supacrawl 2026.2.1

Zero-infrastructure CLI web scraper with LLM extraction.

Supacrawl

Zero-infrastructure web scraping for the terminal.

Why Supacrawl?

There are excellent web scraping tools available. Supacrawl takes a different approach: a CLI tool designed for individual developers who want to scrape from the terminal.

• Zero infrastructure: pip install and go, no Docker/databases/Redis
• Terminal-first: Designed for shell workflows and pipelines
• Clean markdown: Playwright renders JS, outputs readable markdown
• LLM-ready: Built-in extraction with Ollama, OpenAI, or Anthropic
• Stealth mode: Patchright for anti-bot evasion, 2Captcha for CAPTCHAs

pip install supacrawl
playwright install chromium

Quick Start

# Scrape a page to markdown
supacrawl scrape https://example.com

# Crawl a website
supacrawl crawl https://docs.python.org/3/ -o ./python-docs --limit 50

# Discover URLs without fetching
supacrawl map https://example.com

# Web search
supacrawl search "python web scraping 2024"

# LLM extraction (requires LLM config)
supacrawl llm-extract https://example.com/pricing -p "Extract pricing tiers"

# Autonomous agent for complex tasks
supacrawl agent "Find the pricing for all plans on example.com"

Commands

Command	Description
scrape <url>	Scrape single page to markdown
crawl <url>	Crawl website, save to directory
map <url>	Discover URLs from sitemap/links
search <query>	Web search (DuckDuckGo default, Brave optional)
llm-extract <url>	Extract structured data with LLM
agent <prompt>	Autonomous agent for complex tasks
cache	Cache management (clear, stats, prune)

Run supacrawl <command> --help for options.

Output

Crawl produces a flat directory of markdown files:

output/
├── manifest.json          # URLs crawled (for resume)
├── index.md
├── about.md
└── docs_getting-started.md

Each markdown file includes YAML frontmatter with source URL and metadata.

Configuration

Core Settings

Variable	Default	Description
SUPACRAWL_HEADLESS	true	Set false to see browser
SUPACRAWL_TIMEOUT	30000	Page load timeout (ms)
SUPACRAWL_PROXY	-	Proxy URL (http/socks5)

LLM Features

Required for llm-extract, agent, and --summarize:

Variable	Description
SUPACRAWL_LLM_PROVIDER	ollama, openai, or anthropic
SUPACRAWL_LLM_MODEL	Model name (e.g., qwen3:8b)
OPENAI_API_KEY	For OpenAI provider
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	For Anthropic provider
OLLAMA_HOST	Ollama URL (default: localhost:11434)

Search

Variable	Description
BRAVE_API_KEY	Optional: use Brave Search instead of DuckDuckGo

Caching

Supacrawl caches scraped content locally for faster repeated requests. Enable with --max-age:

# Cache for 1 hour
supacrawl scrape https://example.com --max-age 3600

Variable	Default	Description
SUPACRAWL_CACHE_DIR	~/.supacrawl/cache	Cache directory

Cache Management:

supacrawl cache stats   # View cache size and entry count
supacrawl cache prune   # Remove expired entries
supacrawl cache clear   # Clear all cache (with confirmation)

Cache Behaviour:

• No automatic eviction; run cache prune periodically to clean expired entries
• No size limits; cache grows unbounded, use cache clear if disk space is a concern
• Files stored as <hash>.json where hash is SHA256 of normalised URL

Optional Extras

pip install supacrawl[stealth]   # Patchright for anti-bot evasion
pip install supacrawl[captcha]   # 2Captcha for CAPTCHA solving

Use --stealth and --solve-captcha flags when scraping protected sites. Stealth mode automatically runs headful (visible browser) for better anti-detection. CAPTCHA solving requires CAPTCHA_API_KEY environment variable.

Copy .env.example to .env to configure.

Development

# From source
conda env create -f environment.yaml && conda activate supacrawl
pip install -e .[dev]
playwright install chromium

# Quality checks
ruff check src/ && mypy src/
pytest -q -m "not e2e"

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                         Where Supacrawl Fits                                │
├─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬───────────────────────┤
│   Collection    │   Processing    │    Storage      │        Query          │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│                 │                 │                 │                       │
│   supacrawl ────┼──► ragify ──────┼──► Qdrant ──────┼──► Claude Code        │
│                 │    LangChain    │    Chroma       │    Custom Agents      │
│   • scrape      │    LlamaIndex   │    Pinecone     │    RAG Apps           │
│   • crawl       │                 │    Weaviate     │                       │
│   • search      │   • chunk       │                 │                       │
│   • extract     │   • embed       │   • store       │   • retrieve          │
│                 │                 │   • index       │   • generate          │
│                 │                 │                 │                       │
└─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────────────┘

Supacrawl does one thing well: get clean markdown from the web.

Comparison

	Supacrawl	crawl4ai	Firecrawl (self-hosted)	Firecrawl (cloud)
Infrastructure	pip install	pip install	Docker + PostgreSQL + Redis	Hosted API
Web Search	Built-in (DuckDuckGo)	Not included	Via SearXNG	Yes
LLM Providers	Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic	Any via LiteLLM	OpenAI (Ollama experimental)	OpenAI
Intelligent Crawling	Yes (agent command)	Yes (adaptive crawling)	No	Yes (/agent)
Stealth/Anti-bot	Yes (Patchright)	Yes (undetected browser)	No (Fire-engine is cloud-only)	Yes (Fire-engine)
CAPTCHA Solving	Yes (2Captcha)	Optional (CapSolver)	No	No
Caching	Local files	Built-in	PostgreSQL	Managed
Licence	MIT	Apache-2.0	AGPL-3.0	AGPL-3.0
Cost	Free	Free	Free	Pay-per-use

Supacrawl is minimal and focused. crawl4ai is a feature-rich framework with adaptive crawling and chunking. Firecrawl is an API server for applications needing a scraping backend.

Licence

MIT