Document Parsing

Learn about document parsing capabilities.

Firecrawl provides powerful document parsing capabilities, allowing you to extract structured content from various document formats. This feature is particularly useful for processing files like spreadsheets, Word documents, and more.

Supported Document Formats

Firecrawl currently supports the following document formats:

• Excel Spreadsheets (.xlsx, .xls)

  • Each worksheet is converted to an HTML table
  • Worksheets are separated by H2 headings with the sheet name
  • Preserves cell formatting and data types

• Word Documents (.docx, .doc, .odt, .rtf)

  • Extracts text content while preserving document structure
  • Maintains headings, paragraphs, lists, and tables
  • Preserves basic formatting and styling

• PDF Documents (.pdf)

  • Extracts text content with layout information
  • Preserves document structure including sections and paragraphs
  • Handles both text-based and scanned PDFs (with OCR support)
  • Supports mode option to control parsing strategy: fast (text-only), auto (text with OCR fallback, default), or ocr (force OCR)
  • Priced at 1 credit per-page. See Pricing for details.

PDF Parsing Modes

Use the parsers option to control how PDFs are processed:

Mode	Description
auto	Attempts fast text-based extraction first, falls back to OCR if needed. This is the default.
fast	Text-based parsing only (embedded text). Fastest option, but will not extract text from scanned or image-heavy pages.
ocr	Forces OCR parsing on every page. Use for scanned documents or when auto misclassifies a page.

// Object syntax with mode
parsers: [{ type: "pdf", mode: "ocr", maxPages: 20 }]

// Default (auto mode)
parsers: [{ type: "pdf" }]

How to Use Document Parsing

Document parsing in Firecrawl works in two ways:

1. URL-based parsing (/v2/scrape): provide a URL that points to a supported document type.
2. File upload parsing (/v2/parse): upload file bytes directly with multipart/form-data.

For URL-based parsing, Firecrawl detects file type from extension or content type automatically.

Upload documents with /v2/parse

Use /v2/parse when the source document is local or not publicly accessible by URL.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/parse" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer fc-YOUR-API-KEY" \
  -F 'options={"formats":["markdown"]}' \
  -F "file=@./document.docx;type=application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document"

Example: Scraping an Excel File

Node

import Firecrawl from '@mendable/firecrawl-js';

const firecrawl = new Firecrawl({ apiKey: "fc-YOUR-API-KEY" });

const doc = await firecrawl.scrape('https://example.com/data.xlsx');

console.log(doc.markdown);

Example: Scraping a Word Document

Node

import Firecrawl from '@mendable/firecrawl-js';

const firecrawl = new Firecrawl({ apiKey: "fc-YOUR-API-KEY" });

const doc = await firecrawl.scrape('https://example.com/data.docx');

console.log(doc.markdown);

Output Format

All supported document types are converted to clean, structured markdown. For example, an Excel file with multiple sheets might be converted to:

## Sheet1

| Name  | Value |
|-------|-------|
| Item 1 | 100   |
| Item 2 | 200   |

## Sheet2

| Date       | Description  |
|------------|--------------|
| 2023-01-01 | First quarter|

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