Firecrawl cache: maxAge 2 days vs Sume's fresh: true

Firecrawl's scrape takes a numeric maxAge, which its guide says defaults to 172800000 ms (2 days). Sume's scrape takes no number: it has a boolean fresh, default false, and the crawl_scrape description says fresh true bypasses cached content. If your code sets maxAge to ask for a live page, send fresh: true to Sume.

Firecrawl facts are from its advanced scraping guide and Sume's from the OpenAPI file and MCP tool descriptions, all read 2026-09-30.

How do maxAge and fresh map to each other?

The two are different shapes, so only the extremes translate.

What does fresh: true look like in a request?

Add the flag next to url. It is accepted by the scrape route and, per the crawl_site description, by crawl for each page.

const res = await fetch("https://api.sume.com/v1/firecrawl/scrape", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: "Bearer " + process.env.SUME_API_KEY,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({ url: "https://example.com/pricing", fresh: true }),
});
console.log(res.status, await res.json());

Does Sume say how long its cache lasts?

Not in the pages I read. The sources give the flag and its default but no cache lifetime, so do not assume 2 days. If staleness matters, set fresh: true; if it does not, leave it off and accept whatever the cache holds.

Should I always set fresh: true?

No. Use it when the page changes by the hour, such as a price or a status page, and leave it off for stable documentation. A live fetch still has to finish inside timeout_ms, which is capped at 30000. Search results come from the search endpoint; pick pages there, then scrape.