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 → browser

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
-o, --output <path>	Output file path

Tips

• Prefer plain scrape over --query. Scrape to a file, then use grep, head, or read the markdown directly — you can search and reason over the full content yourself. Use --query only when you want a single targeted answer without saving the page (costs 5 extra credits).
• Try scrape before browser. Scrape handles static pages and JS-rendered SPAs. Only escalate to browser when you need interaction (clicks, form fills, pagination).
• Multiple URLs are scraped concurrently — check firecrawl --status for 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-browser — when scrape can't get the content (interaction needed)
• firecrawl-download — bulk download an entire site to local files