> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.crewai.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Spider Scraper

> The `SpiderTool` is designed to extract and read the content of a specified website using Spider.

# `SpiderTool`

## Description

[Spider](https://spider.cloud/?ref=crewai) is the [fastest](https://github.com/spider-rs/spider/blob/main/benches/BENCHMARKS.md#benchmark-results)
open source scraper and crawler that returns LLM-ready data.
It converts any website into pure HTML, markdown, metadata or text while enabling you to crawl with custom actions using AI.

## Installation

To use the `SpiderTool` you need to download the [Spider SDK](https://pypi.org/project/spider-client/)
and the `crewai[tools]` SDK too:

```shell theme={null}
pip install spider-client 'crewai[tools]'
```

## Example

This example shows you how you can use the `SpiderTool` to enable your agent to scrape and crawl websites.
The data returned from the Spider API is already LLM-ready, so no need to do any cleaning there.

```python Code theme={null}
from crewai_tools import SpiderTool

def main():
    spider_tool = SpiderTool()

    searcher = Agent(
        role="Web Research Expert",
        goal="Find related information from specific URL's",
        backstory="An expert web researcher that uses the web extremely well",
        tools=[spider_tool],
        verbose=True,
    )

    return_metadata = Task(
        description="Scrape https://spider.cloud with a limit of 1 and enable metadata",
        expected_output="Metadata and 10 word summary of spider.cloud",
        agent=searcher
    )

    crew = Crew(
        agents=[searcher],
        tasks=[
            return_metadata,
        ],
        verbose=2
    )

    crew.kickoff()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
```

## Arguments

| Argument | Type | Description |
| :- | :- | :- |
| **api\_key** | `string` | Specifies Spider API key. If not specified, it looks for `SPIDER_API_KEY` in environment variables. |
| **params** | `object` | Optional parameters for the request. Defaults to `{"return_format": "markdown"}` to optimize content for LLMs. |
| **request** | `string` | Type of request to perform (`http`, `chrome`, `smart`). `smart` defaults to HTTP, switching to JavaScript rendering if needed. |
| **limit** | `int` | Max pages to crawl per website. Set to `0` or omit for unlimited. |
| **depth** | `int` | Max crawl depth. Set to `0` for no limit. |
| **cache** | `bool` | Enables HTTP caching to speed up repeated runs. Default is `true`. |
| **budget** | `object` | Sets path-based limits for crawled pages, e.g., `{"*":1}` for root page only. |
| **locale** | `string` | Locale for the request, e.g., `en-US`. |
| **cookies** | `string` | HTTP cookies for the request. |
| **stealth** | `bool` | Enables stealth mode for Chrome requests to avoid detection. Default is `true`. |
| **headers** | `object` | HTTP headers as a map of key-value pairs for all requests. |
| **metadata** | `bool` | Stores metadata about pages and content, aiding AI interoperability. Defaults to `false`. |
| **viewport** | `object` | Sets Chrome viewport dimensions. Default is `800x600`. |
| **encoding** | `string` | Specifies encoding type, e.g., `UTF-8`, `SHIFT_JIS`. |
| **subdomains** | `bool` | Includes subdomains in the crawl. Default is `false`. |
| **user\_agent** | `string` | Custom HTTP user agent. Defaults to a random agent. |
| **store\_data** | `bool` | Enables data storage for the request. Overrides `storageless` when set. Default is `false`. |
| **gpt\_config** | `object` | Allows AI to generate crawl actions, with optional chaining steps via an array for `"prompt"`. |
| **fingerprint** | `bool` | Enables advanced fingerprinting for Chrome. |
| **storageless** | `bool` | Prevents all data storage, including AI embeddings. Default is `false`. |
| **readability** | `bool` | Pre-processes content for reading via [Mozilla’s readability](https://github.com/mozilla/readability). Improves content for LLMs. |
| **return\_format** | `string` | Format to return data: `markdown`, `raw`, `text`, `html2text`. Use `raw` for default page format. |
| **proxy\_enabled** | `bool` | Enables high-performance proxies to avoid network-level blocking. |
| **query\_selector** | `string` | CSS query selector for content extraction from markup. |
| **full\_resources** | `bool` | Downloads all resources linked to the website. |
| **request\_timeout** | `int` | Timeout in seconds for requests (5-60). Default is `30`. |
| **run\_in\_background** | `bool` | Runs the request in the background, useful for data storage and triggering dashboard crawls. No effect if `storageless` is set. |