Connect Firecrawl to your MonstarX app
In shortFirecrawl reads web pages for your app and hands back clean text, without the menus and ads. Paste your Firecrawl API key into Backend → Cloud and ask for the feature, like "paste a recipe link and import the recipe". It can read one page, a whole site, or search the web and read the results.
Read and search web pages from your app.
- Type
- For your app
- Category
- Web data and research
- Connect with
- API key
Firecrawl is a service that visits web pages and returns what is on them as clean text, ready for your app or its AI to use. Connect it when your app needs the content of other websites: a recipe from a link, the products on a supplier’s site, the text of an article.
What can you build with it?
Section titled “What can you build with it?”- Import from a link: paste a recipe, job ad or product link and fill in the form from the page.
- Link previews with the page’s title, summary and main picture.
- A price or change watcher that checks a list of pages and tells you what changed.
- Research tools that search the web and read the top results, then summarise them with AI.
- A site import: read every page of your old website to move its content into your new app.
What can Firecrawl do?
Section titled “What can Firecrawl do?”| Job | What your app gets |
|---|---|
| Scrape one page | The page as clean text (markdown), without menus, cookie banners and ads. |
| Crawl a whole site | Every page it can reach from a starting address. Big sites take a while, so the app checks back until it is done. |
| Search the web | Results for a search, with the text of each page. |
Combined with AI, your app can also turn a page into exact fields, like a name, price and description.
MonstarX’s built-in Web Search already answers questions from the web with sources (see Add AI features to your app). Firecrawl is for when your app needs the pages’ full content.
Before you start
Section titled “Before you start”- A Firecrawl account. Firecrawl works on credits, with a small free allowance; each page read uses credits (see Firecrawl’s pricing).
Get your key
Section titled “Get your key”-
Sign in to Firecrawl and open your dashboard’s API Keys.
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Copy your key (it starts with
fc-).
Connect it in MonstarX
Section titled “Connect it in MonstarX”-
Open your project and click Backend in the top bar, then Cloud.
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Under Connectors, click Connect beside Firecrawl.
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Paste the key into API key.
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Click Connect Firecrawl. The row shows Connected, and your preview restarts with the key.
Ask MonstarX to use it
Section titled “Ask MonstarX to use it”| You type | What happens |
|---|---|
| “Let me paste a recipe link and fill in the recipe form from the page.” | Firecrawl reads the page and AI picks out the title, ingredients and steps. |
| “Import every page of my old site, oldsite.com, as blog posts.” | MonstarX asks for Firecrawl first if it is not connected, because it needs your key to read that site, then imports the pages. |
| “Every morning, check these five competitor pages and email me any price changes.” | A daily check that compares with yesterday and emails you. |
| “Add a research page: search the web for a topic and summarise the top five pages.” | A search, the pages’ text and an AI summary with links. |
Security and privacy
Section titled “Security and privacy”- Your key is stored encrypted with this app and used only by its server. People using your app never see it.
- The addresses your app reads are sent to Firecrawl under your account.
- Only the project’s owner can connect, update or disconnect Firecrawl.
- To replace the key, create a new one in Firecrawl, click Update keys on the Firecrawl row, paste it and click Save keys. Publish again, then delete the old key.
Good to know
Section titled “Good to know”- Respect the websites you read: their terms of use and copyright still apply to what your app does with their content.
- Pages behind a sign-in usually cannot be read.
- Crawling a big site can use many credits. Ask MonstarX to set a page limit.
Frequently asked questions
Section titled “Frequently asked questions”Firecrawl or the built-in Web Search?
Web Search answers a question with sources and needs no key. Firecrawl returns the full text of pages, for importing or processing them.
Can Firecrawl read any website?
Most public pages, including ones that build themselves with JavaScript. Pages that need a sign-in usually cannot be read.
What does it cost?
Firecrawl charges credits per page on your own account. MonstarX adds nothing.
Can I build this before I have a key?
Yes, for most features: click Later on the card and MonstarX builds everything. Requests that depend on a site you named wait until Firecrawl is connected, then carry on by themselves.