## TL;DR

Fix: Lesson: treat Cloudflare-blocked targets as a known limitation - retry once, then route around (different engine or source) rather than assuming a bug.

## The error

```text
Firecrawl is blocked by Cloudflare's free bot protection, both self-hosted and cloud, when scraping protected sites.
```

## Fix

1. Lesson: treat Cloudflare-blocked targets as a known limitation - retry once, then route around (different engine or source) rather than assuming a bug.

Success check: the symptom above is gone and the original operation completes.

## When to use

- You hit this exact symptom in firecrawl.
- You want the verified fix without digging through the thread.

## When not to use

- A different error in firecrawl, even a similar-looking one.
- General firecrawl setup or credential questions.

## Compatibility

- Firecrawl (firecrawl/firecrawl)

## Variant phrasings

- How to fix "firecrawl is blocked by Cloudflare" in firecrawl

## Source

- https://github.com/firecrawl/firecrawl/issues/495