firecrawl
Python SDK for the Firecrawl API: web scraping, crawling, web search, and scientific literature search over a research paper index of PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv and arXiv abstracts
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes. Active maintenance (release 2 days old), no known vulnerabilities, low install friction, permissive MIT license, and support for Python 3.8+ make it a safe choice. The package is production-stable and well-suited for AI agents, research workflows, and data extraction pipelines. The main constraint is the dependency on an external Firecrawl API service and its associated costs and rate limits—verify those fit your use case before committing.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Requires a Firecrawl API key from firecrawl.dev; can be set via FIRECRAWL_API_KEY environment variable or passed directly to the Firecrawl class.
- Low install friction with a pure-Python wheel and common async/HTTP dependencies.
- Active maintenance with a release 2 days old and 167387 repository stars signal strong ongoing development.
License · maintenance · safety
MIT License (permissive) — MIT License permits free use, modification, and distribution with minimal restrictions—suitable for both open-source and commercial projects.
last release 2026-08-12 (2 days) · last repo commit 2026-08-14 · 167,387 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 1,541,354 downloads/mo, #3,785 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
from firecrawl import Firecrawl
from firecrawl.types import ScrapeOptions
firecrawl = Firecrawl(api_key="fc-YOUR_API_KEY")
data = firecrawl.scrape('https://firecrawl.dev', formats=['markdown', 'html'])
print(data)- Rate limits or quota restrictions on API calls via the Firecrawl service.
- Latency and reliability characteristics of the underlying Firecrawl API.
- Whether video, product, and menu extraction formats work reliably across all target sites.
What it is and what it does
Firecrawl is a Python client for the Firecrawl web-scraping and search service. It wraps HTTP calls to a remote API that handles the complexity of fetching and parsing web content, returning results in multiple formats (Markdown, HTML, structured JSON, video, product data, menu data) or as typed Pydantic models. The SDK supports both synchronous and asynchronous operations, making it suitable for AI agents and data pipelines that need to extract clean, machine-readable content from websites.
Beyond simple scraping, it offers site-wide crawling with depth and URL limits, web search with optional result scraping, and a specialized research-paper index search covering PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and arXiv abstracts. File parsing (HTML, PDF, DOCX) is supported via multipart upload. Pagination is handled automatically by default but can be controlled manually. The package depends on requests, httpx, websockets, aiohttp, pydantic, python-dotenv, and nest-asyncio for HTTP, async, and environment handling.
Use it for
- Extract clean Markdown from web pages for ingestion into RAG pipelines or LLM context windows.
- Crawl entire websites to build searchable indexes or knowledge bases with configurable depth and URL limits.
- Search academic papers across PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and arXiv, then retrieve specific passages answering a research question.
- Scrape product pages to extract structured title, price, availability, and variant data deterministically.
- Parse uploaded HTML, PDF, or DOCX files locally via the parse method for document extraction workflows.
- Perform web search with optional simultaneous scraping of results to gather and process information in one call.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes.
Active maintenance (release 2 days old), no known vulnerabilities, low install friction, permissive MIT license, and support for Python 3.8+ make it a safe choice. The package is production-stable and well-suited for AI agents, research workflows, and data extraction pipelines. The main constraint is the dependency on an external Firecrawl API service and its associated costs and rate limits—verify those fit your use case before committing.
Install
firecrawl on PyPI
Before you install
Low install friction with a pure-Python wheel and common async/HTTP dependencies. Active maintenance with a release 2 days old and 167387 repository stars signal strong ongoing development.
Requires a Firecrawl API key from firecrawl.dev; can be set via FIRECRAWL_API_KEY environment variable or passed directly to the Firecrawl class.
License in practice
MIT License permits free use, modification, and distribution with minimal restrictions—suitable for both open-source and commercial projects.
Quickstart
from firecrawl import Firecrawl
from firecrawl.types import ScrapeOptions
firecrawl = Firecrawl(api_key="fc-YOUR_API_KEY")
data = firecrawl.scrape('https://firecrawl.dev', formats=['markdown', 'html'])
print(data)Verify before relying
- Rate limits or quota restrictions on API calls via the Firecrawl service.
- Latency and reliability characteristics of the underlying Firecrawl API.
- Whether video, product, and menu extraction formats work reliably across all target sites.
Package facts
| License | MIT License permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release >=3.8 |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 7 packagesrequestshttpxpython-dotenvwebsocketsnest-asynciopydanticaiohttp |
| Maintenance | Actively maintained 2 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 1,541,354 / month, #3,785 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableEnvironment :: Web EnvironmentIntended Audience :: DevelopersIntended Audience :: Science/ResearchLicense :: OSI Approved :: MIT LicenseNatural Language :: EnglishOperating System :: OS IndependentProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9Topic :: InternetTopic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTPTopic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTP :: Indexing/SearchTopic :: Scientific/EngineeringTopic :: Scientific/Engineering :: Bio-InformaticsTopic :: Scientific/Engineering :: Medical Science Apps.Topic :: Software DevelopmentTopic :: Software Development :: LibrariesTopic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python ModulesTopic :: Text ProcessingTopic :: Text Processing :: Indexing |
Evidence: firecrawl-4.35.0-py3-none-any.whl
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See also firecrawl-py · scrapegraph-py · spider-client · Crawl4AI · scrapingbee · linkup-sdk · Scrapy · tavily-python · scrapfly-sdk · googlesearch-python