Firecrawl web search
firecrawl_searchSearch web, news, or image sources and return ranked results with query-relevant highlights; optionally fetch page content for web results.
Instructions
Search web, news, or image sources and return ranked results with query-relevant highlights. Each web result is a title, URL, and description; use firecrawl_scrape on a result URL when the excerpt is not enough.
Authenticated search also returns matching Alexandria data providers in data.tools (companies, people, jobs, finance and filings, public records and government spending, real estate, places and restaurants, retail and prices, package registries and developer data, news, research, and more). Prefer a provider over scraping pages when the task needs the same fields across several entities, exact figures or timestamps, provenance, or many records; use web results when they already answer the question. A search with sources: ["web"] omits semantic provider discovery; domainTools: true can still return website-matched tools. Web-only results use domainTools: false.
On an authenticated session, tool matches describe available capabilities; firecrawl_find_tools returns their contracts and firecrawl_scrape with an alexandria body executes a selected capability. Keyless sessions get no Alexandria matches in data.tools.
For a programming question, add categories: ["developer"]; its hits return in data.web with category: "developer". For a legal or regulatory question, categories: ["gov"] returns hits in data.web with category: "gov" and cannot be combined with other categories; authenticated sessions also have firecrawl_gov_search as the dedicated tool. categories: ["research"] restricts web results to research-affiliated websites; the firecrawl_research_* tools are a separate surface over paper abstracts and full text (PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv). Query operators, domain filters, categories, toolDetail and scrapeOptions are described on their parameters. Returns source-type result groups and usage metadata. Authenticated responses can include an id for optional search feedback.
Tool call template
Replace each placeholder with a value matching the input schema. Only required parameters are included; add optional parameters as needed.
{
"id": 1,
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "tools/call",
"params": {
"arguments": {
"query": "<query>"
},
"name": "firecrawl_search"
}
}Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| tbs | No | ||
| limit | No | ||
| query | Yes | Query for web and semantic tool discovery. Operators include quoted phrases, `-term`, `site:host`, `inurl:term`, `intitle:term`, and `related:host`; the set is non-exhaustive. Catalogue browsing is available through firecrawl_find_tools. | |
| filter | No | ||
| sources | No | Search sources; authenticated sessions default to web + alexandria, keyless sessions to web only. A search with sources: ["web"] omits semantic provider discovery; domainTools: true can still return website-matched tools. Web-only results use domainTools: false. Use ["alexandria"] alone for provider discovery without web results. | |
| location | No | ||
| objective | No | Optional broader goal for this search, if known. Avoid sensitive information. | |
| categories | No | Limit results to specific source types. `research` restricts ordinary web results to research-affiliated websites and returns page snippets, which is separate from the `firecrawl_research_*` tools that search paper abstracts and full text across biomedical (PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv) and arXiv literature; `pdf` searches PDF results; `developer` searches an index built for coding agents over public repositories, GitHub issues, merged pull requests, repository READMEs, and code documentation; `gov` searches the Government Index of US federal, state, and local legal and regulatory sources, the index behind firecrawl_gov_search, and cannot be combined with other categories. `developer` and `gov` return hits in `data.web` with `category` set to their name; the other categories also filter `data.web`. | |
| enterprise | No | ||
| highlights | No | Return query-relevant page excerpts for web and news results when available (default). Highlights appear in web `description` and news `snippet`; otherwise, original snippets are returned. Set to false to keep the original search snippets. | |
| toolDetail | No | Compact by default. Compact returns only provider, capability and description; full includes contracts. Inspect selected compact tools with firecrawl_find_tools providers and capabilities. | |
| clientModel | No | Optional model identifier, if known. | |
| domainTools | No | Include domain-matched tools for result URLs. Defaults to true when Alexandria is combined with web, news or images; semantic-only search leaves domain matching off. | |
| scrapeOptions | No | Attach page content for web results in the same call. These fetches ignore maxAge, so use firecrawl_scrape when you need a live fetch. scrapeOptions fetches web pages, never Alexandria provider tools. | |
| excludeDomains | No | Hostnames to leave out of results. Mutually exclusive with includeDomains. | |
| includeDomains | No | Hostnames to restrict results to. Mutually exclusive with excludeDomains. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| id | No | Search identifier, for optional `firecrawl_search_feedback`. | |
| data | No | Ranked results grouped by source, such as `web`, `news`, `images`, and `alexandria`. | |
| error | No | Error message or error object when the call did not succeed. | |
| tools | No | Domain-matched Alexandria tools for the results. | |
| success | No | Whether the API call succeeded. | |
| warning | No | Non-fatal warning about the result. | |
| nextTool | No | A follow-up tool call that continues this search. | |
| agent_hints | No | Optional response guidance from the Firecrawl API. | |
| creditsUsed | No | Credits this search consumed. | |
| feedbackTool | No | Pointer to the feedback tool for this search. |