Self-hosted mode: custom API URL not persisted across commands when authentication is skipped

[KlementMultiverse]

Problem

When using a self-hosted Firecrawl instance with --api-url, the configuration is not persisted. On the first command, --api-url http://localhost:3002 scrape https://example.com works correctly and skips authentication. However, on the second command, running just firecrawl scrape https://example.com defaults back to https://api.firecrawl.dev and triggers an authentication prompt, even though the user already configured a custom API URL.

This forces users to pass --api-url on every single command, defeating the purpose of configuration persistence for self-hosted setups.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Start a local Firecrawl instance: docker run -p 3002:3002 firecrawl-local
2. Run first command: firecrawl --api-url http://localhost:3002 scrape https://example.com
   • Result: ✅ Works, no authentication required
3. Run second command: firecrawl scrape https://example.com
   • Expected: ✅ Uses the previously configured http://localhost:3002, no auth prompt
   • Actual: ❌ Defaults to https://api.firecrawl.dev, prompts for authentication

Why This Matters

• Self-hosted deployments are common in enterprise environments where users should not need cloud API credentials
• The README explicitly documents that "authentication is automatically skipped" for custom API URLs, implying the URL should be saved
• Users developing locally or running internal Firecrawl instances have no way to set a persistent default without wrapping the CLI in shell aliases or environment variables
• This degrades the developer experience compared to the cloud-first workflow

Expected Behavior

firecrawl config --api-url http://localhost:3002 (or similar persistent config command) should:

1. Save the API URL to the config file (likely ~/.firecrawl/config.json or similar)
2. On subsequent commands without --api-url, use the saved URL instead of the cloud default
3. Allow users to reset with firecrawl config --api-url https://api.firecrawl.dev or firecrawl config --reset

Related

This appears related to #53, which mentions config persistence issues with self-hosted setups.

---

Contributed by Klement Gunndu

[abimaelmartell]

This was fixed in #52

We'll update documentation to match this,

Thanks for reporting!