Exploitation and exploration are two main search strategies of every metaheuristic algorithm . However, the ratio between exploitation and exploration has a significant impact on the performance of these algorithms when dealing with optimization problems. In this study, we introduce an entire fuzzy system to tune efficiently and dynamically the firefly algorithm parameters in order to keep the exploration and exploitation in balance in each of the searching steps. This will prevent the firefly algorithm from being stuck in local optimal, a challenge issue in metaheuristic algorithms . To evaluate the quality of the solution returned by the fuzzy-based firefly algorithm, we conduct extensive experiments on a set of high and low dimensional benchmark functions as well as two constrained engineering problems. In this regard, we compare the improved firefly algorithm with the standard one and other famous metaheuristic algorithms. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the fuzzy-based firefly algorithm to standard firefly and also its comparability to other metaheuristic algorithms.