firecrawl-cost-tuning

# Firecrawl Cost Tuning ## Overview Firecrawl charges credits per operation: 1 credit per scrape, 1 per crawled page, 1 per map call, and variable credits for extract (LLM usage). An unbounded crawl on a large site can consume thousands of credits in minutes. This skill covers concrete techniques to reduce credit consumption by 50-80%. ## Credit Cost Table | Operation | Credits | Notes | |-----------|---------|-------| | `scrapeUrl` | 1 | Per page, any format | | `crawlUrl` | 1 per page | Each discovered page costs 1 credit | | `mapUrl` | 1 | Regardless of URLs returned | | `batchScrapeUrls` | 1 per URL | Same as individual scrape | | `extract` | 5+ | LLM processing adds cost | ## Instructions ### Step 1: Always Set Crawl Limits ```typescript import FirecrawlApp from "@mendable/firecrawl-js"; const firecrawl = new FirecrawlApp({ apiKey: process.env.FIRECRAWL_API_KEY!, }); // BAD: no limit — could crawl 100K pages await firecrawl.crawlUrl("https://docs.large-project.org"); // Cost: potentially 100,000+ credits // GOOD: bounded crawl await firecrawl.crawlUrl("https://docs.large-project.org", { limit: 50, // max 50 pages maxDepth: 2, // only 2 levels deep includePaths: ["/api/*"], // only API docs excludePaths: ["/blog/*", "/changelog/*"], scrapeOptions: { formats: ["markdown"] }, }); // Cost: max 50 credits ``` ### Step 2: Use Scrape for Known URLs Instead of Crawl ```typescript // If you know which pages you need, don't crawl — sc...