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Rate limits cap how many requests your team can make per minute, while concurrency limits cap how many jobs can run in parallel. Both are set by your plan; exceeding either returns a 429 response. See Errors for the full error catalog and a retry-with-backoff snippet.

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Concurrent Browser Limits

Concurrent browsers control how many pages Firecrawl can process for you in parallel. Your plan sets the ceiling; any jobs beyond it wait in a queue until a browser frees up. Time spent in the queue counts against the request’s timeout parameter, so you can set a lower timeout to fail fast instead of waiting. To see current availability before sending work, call the Queue Status endpoint. Jobs that are waiting in your concurrency queue will time out after a maximum of 48 hours.

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Current Plans

PlanConcurrent BrowsersMax Queued Jobs
Free250,000
Hobby550,000
Standard2550,000
Growth50100,000
Scale / Enterprise100+200,000+
Each team has a maximum number of jobs that can be waiting in the concurrency queue. If you exceed this limit, new jobs will be rejected with a 429 status code until existing jobs complete. For larger plans with custom concurrency limits, the max queued jobs is 2,000 times your concurrency limit, capped at 2,000,000. If you require higher concurrency limits, contact us about enterprise plans.

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API Rate Limits

Rate limits are measured in requests per minute and are primarily in place to prevent abuse. When configured correctly, your real bottleneck will be concurrent browsers. Rate limits are applied per team, so all API keys on the same team share the same rate limit counters.

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Keyless (no API key)

The hosted Firecrawl MCP keyless endpoint exposes exactly Search, Scrape, and Parse without an API key. Other hosted MCP tools require an account connection or an API key. For official Firecrawl clients, the CLI, SDKs, and REST API, keyless access also includes Interact. On Firecrawl Cloud, research, developer, and government search endpoints can also be used without an API key. No other endpoints (crawl, extract, map, batch scrape, etc.) are available without a key. Keyless usage is free and capped per IP address per day by two limits, and exceeding either returns a 429:
  • A maximum number of requests per day.
  • A maximum number of credits per day. Operations cost different amounts of credits (for example, Interact and JSON extraction cost more than a basic scrape), so heavier usage reaches the credit cap sooner.
Sign up for a free API key to get 1,000 credits and higher rate limits at no cost — official clients automatically use your key once it’s configured.

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Current Plans

Plan/scrape/map/crawl/search/agent/crawl/status/agent/status
Free10102102500500
Hobby100100201002050005000
Standard5005001005001002500025000
Growth50005000100050001000250000250000
Scale10000100002000100002000500000500000
These rate limits are enforced to ensure fair usage and availability of the API for all users. If you require higher limits, please contact us at help@firecrawl.com to discuss custom plans.

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Extract Endpoints

The extract endpoints share limits with the corresponding /agent rate limits.

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Batch Scrape Endpoints

The batch scrape endpoints share limits with the corresponding /crawl rate limits.

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Government and Research Indexes

Calls to the Government Index and the Research Index are free. Their endpoints have per-minute limits that are the same on every plan: The gov category on /search uses the /search limits above. Each index also has a daily call limit per team:
PlanCalls per index per day
Free / Hobby / Standard1,000
Growth2,000
Scale / EnterpriseUnlimited
Requests without an API key get the Free limit, counted per IP address. Counts reset at 00:00 UTC. After you upgrade, the new limit applies within about 10 minutes.

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What counts

Each index has its own count. Every call to that index counts once, whichever way you reach it:
  • Government Index: /search/gov, /search with the gov category, and the Government Index tool in Alexandria.
  • Research Index: every /search/research/papers endpoint (search, inspect, read and related papers), and the Research Index tool in Alexandria.
An Alexandria request that carries several calls to an index counts each one. If the request would go over the limit, none of its calls run. A request Firecrawl rejects as invalid (400) before it reaches the index is not counted, and neither is an Alexandria request replayed with the same x-request-id, which returns the saved result. A call that reaches the index counts even if the index returns an error.

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When you reach the limit

The request returns 429 with a Retry-After header giving the seconds until 00:00 UTC. Until then, calls to that index are refused unless they fit in what is left of the limit or you upgrade. The body explains the limit and how to raise it:
Alexandria responses also include retryAfterSeconds, the same value as the Retry-After header.

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Browser Sandbox

The browser sandbox endpoints have per-plan rate limits that scale with your subscription:
Plan/interact/interact/{id}/execute
Free210
Hobby20100
Standard100500
Growth1,0005,000
Scale1,5007,500
In addition, each team’s plan determines how many browser sessions can be active simultaneously (see Concurrent Browser Limits above). If you exceed this limit, new session requests will return a 429 status code until existing sessions are destroyed.