Firecrawl MCP Server

• Adjusted search to include query operators in the prompt

<div align="center">

<a name="readme-top"></a>

<img

src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server/main/img/fire.png"

height="140"

</div>

Firecrawl MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that brings Firecrawl to MCP-compatible AI agents — search, scrape, and interact with the live web for clean, agent-ready context.

Big thanks to @vrknetha, @knacklabs for the initial implementation!

Features

• Search the web and get full page content
• Search an index built for coding agents: GitHub issues, merged pull requests, READMEs, and docs
• Scrape any URL into clean, structured data
• Interact with pages — click, navigate, and operate
• Deep research with autonomous agent
• Automatic retries and rate limiting
• Cloud and self-hosted support
• SSE support

Play around with our MCP Server on MCP.so's playground or on Klavis AI.

Installation

Hosted MCP (keyless free tier)

Connect to the remote hosted server with no setup:

https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp

On the keyless free tier, scrape, search, and parse work without an API key (rate-limited). Other tools such as crawl, map, and agent still need a key.

Prefer OAuth or an API key whenever the human can sign up. It unlocks the full tool set and higher limits.

For an interactive account connection, configure your MCP client to use this server URL. This is an MCP endpoint, not a browser page; use the client's account-connection flow and do not add a second Firecrawl server entry when reconnecting:

https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp-oauth

For an API-key connection (for example, an unattended integration), keep the server URL as:

https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp

Then configure the client's secure header or secret setting with:

Authorization: Bearer <FIRECRAWL_API_KEY>

Never put an API key in the server URL. Never put an API key in an agent chat. Configure it directly in the client or secret manager. See the hosted MCP setup guide and the agent onboarding guide for client-specific instructions.

Search-only endpoint

A read-only, search-only surface is also hosted at:

https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp-search

It exposes a fixed set of six read-only tools: firecrawl_search, firecrawl_developer_search, and the four firecrawl_research_* tools. It performs no page-content fetching and has its own OAuth identity; the full endpoint above is unchanged. See docs/search-profile.md for the full contract.

Running with npx

env FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-YOUR_API_KEY npx -y firecrawl-mcp

Manual Installation

npm install -g firecrawl-mcp

Running on Cursor

Configuring Cursor 🖥️

Note: Requires Cursor version 0.45.6+

For the most up-to-date configuration instructions, please refer to the official Cursor documentation on configuring MCP servers:

Cursor MCP Server Configuration Guide

To configure Firecrawl MCP in Cursor v0.48.6

1. Open Cursor Settings
2. Go to Features > MCP Servers
3. Click "+ Add new global MCP server"
4. Enter the following code:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "firecrawl-mcp": {
         "command": "npx",
         "args": ["-y", "firecrawl-mcp"],
         "env": {
           "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "YOUR-API-KEY"
         }
       }
     }
   }

To configure Firecrawl MCP in Cursor v0.45.6

1. Open Cursor Settings
2. Go to Features > MCP Servers
3. Click "+ Add New MCP Server"
4. Enter the following:

• Name: "firecrawl-mcp" (or your preferred name)
• Type: "command"
• Command: env FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=your-api-key npx -y firecrawl-mcp

If you are using Windows and are running into issues, try cmd /c "set FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=your-api-key && npx -y firecrawl-mcp"

Replace your-api-key with your Firecrawl API key. If you don't have one yet, you can create an account and get it from https://www.firecrawl.dev/app/api-keys

After adding, refresh the MCP server list to see the new tools. The Composer Agent will automatically use Firecrawl MCP when appropriate, but you can explicitly request it by describing your web scraping needs. Access the Composer via Command+L (Mac), select "Agent" next to the submit button, and enter your query.

Running on Windsurf

Add this to your ./codeium/windsurf/model_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-server-firecrawl": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "firecrawl-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Running with Streamable HTTP Local Mode

To run the server using Streamable HTTP locally instead of the default stdio transport:

env HTTP_STREAMABLE_SERVER=true FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-YOUR_API_KEY npx -y firecrawl-mcp

Use the url: http://localhost:3000/mcp

Installing via Smithery (Legacy)

To install Firecrawl for Claude Desktop automatically via Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install @mendableai/mcp-server-firecrawl --client claude

Running on VS Code

For one-click installation, click one of the install buttons below...

Install with NPX in VS Code Install with NPX in VS Code Insiders

For manual installation, add the following JSON block to your User Settings (JSON) file in VS Code. You can do this by pressing Ctrl + Shift + P and typing Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON).

