Enhanced Mode

Use enhanced proxies for reliable scraping on complex sites

The proxy parameter is deprecated. We recommend auto — the default — which lets Firecrawl handle proxy selection for you.

Firecrawl provides different proxy types to help you scrape websites with varying levels of complexity. Set the proxy parameter to control which proxy strategy is used for a request.

Proxy types

Type	Description
basic	Standard proxies suitable for most sites
enhanced	Enhanced proxies for complex sites
auto	Recommended. Tries basic first, then retries with enhanced on failure

If you do not specify a proxy, Firecrawl defaults to auto.

Basic usage

Set the proxy parameter to choose a proxy strategy. The following example uses auto, which lets Firecrawl decide when to escalate to enhanced proxies.

Python

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',
)

# Choose proxy strategy: 'basic' | 'enhanced' | 'auto'
doc = firecrawl.scrape('https://example.com', formats=['markdown'], proxy='auto')

print(doc.warning or 'ok')

When Firecrawl escalates

Firecrawl starts on basic proxies. If the target responds with 401, 403, or 429, Firecrawl treats that as a sign the proxy was not good enough and retries the same URL through enhanced proxies. Other status codes, including 404 and 5xx, do not trigger an escalation, because a different proxy would not change the answer.

The escalation happens at most once per request. Once a request is already on enhanced proxies, a further 401, 403, or 429 is returned to you as the result rather than retried again.

You do not need to detect this or handle it. The retry is part of the same request and the response you receive is the final one.

Enhanced proxy requests cost the same as basic requests — 1 credit per request. An escalated retry is not charged separately, so a request that starts on basic and finishes on enhanced still costs 1 credit.

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