Web search with optional content scraping. Returns search results as JSON, optionally with full page content.
When to use
- You don't have a specific URL yet
- You need to find pages, answer questions, or discover sources
- First step in the workflow escalation pattern: search → scrape → map → crawl → interact
Quick start
# Basic search
firecrawl search "your query" -o .firecrawl/result.json --json
# Search and scrape full page content from results
firecrawl search "your query" --scrape -o .firecrawl/scraped.json --json
firecrawl search "your query" --sources news --tbs qdr:d -o .firecrawl/news.json --json
## Options
| Option | Description |
| ------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------- |
| `--limit <n>` | Max number of results |
| `--sources <web,images,news>` | Source types to search |
| `--categories <github,research,pdf>` | Filter by category |
| `--tbs <qdr:h\|d\|w\|m\|y>` | Time-based search filter |
| `--location` | Location for search results |
| `--country <code>` | Country code for search |
| `--scrape` | Also scrape full page content for each result |
| `--scrape-formats` | Formats when scraping (default: markdown) |
| `-o, --output <path>` | Output file path |
| `--json` | Output as JSON |
## Tips
- **`--scrape` fetches full content** — don't re-scrape URLs from search results. This saves credits and avoids redundant fetches.
- Always write results to `.firecrawl/` with `-o` to avoid context window bloat.
- Use `jq` to extract URLs or titles: `jq -r '.data.web[].url' .firecrawl/search.json`
- Naming convention: `.firecrawl/search-{query}.json` or `.firecrawl/search-{query}-scraped.json`
## See also
- [firecrawl-scrape](../firecrawl-scrape/SKILL.md) — scrape a specific URL
- [firecrawl-map](../firecrawl-map/SKILL.md) — discover URLs within a site
- [firecrawl-crawl](../firecrawl-crawl/SKILL.md) — bulk extract from a site