Question 1

What is Firecrawl Search?

Accepted Answer

Firecrawl Search returns clean web content for AI. Pass a query and get ranked titles, descriptions, and URLs back, or add scrapeOptions to also get full markdown for every result, in one call. Already rendered, already cleaned, ready to drop into an LLM.

Question 2

Who uses Search?

Accepted Answer

Teams building AI agents, deep research workflows, RAG pipelines, lead enrichment, and competitive intelligence. Over a million developers have signed up for Firecrawl, including teams at Apple, Canva, and Lovable.

Question 3

How is Search different from a SERP API plus a scraper?

Accepted Answer

A SERP API gives you ten URLs and a snippet. Firecrawl gives you ten URLs, ten ranked snippets, and the full page content for each, already rendered, already cleaned, already markdown. One API call instead of two systems wired together.

Question 4

Can I get the full page content from each result?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Pass scrapeOptions and Search returns full markdown, JSON, HTML, links, or screenshots for every result, ready to drop into an LLM. Every Scrape format is supported on every result.

Question 5

What sources does Search cover?

Accepted Answer

Web, news, and images by default. Filter by category to search GitHub, research papers, or PDFs. Combine multiple sources in a single call. Limit applies per source, so you can request five web results and five news results in one request.

Question 6

Can I filter by category, domain, or location?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Pass categories for GitHub, research, or PDFs. Pass includeDomains or excludeDomains to scope the search. Pass location to localize results to a country or city, so an agent sees the same results a real user there would.

Question 7

Can I filter by time?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Use tbs to filter by past hour, day, week, month, or year. You can also pass a custom date range with cdr. Combine with sbd:1 to sort by date for freshness-ordered results.

Question 8

Is Search suitable for large-scale projects?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Scale and Enterprise plans include high concurrency, custom rate limits, and SLAs. Zero Data Retention is available for sensitive workloads on both the search and scrape steps.

Question 9

How much does Search cost?

Accepted Answer

2 credits per 10 results, rounded up. If you also scrape results via scrapeOptions, standard scrape credits apply per page (1 credit basic, plus 4 for enhanced proxy or JSON mode). See the pricing page for the full breakdown.

Question 10

Is there a free tier?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Free accounts include 1,000 credits per month, enough to run hundreds of searches with content. No credit card required.

Question 11

Can I self-host Search?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Firecrawl is open source with over 100,000 GitHub stars. Run the search endpoint on your own infrastructure for full control, or use the hosted API for zero ops. Both share the same SDKs and CLI.

Firecrawl Search · Web Search API for AI Agents

Live web search
for AI agents.

The results your AI needs,
the moment it needs them.

Built into the AI tools
you already use

Frequently asked questions

Firecrawl Search · Web Search API for AI Agents

Live web searchfor AI agents.

The results your AI needs,the moment it needs them.The results your AI needs,the moment it needs them.

Built into the AI toolsyou already useBuilt into the AI toolsyou already use

Frequently asked questionsFrequently asked questions

Live web search
for AI agents.

The results your AI needs,
the moment it needs them.

Built into the AI tools
you already use

Frequently asked questions