Crawl4AI SOP

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Install ​

Requirements ​

  • Python 3.8+
  • pip

Install steps ​

bash
# Step 1: install the package
pip install -U crawl4ai

# Step 2: run the post-install setup (downloads Playwright browsers)
crawl4ai-setup

crawl4ai-setup installs the Chromium browser that Crawl4AI uses to render JavaScript pages. This step is required; skipping it means crawls will fail with a Playwright browser-not-found error.

If crawl4ai-setup reports a Playwright error, run the manual fallback:

bash
python -m playwright install chromium

Docker (alternative) ​

If you prefer not to install Python deps locally, the official Docker image bundles everything:

bash
docker pull unclecode/crawl4ai:latest
docker run -p 11235:11235 unclecode/crawl4ai:latest

The container exposes an HTTP API on port 11235. See the Docker docs for API endpoints.

Verify install ​

After setup, confirm the package is available:

bash
python -c "import crawl4ai; print(crawl4ai.__version__)"

Expected output: a version string like 0.6.x printed to stdout with no errors.