--- title: "Crawl Website & Scrape Markdown" method: POST path: "/web/crawl" tags: ["Web Scraping"] --- # Crawl Website & Scrape Markdown `POST /web/crawl` Performs a crawl starting from a given URL, extracts page content as Markdown, and returns results for all crawled pages. ## Request body - object - `url` string, uri, required — The starting URL for the crawl (must include http:// or https:// protocol) - `maxPages` integer — Maximum number of pages to crawl. Hard cap: 500. - `maxDepth` integer — Maximum link depth from the starting URL (0 = only the starting page) - `urlRegex` string — Regex pattern. Only URLs matching this pattern will be followed and scraped. - `includeLinks` boolean — Preserve hyperlinks in the Markdown output - `includeImages` boolean — Include image references in the Markdown output - `shortenBase64Images` boolean — Truncate base64-encoded image data in the Markdown output - `useMainContentOnly` boolean — Extract only the main content, stripping headers, footers, sidebars, and navigation - `followSubdomains` boolean — When true, follow links on subdomains of the starting URL's domain (e.g. docs.example.com when starting from example.com). www and apex are always treated as equivalent. - `pdf` object — PDF parsing controls. Use start/end to limit text extraction and embedded-image detection/OCR to an inclusive 1-based page range. - `shouldParse` boolean — When true, PDF pages are fetched and parsed. When false, PDF pages are skipped entirely (not included in results and not counted as failures). - `ocr` boolean — When true, detect and OCR images embedded in the selected PDF pages, inserting recognized text at each image's position in page reading order while preserving the PDF text layer. This is separate from automatic scanned-PDF OCR fallback. - `start` integer — First 1-based PDF page to parse. When omitted, parsing starts at the first page. - `end` integer — Last 1-based PDF page to parse. When omitted, parsing ends at the last page. Must be greater than or equal to start when both are provided. - `includeFrames` boolean — When true, the contents of iframes are rendered to Markdown for each crawled page. - `includeSelectors` string[] — CSS selectors. When provided, only matching HTML subtrees (and their descendants) are kept before each crawled page is converted to Markdown. When omitted, the entire document is kept. Examples: "article.main", "#content", "[role=main]". - `excludeSelectors` string[] — CSS selectors to remove before each crawled page is converted to Markdown. Applied after includeSelectors. Exclusion takes precedence: an element matching both is removed. Examples: "nav", "footer", ".ad-banner", "[aria-hidden=true]". - `maxAgeMs` integer — Return a cached result if a prior scrape for the same parameters exists and is younger than this many milliseconds. Defaults to 1 day (86400000 ms) when omitted. Max is 30 days (2592000000 ms). Set to 0 to always scrape fresh. - `waitForMs` integer — Optional browser wait time in milliseconds after initial page load for each crawled page. Min: 0. Max: 30000 (30 seconds). - `settleAnimations` boolean — When true, waits briefly for CSS and transition animations to settle before extracting each crawled page. Defaults to false. This adds a bit of latency in exchange for more stable output on animated pages. - `stopAfterMs` integer — Soft time budget for the crawl in milliseconds. After each scrape, the crawler checks the elapsed time and, if exceeded, returns the pages collected so far instead of continuing. Min: 10000 (10s). Max: 110000 (110s). Default: 80000 (80s). - `country` 'ad' | 'ae' | 'af' | 'ag' | 'ai' | 'al' | 'am' | 'ao' | 'ar' | 'at' | 'au' | 'aw' | 'az' | 'ba' | 'bb' | 'bd' | 'be' | 'bf' | 'bg' | 'bh' | 'bi' | 'bj' | 'bm' | 'bn' | 'bo' | 'bq' | 'br' | 'bs' | 'bw' | 'by' | 'bz' | 'ca' | 'cd' | 'cf' | 'cg' | 'ch' | 'ci' | 'cl' | 'cm' | 'cn' | 'co' | 'cr' | 'cv' | 'cw' | 'cy' | 'cz' | 'de' | 'dj' | 'dk' | 'dm' | 'do' | 'dz' | 'ec' | 'ee' | 'eg' | 'es' | 'et' | 'fi' | 'fj' | 'fr' | 'ga' | 'gb' | 'gd' | 'ge' | 'gf' | 'gg' | 'gh' | 'gm' | 'gn' | 'gp' | 'gq' | 'gr' | 'gt' | 'gu' | 'gw' | 'gy' | 'hk' | 'hn' | 'hr' | 'ht' | 'hu' | 'id' | 'ie' | 'il' | 'im' | 'in' | 'iq' | 'ir' | 'is' | 'it' | 'je' | 'jm' | 'jo' | 'jp' | 'ke' | 'kg' | 'kh' | 'kn' | 'kr' | 'kw' | 'ky' | 'kz' | 'la' | 'lb' | 'lc' | 'lk' | 'lr' | 'ls' | 'lt' | 'lu' | 'lv' | 'ly' | 'ma' | 'mc' | 'md' | 'me' | 'mf' | 'mg' | 'mk' | 'ml' | 'mm' | 'mn' | 'mo' | 'mq' | 'mr' | 'mt' | 'mu' | 'mv' | 'mw' | 'mx' | 'my' | 'mz' | 'na' | 'nc' | 'ne' | 'ng' | 'ni' | 'nl' | 'no' | 'np' | 'nz' | 'om' | 'pa' | 'pe' | 'pf' | 'pg' | 'ph' | 'pk' | 'pl' | 'pr' | 'ps' | 'pt' | 'py' | 'qa' | 're' | 'ro' | 'rs' | 'ru' | 'rw' | 'sa' | 'sc' | 'sd' | 'se' | 'sg' | 'si' | 'sk' | 'sl' | 'sm' | 'sn' | 'so' | 'sr' | 'ss' | 'st' | 'sv' | 'sx' | 'sy' | 'sz' | 'tc' | 'td' | 'tg' | 'th' | 'tj' | 'tl' | 'tm' | 'tn' | 'tr' | 'tt' | 'tw' | 'tz' | 'ua' | 'ug' | 'us' | 'uy' | 'uz' | 'vc' | 've' | 'vg' | 'vi' | 'vn' | 'ye' | 'yt' | 'za' | 'zm' | 'zw' — Two-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code identifying a supported Context.dev residential proxy exit location. Must be one of Context.dev's supported countries. When provided, Context.dev fetches the target page from that country. - `timeoutMS` integer — Optional timeout in milliseconds for the request. If the request takes longer than this value, it will be aborted with a 408 status code. Maximum allowed value is 300000ms (5 minutes). - `zdr` 'enabled' | 