How It Works
Firecrawl caches previously scraped pages and, by default, returns a recent copy when available.- Default freshness:
maxAge = 172800000
ms (2 days). If the cached copy is newer than this, it’s returned instantly; otherwise, Firecrawl scrapes fresh and updates the cache. - Force fresh: Set
maxAge: 0
to always scrape. - Skip caching: Set
storeInCache: false
if you don’t want to store results for a request.
maxAge
:
- Return instantly if we have a recent version of the page
- Scrape fresh only if our version is older than your specified age
- Save you time - results come back in milliseconds instead of seconds
When to Use This
Great for:- Documentation, articles, product pages
- Bulk processing jobs
- Development and testing
- Building knowledge bases
- Real-time data (stock prices, live scores, breaking news)
- Frequently updated content
- Time-sensitive applications
Usage
AddmaxAge
to your scrape request. Values are in milliseconds (e.g., 3600000
= 1 hour).
Common maxAge values
Here are some helpful reference values:- 5 minutes:
300000
- For semi-dynamic content - 1 hour:
3600000
- For content that updates hourly - 1 day:
86400000
- For daily-updated content - 1 week:
604800000
- For relatively static content
Performance impact
WithmaxAge
enabled:
- 500% faster response times for recent content
- Instant results instead of waiting for fresh scrapes
Important notes
- Default:
maxAge
is172800000
(2 days) - Fresh when needed: If our data is older than
maxAge
, we scrape fresh automatically - No stale data: You’ll never get data older than your specified
maxAge
Faster crawling
The same speed benefits apply when crawling multiple pages. UsemaxAge
within scrapeOptions
to get cached results for pages we’ve seen recently.
maxAge
, each page in your crawl will benefit from the 500% speed improvement if we have recent cached data for that page.
Start using maxAge
today for dramatically faster scrapes and crawls!