{
  "mcp": {
    "inputs": [
      {
        "type": "promptString",
        "id": "apiKey",
        "description": "Firecrawl API Key",
        "password": true
      }
    ],
    "servers": {
      "firecrawl": {
        "command": "npx",
        "args": ["-y", "firecrawl-mcp"],
        "env": {
          "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "${input:apiKey}"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Optionally, you can add it to a file called .vscode/mcp.json in your workspace. This will allow you to share the configuration with others:

{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "apiKey",
      "description": "Firecrawl API Key",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "firecrawl": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "firecrawl-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "${input:apiKey}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Configuration

Environment Variables

Required for Cloud API

• FIRECRAWL_API_KEY: Your Firecrawl API key
• Required when using cloud API (default)
• Optional when using self-hosted instance with FIRECRAWL_API_URL
• FIRECRAWL_API_URL (Optional): Custom API endpoint for self-hosted instances
• Example: https://firecrawl.your-domain.com
• If not provided, the cloud API will be used (requires API key)

MCP OAuth (Bearer access tokens)

Hosted Firecrawl can issue OAuth access tokens (fco_…) via the authorization server on firecrawl.dev. This MCP server forwards whichever credential it resolves to the Firecrawl API as Authorization: Bearer ….

• HTTP stream transports (CLOUD_SERVICE=true, HTTP_STREAMABLE_SERVER=true, or SSE_LOCAL=true): Clients should send Authorization: Bearer <fco_access_token> on MCP requests. An OAuth bearer token takes precedence over x-firecrawl-api-key / x-api-key when both are present.
• stdio: Use FIRECRAWL_OAUTH_TOKEN for a static access token, or keep using FIRECRAWL_API_KEY for an API key.

Use access tokens (fco_…) only. Refresh tokens (fcr_…) must be exchanged at the token endpoint, not passed to the scrape/search API.

Search-only surface (hosted)

In hosted mode (CLOUD_SERVICE=true) a second in-process instance serves the search-only endpoint. The bundled service has a fixed deployment contract: nginx routes /v2/mcp-search to the instance on local port 3001, and the OAuth protected-resource identifier is https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp-search.

FIRECRAWL_MCP_SEARCH_ENABLED (default true) is the supported operational toggle; set it to false to prevent the search instance from starting. The Node process also accepts FIRECRAWL_MCP_SEARCH_PORT, FIRECRAWL_MCP_SEARCH_ENDPOINT, and FIRECRAWL_MCP_SEARCH_RESOURCE_URL for isolated tests. Those overrides do not reconfigure the bundled nginx routes or the authorization server allowlist and must not be used independently in the hosted deployment.

The search instance requires authentication for every request (including tools/list) and rejects OAuth tokens whose audience does not match its own resource.

Configuration Examples

For cloud API usage:

export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=your-api-key

For self-hosted instance:

# Required for self-hosted
export FIRECRAWL_API_URL=https://firecrawl.your-domain.com

# Optional authentication for self-hosted
export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=your-api-key  # If your instance requires auth

Usage with Claude Desktop

Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-server-firecrawl": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "firecrawl-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

How to Choose a Tool

Use this guide to select the right tool for your task:

• If you know the exact URL you want: use scrape (with JSON format for structured data)
• If you have multiple known URLs: call scrape for each URL. If you specifically need one bulk API operation, use the Firecrawl API batch endpoint outside MCP.
• If you need to discover URLs on a site: use map
• If you want to search the web for info: use search
• If you have a programming question (a library, an API contract, an error message, a known bug): use developer search
• If you need scientific papers (biomedical, life-science, clinical, or arXiv literature): use research tools — they search paper abstracts and full text. search with categories: ["research"] is a different thing: a website filter over ordinary web results.
• If you need complex research across multiple unknown sources: use agent
• If you want to analyze a whole site or section: use crawl (with limits!)
• If you need interactive browser automation (click, type, navigate): use interact with a URL for a fresh page, or scrape + interact when you already scraped the page or need tighter scrape control

Quick Reference Table

| Tool | Best for | Returns |

| ------------ | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------ |

| scrape | Single page content | JSON (preferred) or markdown |

| interact | Interact with a URL or scraped page | Execution result + scrapeId for URL mode |

| map | Discovering URLs on a site | URL[] |

| crawl | Multi-page extraction (with limits) | final crawl status/data after internal polling |

| parse | Files and hosted upload refs | markdown, JSON, or document output |

| search | Web search for info | results[] |

| developer | Programming questions over developer sources | results[] with passages |

| agent | Complex multi-source research | JSON (structured data) |

| monitor | Recurring page checks | monitor/check metadata and diffs |

| research | Paper and GitHub repository research | research results and repo matches |

Format Selection Guide

When using scrape, choose the right format:

• JSON format (recommended for most cases): Use when you need specific data from a page. Define a schema based on what you need to extract. This keeps responses small and avoids context window overflow.
• Markdown format (use sparingly): Only when you genuinely need the full page content, such as reading an entire article for summarization or analyzing page structure.

Available Tools

1. Scrape Tool (firecrawl_scrape)

Scrape content from a single URL with advanced options.

Best for:

• Single page content extraction, when you know exactly which page contains the information.

Not recommended for:

• Extracting content from multiple pages (use repeated scrape calls for known URLs, or map + scrape to discover URLs first, or crawl for full page content)
• When you're unsure whic