Firecrawl removed research index GitHub search: calls get 410 Gone, use developer search (November 3, 2026)

What you get

Firecrawl removed its research index GitHub search on November 3, 2026. GET /v2/search/research/github and the legacy GET /v2/research/github now answer 410 Gone with the code ENDPOINT_REMOVED. The response points to /v2/search/developer as the successor.

On November 4 Firecrawl shipped SDKs that say so. In Python 4.55.0, search_github() gives a FutureWarning and its docs say it always raises FirecrawlError with the 410 message. In JS 4.52.0, research.searchGithub() is marked @deprecated. The methods still exist, so nothing breaks at build time. The calls fail at run time.

The replacement is developer search. It covers issues, merged pull requests and READMEs from public repositories, plus curated documentation sites. Firecrawl says to send the same query and k. Results carry matched passages instead of a snippet, and each has an id such as issue:owner/repo#123. It costs 2 credits per 10 results, rounded up.

Prerequisites

• A Firecrawl API key in FIRECRAWL_API_KEY. Developer search works without a key to start. A key gives higher rate limits.
• Python firecrawl (or firecrawl-py) 4.55.0, or Node firecrawl (or @mendable/firecrawl-js) 4.52.0, if you use an SDK

Steps

1. Search your code for search_github, searchGithub and /search/research/github.
2. Send the same query to developer search. This is the POST example from Firecrawl's API reference. Firecrawl says no API key is needed to get started, and the Authorization header gives higher rate limits:

curl -X POST https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/search/developer \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "query": "how do I configure retries",
    "k": 10,
    "types": ["issue", "pull_request"],
    "language": "Rust",
    "license": "MIT"
  }'