Express

Use Firecrawl with Express to build web scraping and search APIs.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• A Firecrawl API key — get one free

Setup

npm install express @mendable/firecrawl-js

Add your API key to .env:

FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-YOUR-API-KEY

Search the web

import express from "express";
import Firecrawl from "@mendable/firecrawl-js";

const app = express();
app.use(express.json());

const firecrawl = new Firecrawl({ apiKey: process.env.FIRECRAWL_API_KEY });

app.post("/search", async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const { query } = req.body;
    const results = await firecrawl.search(query, { limit: 5 });
    res.json(results);
  } catch (error) {
    res.status(500).json({ error: error.message });
  }
});

app.listen(3000, () => console.log("Server running on port 3000"));

Scrape a page

app.post("/scrape", async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const { url } = req.body;
    const result = await firecrawl.scrape(url);
    res.json(result);
  } catch (error) {
    res.status(500).json({ error: error.message });
  }
});

Interact with a page

Use interact to control a live browser session — click buttons, fill forms, and extract dynamic content.

app.post("/interact", async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const { url } = req.body;

    const result = await firecrawl.scrape(url, { formats: ['markdown'] });
    const scrapeId = result.metadata?.scrapeId;

    await firecrawl.interact(scrapeId, { prompt: 'Search for iPhone 16 Pro Max' });
    const response = await firecrawl.interact(scrapeId, { prompt: 'Click on the first result and tell me the price' });

    await firecrawl.stopInteraction(scrapeId);

    res.json({ output: response.output });
  } catch (error) {
    res.status(500).json({ error: error.message });
  }
});

Test it

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/search \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "firecrawl web scraping"}'

Next steps

Scrape docs

All scrape options including formats, actions, and proxies

Search docs

Search the web and get full page content

Interact docs

Click, fill forms, and extract dynamic content

Node SDK reference

Full SDK reference with crawl, map, batch scrape, and more