diff --git a/crawl4ai/__version__.py b/crawl4ai/__version__.py
index 2761f396..5a6c004d 100644
--- a/crawl4ai/__version__.py
+++ b/crawl4ai/__version__.py
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
 # crawl4ai/_version.py
-__version__ = "0.4.243"
+__version__ = "0.4.244"