Browserless Review: How Good is This for Scraping and Automation?

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Browserless is a headless browser platform for scraping and automation. The company was founded in 2017 and has become a household name that empowers developers, startups, and small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to streamline workflow automation, testing automation, and web scraping.

In this Browserless Review, I will explore how it works, its product offering, features, pricing, and alternatives to determine if it is the right headless browser for scraping and automation.

Features

• Comes BrowserQL to avoid detectors and solve CAPTCHAs
• Comes with RESTful APIs to capture screenshots and generate PDFs
• Integrates with popular scripting frameworks like Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium
• Supports hybrid automations to run concurrent sessions
• Supports Lighthouse Testing without managing dependencies
• Scalable cloud-based architecture

Pros

• Comes with Robust API for custom integrations
• Built-in support for Puppeteer, Playwright and Selenium
• Use residential proxies to dodge bot detection
• Comes with a built-in browser for scripting
• Flexible tool as it allows users to write their own scraping logic

Cons

• Starting price is high for small businesses
• Steep learning curve for beginners as they have to manage proxies, set up headless browser instances, and handle complex JavaScript instances
• Requires coding skills and familiarity with tools like Puppeteer and Playwright

How Does Browserless Work?

Browserless is a cloud-based service with robust browser automation tools centered around headless Chrome. This platform is designed for developers and businesses looking for scalable and efficient secure solutions. As a cloud-based headless Chrome service, the tool allows users to access headless Chrome instances in the cloud. These instances are optimized for speed, ease of use, and stability; you don’t have to manage the browser locally. 

Every session is isolated, which means it is treated as discrete. This ensures that every user’s operation remains secure and unaffected by other sessions. Such an approach is helpful in critical tasks that need high reliability, such as account management automation and financial scraping. Browserless applies advanced techniques to detect and bypass bots. It simply modifies browser behaviors and network requests to mimic real-life user activities, thus reducing the chances of being blocked or flagged by anti-bot detection systems. 

Browserless does not work in isolation, as it natively supports browser automation libraries like Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium. You can use this tool with libraries to build feature-rich automation scripts for different use cases. Its bot detection and bypassing features are ideal for various use cases such as data collection and PDF generation. 

5 Browserless Product Offering

Browserless offers a complete suite of products that helps businesses scale and automate browser operations through cloud-based headless Chrome instances. Here is a breakdown of some of the products:

1. Bot Detection

Individuals and businesses can use Browserless to bypass bot detectors, dodge captchas, utilize stealth headful browsers, and integrate residential proxies to enhance automation. This feature is designed to help you access any site using various stealth options.

You can get past forced captchas through Auto-captcha solving or Stream captchas to the user.

• Auto-captcha solving: This simply means adding lines of code to your scripts to solve captchas. This approach will trigger Browserless’ own custom Chrome extension to collect the token and solve via a secondary service. 
• Stream captchas to the user: You can stream captchas to users for them to solve only if they are part of an on-demand automation. Browserless Hybrid Automations allow users to interact with the remote browser through an iframe or a streamed tab and then resume their script. 

2. REST APIs

Browserless REST APIs are designed to aid in tasks like capturing HTML, generating PDFs, retrieving JSON, running Lighthouse tests, and creating screencasts to streamline automation. You don’t need Playwright or Puppeteer to capture HTML, as the headless browser will automatically load the page even if it has dynamic content that requires JavaScript. The browser will then download the content as HTML, and you can use it with Scrapy or any other similar tool. 

Use the /pdf API to render dynamically generated content, especially in report and dashboard exports. There are over 20 customization options that you can use to customize your outputs. Use the /scrape API to load pages with JavaScript and return JSON with the specified selectors. Use waitFor and gotoOptions args to fine-tune the API and ensure all the needed elements are present before returning data. 

3. Cookies & Reconnects

Browserless helps individuals and businesses optimize automation with session management tools, enabling cookie reuse, cache storage, and reconnecting browsers to reduce resource usage. Utilize the reuse cookies feature to skip annoying steps like bot scanning or repeat logins when revisiting website hours or days apart. Browserless helps you keep Puppeteer browsers alive with its Reconnect API. This means you don’t have to launch a fresh browser with each script, as the /reconnect API will help you keep the browser alive for later use. 

