firecrawl browser

Cloud Chromium sessions in Firecrawl's remote sandboxed environment. Interact with pages that require clicks, form fills, pagination, or login.

When to use

Content requires interaction: clicks, form fills, pagination, login
scrape failed because content is behind JavaScript interaction
You need to navigate a multi-step flow
Last resort in the workflow escalation pattern: search → scrape → map → crawl → browser
Never use browser for web searches — use search instead

Quick start

# Typical browser workflow
firecrawl browser "open <url>"
firecrawl browser "snapshot -i"                       # see interactive elements with @ref IDs
firecrawl browser "click @e5"                         # interact with elements
firecrawl browser "fill @e3 'search query'"           # fill form fields
firecrawl browser "scrape" -o .firecrawl/page.md      # extract content
firecrawl browser close

Shorthand auto-launches a session if none exists — no setup required.

Commands

| Command | Description | | -------------------- | ---------------------------------------- | | open <url> | Navigate to a URL | | snapshot -i | Get interactive elements with @ref IDs | | screenshot | Capture a PNG screenshot | | click <@ref> | Click an element by ref | | type <@ref> <text> | Type into an element | | fill <@ref> <text> | Fill a form field (clears first) | | scrape | Extract page content as markdown | | scroll <direction> | Scroll up/down/left/right | | wait <seconds> | Wait for a duration | | eval <js> | Evaluate JavaScript on the page |

Session management: launch-session --ttl 600, list, close

Options

| Option | Description | | ---------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | | --ttl <seconds> | Session time-to-live | | --ttl-inactivity <seconds> | Inactivity timeout | | --session <id> | Use a specific session ID | | --profile <name> | Use a named profile (persists state) | | --no-save-changes | Read-only reconnect (don't write to session state) | | -o, --output <path> | Output file path |

Profiles

Profiles survive close and can be reconnected by name. Use them for login-then-work flows:

# Session 1: Login and save state
firecrawl browser launch-session --profile my-app
firecrawl browser "open https://app.example.com/login"
firecrawl browser "snapshot -i"
firecrawl browser "fill @e3 'user@example.com'"
firecrawl browser "click @e7"
firecrawl browser "wait 2"
firecrawl browser close

# Session 2: Come back authenticated
firecrawl browser launch-session --profile my-app
firecrawl browser "open https://app.example.com/dashboard"
firecrawl browser "scrape" -o .firecrawl/dashboard.md
firecrawl browser close

Read-only reconnect (no writes to session state):

firecrawl browser launch-session --profile my-app --no-save-changes

Shorthand with profile:

firecrawl browser --profile my-app "open https://example.com"

Tips

If you get forbidden errors, the session may have expired — create a new one.
For parallel browser work, launch separate sessions and operate them via --session <id>.
Always close sessions when done to free resources.

firecrawl-browser