Running Locally

This guide walks you through running the Firecrawl API server on your local machine. Follow these steps to set up the development environment, start the services, and send your first request.

If you’re contributing, the process follows standard open-source conventions: fork the repo, make changes, run tests, and open a pull request. For questions or help getting started, reach out to [email protected] or submit an issue.

Prerequisites

Install the following before proceeding:

Dependency	Required	Install guide
Node.js	Yes	nodejs.org
pnpm (v9+)	Yes	pnpm.io
Redis	Yes	redis.io
PostgreSQL	Yes	Via Docker (see below) or installed directly
Docker	Optional	Required for the PostgreSQL container setup

Set up the database

You need a PostgreSQL database initialized with the schema at apps/nuq-postgres/nuq.sql. The easiest approach is to use the Docker image inside apps/nuq-postgres.

With Docker running, build and start the container:

docker build -t nuq-postgres apps/nuq-postgres

docker run --name nuqdb \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres \
  -p 5433:5432 \
  -v nuq-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data \
  -d nuq-postgres

Configure environment variables

Copy the template to create your .env file in the apps/api/ directory:

cp apps/api/.env.example apps/api/.env

For a minimal local setup without authentication or optional sub-services (PDF parsing, JS blocking, AI features), use the following configuration:

apps/api/.env

# ===== Required =====
NUM_WORKERS_PER_QUEUE=8
PORT=3002
HOST=0.0.0.0
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379
REDIS_RATE_LIMIT_URL=redis://localhost:6379

## To turn on DB authentication, you need to set up supabase.
USE_DB_AUTHENTICATION=false

## PostgreSQL connection for queuing — change if credentials, host, or DB differ
NUQ_DATABASE_URL=postgres://postgres:postgres@localhost:5433/postgres

# ===== Optional =====
# SUPABASE_ANON_TOKEN=
# SUPABASE_URL=
# SUPABASE_SERVICE_TOKEN=
# TEST_API_KEY=               # Set if you've configured authentication and want to test with a real API key
# OPENAI_API_KEY=             # Required for LLM-dependent features (image alt generation, etc.)
# BULL_AUTH_KEY=@
# PLAYWRIGHT_MICROSERVICE_URL= # Set to run a Playwright fallback
# LLAMAPARSE_API_KEY=         # Set to parse PDFs with LlamaParse
# SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL=          # Set to send Slack server health status messages
# POSTHOG_API_KEY=            # Set to send PostHog events like job logs
# POSTHOG_HOST=               # Set to send PostHog events like job logs

Install dependencies

From the apps/api/ directory, install packages with pnpm:

cd apps/api
pnpm install

Start the services

You need three terminal sessions running simultaneously: Redis, the API server, and a terminal for sending requests.

Terminal 1 — Redis

Start the Redis server from anywhere in the project:

redis-server

Terminal 2 — API server

Navigate to apps/api/ and start the service:

pnpm start

This starts the API server and the workers responsible for processing crawl jobs.

If you plan to use the LLM extract feature, export your OpenAI key first: export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

Terminal 3 — Send a test request

Verify the server is running with a health check:

curl -X GET http://localhost:3002/test

This should return Hello, world!.

To test the crawl endpoint:

curl -X POST http://localhost:3002/v1/crawl \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://mendable.ai"
  }'

Alternative: Docker Compose

For a simpler setup, Docker Compose runs all services (Redis, API server, and workers) in a single command.

Make sure Docker and Docker Compose are installed.
Copy .env.example to .env in the apps/api/ directory and configure as needed.
From the project root, run:

docker compose up

This starts all services automatically in the correct configuration.

Running tests

Run the test suite with:

npm run test:snips

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