Speed up Firecrawl scrapes with the v2 cache controls (maxAge, minAge, lockdown)
domain: docs.firecrawl.dev · 4 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
On POST /v2/scrape (or /batch/scrape, /crawl) pass maxAge in ms (default 172800000 = 2 days) to reuse a page cached within that window — caching can speed scrapes up to ~500%.
For cache-ONLY behavior set minAge (e.g. 1 = accept any cached data). A miss returns 404 with error code SCRAPE_NO_CACHED_DATA and never triggers a fresh scrape.
Set storeInCache:false when you don't want results written to the shared cache (data-protection concern); sensitive params like actions/headers already force this off.
For air-gapped/compliance environments set lockdown:true — serves only from cache, never makes an outbound request, and never logs the URL (404 SCRAPE_LOCKDOWN_CACHE_MISS on miss).
Known gotchas
minAge mode NEVER fetches fresh — if the page isn't cached you get a 404, so don't use it for first-time scrapes.
lockdown is billed 5 credits on a cache hit but 1 credit on a miss (unusual — misses are cheap because nothing is fetched).
lockdown is treated as zero data retention; it is gated behind contacting help@firecrawl.dev.
Cached data may be up to maxAge old (2 days by default) — not appropriate when you need fresh content.
Official docs: https://docs.firecrawl.dev/api-reference/endpoint/scrape
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