The Cookies and Reconnects feature is designed to help reduce proxy usage by over 90%. It uses a cache, which reduces bandwidth usage and is ideal for repeatedly scraping a site with a high proxy consumption. 

4. Hybrid Automations

Browserless Hybrid Automations enable users to secure user-in-the-loop scripts, directly allowing streamed logins, 2FAs, and user interactions in embedded iframes. Browserless automations enable users to log into their accounts without storing sensitive data like passwords and usernames/emails. These Hybrid Automations will enable you to stream the Window for the users so they can interact directly and complete actions like logins, captchas, and 2FAs. 

You can embed the window into your application or website, so you don’t need to bounce users between windows or tabs. Browserless is secure, and you don’t have to worry about memory leaks that will likely happen when you host multiple sessions. 

5. Lighthouse Testing

Browserless is designed to simplify parallel Lighthouse testing with its /performance API, enabling scalable performance monitoring without managing dependencies. You don’t need to download Node.js or any other packages, as a simple POST request on the /performance API will work the magic. This headless browser’s API runs Lighthouse as a forked process, allowing users to run tests for simulated bandwidths or multiple pages without using the child processes approach. 

Select the metrics you need during Lighthouse testing. For instance, specify the categories in a config object to narrow down the data you want to receive. This tool will return a JSON object with a Lighthouse performance score on a 0 to 1 scale for every test you run.

5 Browserless Features

Browserless has a set of features designed to simplify browser automation. This headless browser has bot detection and bypassing features and is also scalable. Let us explore some of these features in depth:

1. Browser Automation

Browserless uses its cloud-based infrastructure to programmatically control headless browsers for bot detection, data extraction, and scraping tasks. Users don’t have to worry about infrastructure setup or maintenance, as the headless browser takes care of these features. 

We can sign on to Browserless’ Scale plan to learn how its browser automation feature works. Visit the homepage, click Pricing, and then Scale. Start your 7-day trial. 

After signing up, you can extract data by automating things like retrieving information like website metadata, reviews, and pricing. 

For my case, I decided to take a screenshot of https://geekflare.com/tools using Browserless. I used this code:

curl -X POST \

  https://production-sfo.browserless.io/screenshot?token=RaiobKx6o6riwi7878dc46c2e11bbc51d6c8273ed6 \

  -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' \

  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \

  -d '{

  "url": "https://geekflare.com/tools",

  "options": {

    "fullPage": true,

    "type": "png"

  }

}' \

  --output "geekflare_tools_screenshot.png"

The code does the following: 

• Endpoint: Connects to Browserless’s screenshot endpoint.
• Payload:

"url": "https://geekflare.com/tools" specifies the page to capture.

"options": { "fullPage": true, "type": "png" }:

fullPage: true: Captures the entire page.

type: "png": Saves the screenshot in PNG format.

Output: Saves the screenshot locally as geekflare_tools_screenshot.png.

I will then run this command to confirm if the screenshot has been saved: 

ls geekflare_tools_screenshot.png

I will then run this command to open the saved image:

xdg-open geekflare_tools_screenshot.png

The saved image will be: 

2. Bot Detection and Evasion

Browserless has advanced techniques that bypass bot detection. For instance, it uses IP rotation, where requests are passed through different IPs to bypass detection. This tool also configures the headless browser instances to appear like a real user. Browserless also randomizes headers to mimic real browsing behavior. 

3. Scalable Cloud-based Architecture

Browserless is a managed cloud infrastructure that scales with your workload. The dynamic session scaling automatically adjusts the number of browser instances to handle demand fluctuations.

This tool also ensures efficient utilization of CPU and memory for concurrent sessions. The scalable infrastructure can thus seamlessly handle both high-volume and small-scale tasks. Businesses don’t need capacity or server maintenance planning when handling various browser automation tasks. 

4. Robust API for Custom Integrations

Browserless comes with a robust API, allowing users to integrate it into various workflows. Its support for REST APIs and WebSocket allows user sessions to be controlled programmatically.

You can also do custom scripting by uploading and executing user-defined scripts. Take advantage of the error-tracking and debugging tools to get detailed logs and determine where optimizations are needed. 

5. Built-in Support for Puppeteer, Playwright and Selenium

Browserless integrates with industry-standard browser automation libraries. Puppeteer is ideal for those looking for a fast, headless Chrome automation library. You can use Playwright if you want cross-browser automation with advanced capabilities. Selenium is ideal if you are looking for browser compatibility and functional testing. 

