Lockdown Mode

Lockdown mode forces the scrape endpoint to read from Firecrawl’s existing index and cache only — it never makes an outbound request to the target URL. It is designed for compliance-constrained and air-gapped environments where the scrape request itself (the URL, headers, and body) could leak sensitive information over the network.

How it works

When lockdown: true is set on a /v2/scrape request:

• No outbound traffic. Firecrawl never connects to the target URL. All outbound paths (HTTP engines, robots.txt fetching, search-index writes, audio transforms, etc.) are gated off.
• Cache-only reads. The request is served from Firecrawl’s index if a matching entry exists. The default maxAge is bumped to 2 years so existing cached pages are eligible regardless of age.
• Cache miss returns an error. If no cached data is available, Firecrawl returns a 404 with error code SCRAPE_LOCKDOWN_CACHE_MISS. The URL is never logged on miss.
• Zero data retention. Lockdown requests are treated as ZDR: no URL is persisted, no response blob is written to long-term storage, and the scrape job is cleaned up after delivery.

When to use this

Great for:

• Regulated industries (healthcare, finance, legal) where outbound requests require audit or approval
• Air-gapped or compliance-constrained environments where the URL itself is sensitive
• Replaying already-indexed pages without re-hitting origins

Skip for:

• Fresh content that has never been scraped before — lockdown mode returns an error on cache miss
• Real-time or time-sensitive data

Usage

Add lockdown: true to your scrape request.

from firecrawl import Firecrawl

firecrawl = Firecrawl(
  # No API key needed to get started — add one for higher rate limits:
  # api_key="fc-YOUR_API_KEY",
)

# Serve only previously cached results. No outbound request is made.
# Returns SCRAPE_LOCKDOWN_CACHE_MISS if the URL is not in the cache.
scrape_result = firecrawl.scrape(
    'https://firecrawl.dev',
    formats=['markdown'],
    lockdown=True,
)

print(scrape_result.markdown)

Cache miss response

If the URL has not been previously scraped and cached, the response is:

{
  "success": false,
  "code": "SCRAPE_LOCKDOWN_CACHE_MISS",
  "error": "No cached data is available for this request in lockdown mode. Lockdown mode only serves previously cached responses and never makes outbound requests. To resolve this, either disable lockdown mode to allow a fresh scrape, or try again after the URL has been scraped and cached."
}

To seed the cache, perform a normal (non-lockdown) scrape of the URL first. Subsequent lockdown requests will return the cached result.

Billing

Zero Data Retention does not incur an additional charge on lockdown requests — the ZDR cost is waived because lockdown mode is already ZDR by default.

Cache hit matching

Lockdown uses the same cache-match rules as regular scrapes. For a cache hit, these parameters must match the cached entry: url, mobile, location, waitFor, blockAds, screenshot (enabled/disabled and full-page), and enhanced proxy mode. You can verify behavior via metadata.cacheState in the response — it will be "hit" on a served response.

Availability

Lockdown mode is supported on the /v2/scrape endpoint and is exposed across all surfaces that call it:

• SDKs — Python, Node.js, Go, Rust, Java, .NET, Ruby, PHP, and Elixir (lockdown: true on the scrape options).
• CLI — pass --lockdown to firecrawl scrape.
• MCP server — include "lockdown": true in the firecrawl_scrape tool arguments.

It is not available on crawl, map, extract, or search.

Are you an AI agent that needs a Firecrawl API key? See firecrawl.dev/agent-onboarding/SKILL.md for automated onboarding instructions.