Firecrawl Deploy Integration

Overview

Deploy applications using Firecrawl's web scraping API to production. Covers Vercel serverless, Cloud Run containers, self-hosted Firecrawl via Docker, and webhook endpoint deployment for async crawl results.

Output

Keep a deployment receipt with the image or release identifier, environment, secret-manager references, approved domain policy, canary outcome, aggregate health metrics, and rollback decision. Never place API keys, response bodies, or scraped content in deployment logs.

Examples

Deploy one staging route with a scoped credential injected by the platform. Confirm it rejects an unapproved target before making a provider call, then simulate upstream failure and verify it returns a generic error without leaking headers or content. Roll back the canary before broad release if either check fails.

Prerequisites

• Firecrawl API key (FIRECRAWL_API_KEY)
• Application using @mendable/firecrawl-js
• Platform CLI (vercel, docker, or gcloud)

Instructions

Step 1: Configure Platform Secrets

set -euo pipefail
# Vercel
vercel env add FIRECRAWL_API_KEY production

# Cloud Run
echo -n "$FIRECRAWL_API_KEY" | gcloud secrets create firecrawl-api-key --data-file=-

# Docker
# Use --env-file or docker secrets

Step 2: Vercel Serverless API Route

// app/api/scrape/route.ts (Next.js App Router)
import FirecrawlApp from "@mendable/firecrawl-js";
import { NextRequest, NextResponse } from "next/server";

const firecrawl = new FirecrawlApp({
  apiKey: process.env.FIRECRAWL_API_KEY!,
});

export async function POST(req: NextRequest) {
  const { url, formats = ["markdown"] } = await req.json();

  if (!url) {
    return NextResponse.json({ error: "URL required" }, { status: 400 });
  }

  try {
    const result = await firecrawl.scrapeUrl(url, {
      formats,
      onlyMainContent: true,
      waitFor: 3000,
    });

    return NextResponse.json({
      success: result.success,
      markdown: result.markdown,
      title: result.metadata?.title,
      sourceURL: result.metadata?.sourceURL,
    });
  } catch (error: any) {
    return NextResponse.json(
      { error: error.message, status: error.statusCode },
      { status: error.statusCode || 500 }
    );
  }
}

Step 3: Self-Hosted Firecrawl (Docker Compose)

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  firecrawl:
    image: mendableai/firecrawl:latest
    ports:
      - "3002:3002"
    environment:
      - PORT=3002
      - USE_DB_AUTHENTICATION=false
      - REDIS_URL=redis://redis:6379
      - REDIS_RATE_LIMIT_URL=redis://redis:6379
      - NUM_WORKERS_PER_QUEUE=2
      - BULL_AUTH_KEY=${BULL_AUTH_KEY:-changeme}
    depends_on:
      redis:
        condition: service_healthy

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    ports:
      - "6379:6379"
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "redis-cli", "ping"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 3s
      retries: 5

  app:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-self-hosted
      - FIRECRAWL_API_URL=http://firecrawl:3002
    depends_on:
      - firecrawl

// Point app to self-hosted Firecrawl
const firecrawl = new FirecrawlApp({
  apiKey: process.env.FIRECRAWL_API_KEY!,
  apiUrl: process.env.FIRECRAWL_API_URL || "https://api.firecrawl.dev",
});

Step 4: Cloud Run Deployment

set -euo pipefail
# Build and deploy
gcloud run deploy firecrawl-app \
  --source . \
  --region us-central1 \
  --set-secrets "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=firecrawl-api-key:latest" \
  --memory 512Mi \
  --timeout 300 \
  --allow-unauthenticated

Step 5: Webhook Endpoint for Async Crawls

// app/api/webhooks/firecrawl/route.ts
import crypto from "crypto";
import { NextRequest, NextResponse } from "next/server";

export async function POST(req: NextRequest) {
  const body = await req.text();

  // Verify webhook signature
  const signature = req.headers.get("x-firecrawl-signature");
  if (signature && process.env.FIRECRAWL_WEBHOOK_SECRET) {
    const expected = crypto
      .createHmac("sha256", process.env.FIRECRAWL_WEBHOOK_SECRET)
      .update(body)
      .digest("hex");
    if (signature !== expected) {
      return NextResponse.json({ error: "Invalid signature" }, { status: 401 });
    }
  }

  const { type, id, data } = JSON.parse(body);

  switch (type) {
    case "crawl.completed":
      console.log(`Crawl ${id} complete: ${data.length} pages`);
      await processPages(data);
      break;
    case "crawl.page":
      console.log(`Page scraped: ${data[0]?.metadata?.sourceURL}`);
      break;
    case "crawl.started":
      console.log(`Crawl ${id} started`);
      break;
  }

  return NextResponse.json({ received: true });
}

Step 6: Health Check

export async function GET() {
  try {
    const result = await firecrawl.scrapeUrl("https://example.com", {
      formats: ["markdown"],
    });
    return NextResponse.json({
      status: result.success ? "healthy" : "degraded",
    });
  } catch {
    return NextResponse.json({ status: "unhealthy" }, { status: 503 });
  }
}

Error Handling

Resources

• Firecrawl Self-Hosting
• Firecrawl Webhooks
• Firecrawl Node SDK

Next Steps

For webhook handling, see firecrawl-webhooks-events.