firecrawl-py
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. The package is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, uses a permissive MIT license, and installs with low friction. It is well-suited for developers building AI agents or applications that need web scraping, crawling, or research paper search. The primary constraint is the requirement for a Firecrawl API key and service account.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 to the Firecrawl constructor.
- Low install friction; pure Python wheel with common async and HTTP dependencies.
- Active maintenance with a release 2 days old and high repository activity (167374 stars).
License · maintenance · safety
MIT License (permissive) — MIT License permits commercial and private use with minimal restrictions; suitable for most projects.
last release 2026-08-12 (2 days) · last repo commit 2026-08-14 · 167,374 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 7,323,775 downloads/mo, #1,752 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install firecrawl-py
from firecrawl import Firecrawl
firecrawl = Firecrawl(api_key="fc-YOUR_API_KEY")
data = firecrawl.scrape('https://example.com', formats=['markdown', 'html'])
print(data)- Whether the paper index (~43M abstracts) is kept current and how frequently it is updated.
- Rate limits and quota behavior for the Firecrawl API service itself.
- Performance characteristics for large-scale crawls or batch scrapes.
What it is and what it does
Firecrawl-py is a Python client for the Firecrawl web scraping and search service. It provides methods to scrape individual URLs, crawl entire websites, search the web, and query a research paper index covering PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and arXiv abstracts. The library returns content in multiple formats—Markdown, HTML, video, product data, menu data—and supports both synchronous and asynchronous operations. It depends on requests, httpx, websockets, aiohttp, pydantic, python-dotenv, and nest-asyncio for HTTP, async, and configuration handling.
The package is designed for AI agents and applications that need to extract structured or semi-structured data from web pages or search academic literature. It handles pagination automatically, supports interactive browsing actions, and provides specialized extraction for product pages and restaurant menus. The research paper search methods return raw JSON with camelCase keys, distinct from the rest of the SDK's snake_case convention.
Use it for
- Scrape product pages to extract title, price, availability, and variants deterministically.
- Crawl a website up to a specified depth and format limit to build a searchable knowledge base.
- Search academic literature by querying abstracts from biomedical and physics preprint repositories.
- Extract Markdown from web pages for ingestion into RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) pipelines.
- Map a website's URL structure with optional sitemap and subdomain inclusion for discovery.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes.
The package is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, uses a permissive MIT license, and installs with low friction. It is well-suited for developers building AI agents or applications that need web scraping, crawling, or research paper search. The primary constraint is the requirement for a Firecrawl API key and service account.
Install
firecrawl-py on PyPI
Before you install
Low install friction; pure Python wheel with common async and HTTP dependencies. Active maintenance with a release 2 days old and high repository activity (167374 stars).
Requires a Firecrawl API key from firecrawl.dev; can be set via FIRECRAWL_API_KEY environment variable or passed to the Firecrawl constructor.
License in practice
MIT License permits commercial and private use with minimal restrictions; suitable for most projects.
Quickstart
pip install firecrawl-py
from firecrawl import Firecrawl
firecrawl = Firecrawl(api_key="fc-YOUR_API_KEY")
data = firecrawl.scrape('https://example.com', formats=['markdown', 'html'])
print(data)Verify before relying
- Whether the paper index (~43M abstracts) is kept current and how frequently it is updated.
- Rate limits and quota behavior for the Firecrawl API service itself.
- Performance characteristics for large-scale crawls or batch scrapes.
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 | 7,323,775 / month, #1,752 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_py-4.35.0-py3-none-any.whl
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See also firecrawl · scrapegraph-py · spider-client · Crawl4AI · scrapingbee · tavily-python · Scrapy · valyu · arxiv · tavily-cli