3 Browserless Use Cases

Browserless can be used to perform different tasks like browser automation, Web Scraping and data extraction, and generating PDFs & screenshots. 

1. Browser Automation

Browserless can do the heavy lifting in instances that require manual intervention. For instance, you can use it to run automated UI tests to ensure functionality across browsers. You can also test the website’s performance metrics by running synthetic transactions. Lastly, you can automate the filling of submission forms, such as sign-up processes or contact forms. 

2. Web Scraping and Data Extraction

Browserless can scrape data at scale. You can use it to conduct market research to get competitors’ product data and pricing details. Individuals and businesses can also use this headless browser to compile job postings from popular career websites. This tool can aggregate news articles from different websites. I can extract data from the Geekflare tools page and save it in a PDF. This is the code:

curl -X POST 'https://chrome.browserless.io/pdf?token=RaiobKx6o6riwi7878dc46c2e11bbc51d6c8273ed6' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
  "url": "https://geekflare.com/tools",
  "printBackground": true,
  "format": "A4"
}' --output geekflare-tools.pdf

This screenshot shows that Browserless has scraped the web page and saved its content as a PDF:

3. Generating PDF & Screenshot

You can create PDFs or take screenshots of a web page using Browserless. This is important for web archiving, where you want to save rendered pages as PDFs for offline viewing. It is also handy when you want to automate the creation of data reports with visualization. You can also capture high-quality screenshots for advertisement purposes or product reviews. 

I captured a screenshot of the Geekflare tools page using this code:

curl -X POST \

  https://production-sfo.browserless.io/screenshot?token=RaiobKx6o6riwi7878dc46c2e11bbc51d6c8273ed6 \

  -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' \

  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \

  -d '{

  "url": "https://geekflare.com/tools",

  "options": {

    "fullPage": true,

    "type": "png"

  }

}' \

  --output "geekflare_tools_screenshot.png"

Browserless Pricing

Browserless has three pricing plans. Starter and Scale plans have a 7-day free trial. 

Browserless Alternatives for Web Scraping

Even though Browserless is a complete solution for headless browser automation and web scraping, it is not the only tool for such tasks. Some of its competitors in web scraping are BrightData, ScraperAPI, ScrapingBee, Apify, ZenRows, and Checkly. Below, I have added a comparison table highlighting the following parameters:

Who Should Use Browserless?

Browserless can be used by individuals and small and large businesses. However, these are some of the users that are likely to benefit more:

• Businesses needing scalable browser automation: Browserless can scale depending on the needs. Users can automate routine tasks like interacting with dynamic websites and sending forms. 
• Enterprises needing web scraping PDF generation and remote screenshots: Browserless can capture high-quality screenshots for product reviews and marketing content. It can also convert the content of web pages into PDFs for offline access. 
• Businesses in e-commerce, marketing, and data-driven industries: Businesses can use Browserless for market research and do competitor research at scale. Marketing agencies can use this tool to automate data gathering and generate reports for effective decision-making.

Who Shouldn’t Use Browserless?

Despite its browser automation and web scraping prowess, Browserless is not the magic pick for all use cases. These are some of the instances where alternatives might be better. 

• Individuals with basic automation and scraping needs: Browserless is not ideal for those looking for a basic scraping tool. An AI scraper like OxyCopilot will be a good fit for such a case. 
• Projects with highly constrained budgets: Browserless paid plans start from $140/month, which is high for those with strained budgets. Alternatives such as Bright Data are a good fit for such projects.

Browserless Verdict

I particularly loved how easy it is to generate screenshots and PDFs for offline usage or even marketing purposes. Using it with PlayWright and other scraping frameworks was also a breeze. Its built-in browser, BrowserQL, makes it easy to run scripts even without caring about the development environment. The custom scripting capabilities offer advanced features such as hybrid automation and video extraction. 

However, I found its pricing is quite high for small businesses with budget constraints. Also, even though the tool is developer-friendly, it has a steep learning curve to learn its complete suite of tools, especially for non-technical teams.

Browserless receives the Geekflare Innovation Award for its amazing browser automation, bot detection, and bypassing solutions.

What’s next?

After understanding Browserless web scraping techniques, let’s explore some more tools to extract valuable information from websites.

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