.
• A successful scrape reports what the page returned. Whether the thing the page describes is still active is a source-specific judgment your code makes.
• See references/freshness-and-liveness.md (opens in a new tab) for the tradeoff, the metadata, and the decision rule.

Common Product Patterns

• knowledge ingestion from known URLs
• enrichment from a company, product, or docs page
• pricing, changelog, and documentation extraction
• page-level quality checks or monitoring

Escalation Rules

• If you do not have the URL yet, start with firecrawl-build-search.
• If content requires clicks, typing, or multi-step navigation, escalate to firecrawl-build-interact.

Implementation Notes

• Keep the integration narrow: one feature, one URL, one extraction contract.
• Treat /scrape as the default primitive for downstream LLM or indexing pipelines.
• Request richer formats only when the consumer needs them, such as links, screenshots, or branding data.

Docs (Source of Truth)

Read the source-of-truth page for your project language before writing integration code:

• Node / TypeScript: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/node (opens in a new tab)
• Python: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/python (opens in a new tab)
• Rust: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/rust (opens in a new tab)
• Java: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/java (opens in a new tab)
• Elixir: docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/elixir

See Also

• firecrawl-build
• firecrawl-build-search
• firecrawl-build-interact