'disabled' — Set to enabled to bypass shared caches and omit request and response content from retained usage logs. Requires zero data retention to be enabled for your organization (contact support@context.dev), otherwise the request fails with ZDR_NOT_ENABLED. Successful ZDR responses include X-Context-ZDR: true. - `tags` string[] — Optional tags for tracking usage. Up to 20 tags, each 1 to 50 characters. ## Response `200` Successful response - object - `results` object[], required - `markdown` string, required — Extracted page content as Markdown (empty string on failure) - `metadata` object, required — Metadata extracted from the scraped page HTML. - `sourceUrl` string, required — Original URL requested by the caller. - `finalUrl` string, required — Final URL scraped after redirects or scraper fallback, when known. Falls back to sourceUrl when unavailable. - `title` string, required — Best page title extracted from the page (empty string if unavailable). - `description` string — Best description extracted from standard, Open Graph, or Twitter metadata. - `language` string — Language extracted from html lang or language meta tags. - `keywords` string[] — Keywords extracted from the page's keywords meta tag. - `canonicalUrl` string — Resolved canonical URL, when present. - `author` string — Author metadata, when present. - `siteName` string — Site or application name from page metadata. - `image` string — Primary resolved preview image from Open Graph, Twitter, or image metadata. - `favicon` string — Resolved favicon URL, when present. - `publishedTime` string — Published timestamp/date from page metadata, when present. - `modifiedTime` string — Modified timestamp/date from page metadata, when present. - `robots` string — Robots meta directive, when present. - `openGraph` object — Open Graph metadata with the og: prefix removed and keys camel-cased. - `twitter` object — Twitter card metadata with the twitter: prefix removed and keys camel-cased. - `alternates` PageMetadataAlternate[] — Resolved alternate links from link rel=alternate tags. - `href` string, required — Resolved alternate URL. - `hreflang` string — Language or locale for the alternate URL, when present. - `type` string — Alternate resource MIME type, when present. - `title` string — Alternate resource title, when present. - `jsonLd` object[] — JSON-LD structured data blocks parsed from the page. - `additionalMeta` object — Additional non-social meta tags not promoted to top-level metadata fields. - `url` string, required — The crawl URL fetched for this page. - `crawlDepth` integer, required — Depth relative to the start URL. 0 = start URL, 1 = one link away. - `statusCode` integer, required — HTTP status code of the response - `success` boolean, required — true if the page was fetched and parsed successfully - `metadata` object, required - `numUrls` integer, required — Total number of URLs crawled - `maxCrawlDepth` integer, required — Maximum crawl depth reached during the crawl - `numSucceeded` integer, required — Number of pages successfully crawled - `numFailed` integer, required — Number of pages that failed to crawl - `numSkipped` integer, required — Number of URLs skipped (PDFs when pdf.shouldParse=false, or URLs not matching urlRegex) - `key_metadata` KeyMetadata — Metadata about the API key used for the request. Included in every response whenever a valid API key is provided, even when the response status is not 200. - `credits_consumed` integer, required — The number of credits consumed by this request. - `credits_remaining` integer, required — The number of credits remaining for your organization after this request. ## Other responses - `400` — Bad request - Invalid URL or parameters - `401` — Unauthorized - Invalid or missing API key - `403` — Forbidden - Insufficient permissions or usage limit exceeded - `404` — Start URL returned a 404 - `408` — Request timeout - `415` — Unsupported content type - the start URL resolved to a content type that is not supported (e.g. an image, presentation, media, or archive). Supported types are HTML, XML, PDF, DOCX, DOC, XLSX, XLS, PPTX, PPT, and CSV. - `429` — Rate limit exceeded - `500` — Internal server error ## Changes - **2026-07-21** `3764d9c86493` — 4 info - added the new optional request property `pdf/ocr` - added the new optional request property `tags` - added the new optional request property `zdr` - the `pdf` request property default value changed from `{"shouldParse":true}` to `{"shouldParse":true,"ocr":false}` - **2026-07-09** `de91b92d5fb7` — 2 info - added the new optional request property `country` - added the new optional request property `settleAnimations` - **2026-06-22** `4767df4f281f` — 6 breaking, 3 info - the `results/items/metadata` response's property type/format changed from `object`/`` to ``/`` for status `200` - removed the required property `results/items/metadata/crawlDepth` from the response with the `200` status - removed the required property `results/items/metadata/statusCode` from the response with the `200` status - removed the required property `results/items/metadata/success` from the response with the `200` status - …5 more [Change history](https://skmtc.dev/context/apis/context-dev/changes/web/crawl/post.md) --- [API](https://skmtc.dev/context/apis/context-dev.md) · [All operations](https://skmtc.dev/context/apis/context-dev/llms.txt) · [OpenAPI document](https://skmtc-service-production.skmtc.workers.dev/v1/apis/context/context-dev/revisions/35f1d8d4ea26/schema)