---
title: "Scrape Markdown"
method: GET
path: "/web/scrape/markdown"
tags: ["Web Scraping"]
---

# Scrape Markdown

`GET /web/scrape/markdown`

Scrapes the given URL into LLM usable Markdown. Inspect key_metadata on JSON responses from a recognized API key; use error_code to distinguish stable failure categories.

### YouTube

YouTube URLs return the video or channel itself rather than the surrounding player and navigation chrome. A URL addressing a single video (`/watch`, `youtu.be`, `/shorts`, `/embed`, `/live`) returns its title, channel, duration, view count, keywords, full description, and the transcript when the video has captions that can be retrieved; videos without captions return everything except the transcript. A channel URL (`/channel/UC…`, `/@handle`, `/c/…`, `/user/…`) returns its name, handle, subscriber count, video count, and full description. When `includeImages=true`, video responses also include the thumbnail and channel responses include the avatar. Costs the same as any other scrape.

### Billing & errors

| HTTP status | Billed? | Meaning |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 200 | Yes — 1 credit, or 2 credits with actions | Successful scrape, including a zero-length result when includeSelectors matched nothing |
| 400 | No | Invalid input, skipped PDF, or the page could not be scraped |
| 401 / 403 | No | Invalid/disabled key, insufficient permissions, or credits exhausted; inspect error_code |
| 404 | No | Target page returned or fingerprinted as not found |
| 408 | No | Request timed out |
| 413 | No | Target content exceeds the maximum supported size (20 MB) |
| 415 | No | Unsupported content type |
| 429 | No | Per-minute rate limit exceeded; honor Retry-After |
| 500 | No | Internal error |

## Query parameters

- `url` string, uri, required — Full URL to scrape into LLM usable Markdown (must include http:// or https:// protocol)
- `includeLinks` union — Preserve hyperlinks in Markdown output
  - boolean
  - 'true' | 'false'
- `includeImages` union — Include image references in Markdown output
  - boolean
  - 'true' | 'false'
- `shortenBase64Images` union — Shorten base64-encoded image data in the Markdown output
  - boolean
  - 'true' | 'false'
- `useMainContentOnly` union — Extract only the main content of the page, excluding headers, footers, sidebars, and navigation
  - boolean
  - 'true' | 'false'
- `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` union — When true, PDF URLs are fetched and parsed. When false, PDF URLs are skipped and a 400 PDF_SKIPPED is returned.
    - boolean
    - 'true' | 'false'
  - `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.
  - `ocr` union — When true, OCR the selected PDF pages that have no usable text layer (scans), replacing each recovered page's text with the OCR result while pages with a real text layer keep it. Billed at 1 credit per page OCR actually recovered, on top of the base request cost. When false, no OCR runs.
    - boolean
    - 'true' | 'false'
- `includeFrames` union — When true, the contents of iframes are rendered to Markdown.
  - boolean
  - 'true' | 'false'
- `includeSelectors` string[], nullable — CSS selectors. When provided, only matching HTML subtrees (and their descendants) are kept before conversion to Markdown. When omitted, the entire document is kept. Examples: "article.main", "#content", "[role=main]".
- `excludeSelectors` string[], nullable — CSS selectors to remove before conversion to Markdown. Applied after includeSelectors. Exclusion takes precedence: an element matching both is removed. Examples: "nav", "footer", ".ad-banner", "[aria-hidden=true]".
- `maxAgeMs` integer, nullable — 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, nullable — Optional browser wait time in milliseconds after initial page load before converting the page to Markdown. Min: 0. Max: 30000 (30 seconds).
- `settleAnimations` union — When true, waits briefly for CSS and transition animations to settle before converting to Markdown. Defaults to false. This adds a bit of latency in exchange for more stable output on animated pages.
  - boolean
  - 'true' | 'false'
- `actions` WebScrapeAction[], nullable — Optional browser actions executed in array order after the page loads and before content is captured. Requires a paid plan. Send a JSON array in the query parameter. Maximum: 5 actions.
  - union — Browser action discriminated by `do`. Each variant exposes only its applicable fields.
    - WebScrapeWaitAction — Pause for a fixed number of milliseconds before continuing to the next action.
      - `do` 'wait', required
      - `timeMs` integer, required
    - WebScrapePerformAction — Resolve and perform one natural-language browser action.
      - `do` 'perform', required
      - `action` string, required
- `headers` object — Optional outbound HTTP headers forwarded only to the target URL, sent as deep-object query params such as headers[X-Custom]=value. When provided, caching is bypassed: the result is neither read from nor written to cache.
- `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' — Fetch the target page through a residential proxy in this country (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2).
- `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
  - `success` true, required — Indicates success
  - `markdown` string, required — Page content converted to GitHub Flavored Markdown
  - `contentLength` integer, required — UTF-8 byte length of the returned Markdown. Use 0 to identify an empty result and compare small values against your workload's minimum useful-content threshold.
  - `url` string, required — The URL that was scraped
  - `metadata` PageMetadata, 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 — Best title extracted from the page.
    - `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.
  - `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.
  - `actionsApplied` object[] — One verified outcome per requested browser action, in request order.
    - `instruction` string, required
    - `status` 'applied' | 'failed' | 'skipped', required — Applied means the requested page state was visibly verified. Failed means it was not verified. Skipped means it was not attempted.
    - `method` string
    - `targetDescription` string
    - `completionEvidence` string — Visible page evidence used to verify an applied action.
    - `error` string
    - `durationMs` number
  - `actionsHtmlStale` boolean — True when an action was applied but the returned content could not be refreshed afterward.

## Other responses

- `400` — Bad request - Invalid URL or failed to scrape
- `401` — Unauthorized - Invalid or missing API key
- `403` — Forbidden - Insufficient permissions or usage limit exceeded
- `404` — Target page returned a 404
- `408` — Request timeout
- `413` — Content too large - the target content exceeds the maximum supported download size, so it cannot be scraped
- `415` — Unsupported content type - the 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

---

[API](https://skmtc.net/context/apis/context-dev.md) · [All operations](https://skmtc.net/context/apis/context-dev/llms.txt) · [OpenAPI document](https://skmtc-service-staging.skmtc.workers.dev/v1/apis/context/context-dev/versions/3c6a01ba967f/schema)