Parse PDFs with Firecrawl using PDF parser modes and per-page credit billing
domain: docs.firecrawl.dev · 6 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
By default Firecrawl parsers include 'pdf' — PDF content is extracted to markdown, billed 1 credit per page.
Leave parsers at default for text extraction.
To get raw PDF bytes instead, set parsers to an empty array [] — PDF returned as base64 at a flat 1 credit for the whole PDF.
Choose a PDF mode via parsers: { type:'pdf', mode:'fast' } (embedded text only), 'auto' (default; fast first, OCR fallback), or 'ocr' (force OCR every page).
Limit scanned pages with maxPages:1-10000.
Enable redactPII if pages contain personal data before OCR/processing.
Known gotchas
PDF page extraction bills 1 credit PER PAGE by default — large PDFs burn credits fast.
Empty parsers flips billing to a flat 1 credit and returns base64, not markdown.
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