Reuse browsers for multiple automations, with our improved /reconnect API

Browserless Blog

Advice and stories from our team about working with Puppeteer and Playwright.

July 26, 2024

Deploying Playwright on Google Cloud Functions

Use this tutorial to learn how to integrate Playwright with GCP, with code examples for deploying Chrome in a Function for seamless automations.

July 18, 2024

How to Run Puppeteer Within Chrome to Create Hybrid Automations

If you’re finding it hard to automate browser tasks due to security challenges, learn how to nest browsers for powerful hybrid automations in this guide.

July 16, 2024

Hiring - Senior Product Engineer

We're now hiring a a Senior Product Engineer to join our team.

July 11, 2024

Why HTTP load tests fail to catch critical errors

Why your load tests should include browsers as well as API call, and how to handle the required infrastructure.

July 5, 2024

How to Deploy Playwright on an Azure Functions App

Want to deploy Playwright on an Azure Functions App? This 4-step guide will show you how to get past size limitations and automate browser tasks.

June 28, 2024

How to Run Playwright Automations on Heroku

Looking to automate browser tasks on Heroku? Use this tutorial to learn how to integrate Playwright for seamless browser automation in the cloud.

June 19, 2024

Keep Puppeteer browsers alive with our Reconnect API

How to reuse a Chrome instance for multiple Puppeteer scripts with our /reconnect API, to speed up scraping or avoid repeat log ins.

June 13, 2024

How to Run Parallel Lighthouse Tests In Your CI Pipeline

How to run high volume Lighthouse tests as part of your continuous integration pipeline. Includes an overview of the benefits, and running concurrent tests with Browserless's /performance API

June 7, 2024

Join us at the 2024 edition of The Browser Conference

Join us at the next edition of the Browser Conference, featuring talks from Google, Sauce Labs and Selenium

June 6, 2024

How to deploy Puppeteer on Google Cloud Functions

Looking to deploy Puppeteer on GCP? This guide includes the code required to run Puppeteer in a Function, including dealing with challenges such as compressed browsers.

May 29, 2024

How to Fix Slow Puppeteer Scripts With Three Underused Techniques

Common issues that cause slow Puppeteer scripts and how to fix them with underused features.

May 22, 2024

How to deploy Puppeteer on Azure Functions for browser automation

How to deploy Puppeteer on Azure Functions, including instructions for using compressed browsers compatible with file size limits and saving outputs to a blob.

May 7, 2024

How to run Puppeteer on Heroku for Web Automation

Want to automate tasks on the web using Puppeteer-core and Heroku? This tutorial will walk you through the process and help you get started quickly.

April 29, 2024

How to Deploy Playwright on AWS Lambda

How to move your Playwright scripts onto AWS Lambda, with code examples for the required library files and layers.

April 24, 2024

How we manage individual user concurrencies with Nginx and Lua

A behind the scenes of how we manage fluctuating browser concurrency limits across our thousands of users.

April 12, 2024

Case Study: How My AskAI use Browserless to give their chatbots access the web

How My AskAI used Browserless to skip the deployment headaches of Puppeteer, and gives their AI agents internet access.

March 28, 2024

Automatically solve any captcha as part of your Playwright or Puppeteer script

Easily add captcha solving to your Puppeteer or Playwright scripts with our API, for web scraping and other automations.

March 22, 2024

How to run Playwright on Netlify

How to deploy Playwright on Netlify for testing or other automations, including advice on hosting headless browsers.

March 21, 2024

Stream login windows during Puppeteer scripts, with our Hybrid Automations

Screencast to an iframe while running a Puppeteer script, for actions such as entering details, solving captchas or authorizing a 2FA.

March 20, 2024

How to Deploy Puppeteer on AWS Lambda

How to deploy Puppeteer on AWS Lambda, including the use of puppeteer-core and sending generated files to an S3 bucket.

February 29, 2024

Deploying Playwright with Vercel for Effective End-to-End Testing

How to deploy Playwright on Vercel, with separately hosted browsers. Complete with code examples, you'll be up and running in no time.

February 28, 2024

How to use our new and improved SDK for Browserless v2

Diving into what's possible with Browserless's updated SDK and how to use it. Extend, modify or even re-implement parts of Browserless.

February 26, 2024

Announcing the /unblock API from Browserless, a new approach to dodging bot detectors

The /unblock API clears away bot fingerprints at the CDP level, to truly humanize your Puppeteer automations.

February 21, 2024

How and why we ripped our OS product apart for a full rebuild

Our battle with tech debt and the full details of completely rebuilding an open source product for v2.

February 20, 2024

How to use Puppeteer with Netlify

How to use Puppeteer on Netlify for tasks such as screenshots or PDF exports. This guide uses puppeteer-core with a separate Chrome instance.

February 15, 2024

How to Use Scrapy on Dynamic Sites, Without Playwright or Selenium

How to run Scrapy on our fleet of headless browsers, via our /content API. Run your existing scripts with a minimal code change, no need to touch Playwright, Puppeteer or Selenium.

February 13, 2024

Case study – How Semji create HTML snapshots for their SEO platform

How Semji ran their Puppeteer automations using Browserless, to generate HTML screenshots for their AI SEO tool.

February 2, 2024

Interview with Ben Fellows: Life Running a Top Quality Assurance Agency

Discussing the ins and outs of running a QA agency, including the realist's approach to continuous delivery and testing with Playwright.

January 23, 2024

How to Optimize Puppeteer Automations

Speed up your Puppeteer scraping and automations with practical tips on reusing browsers, cache management, and resource optimization.

January 17, 2024

Intelligent Data Extraction: What, Why, and How

Discover the transformative impact of intelligent data extraction for businesses. Dive into its significance, benefits, and the methodology behind turning vast amounts of raw data into actionable insights.

December 20, 2023

Case Study: How Takeoff Copenhagen got a 5x speed boost and reliable proxies for scraping with Browserless

Read how switching to Browserless helped Takeoff get reliable proxies, cut their bill and run faster scraping scripts.

December 18, 2023

Running scripts for Browserless using Zapier

You can run automations fully on the cloud by using Browserless with Zapier. Here's a quick guide on how to set up your first Zap.

December 15, 2023

How to generate Puppeteer scripts with Chrome's inbuilt recorder

How to turn website interactions into Puppeteer scripts using Chrome's inbuilt Recorder, then run them through Browserless's API with a few tweaks.

December 13, 2023

Migrating from Selenium to Playwright

Outlining the advantages of Playwright over Selenium, with a detailed guide for how to convert your scripts and ditch the Grid.

December 6, 2023

browserless 2.0.0

We’re more than excited to announce today that we’ve rewritten browserless.io from the ground-up, and will be releasing it soon!

December 5, 2023

Advanced issues when managing Chrome on AWS

Key points to consider when hosting headless Chromium on AWS, for both EC2 and Lambda deployments

September 24, 2023

Announcing a residential proxy for browserless.io

We're excited to announce that we now have a built-in residential proxy for our paid cloud plans on browserless!

September 5, 2023

How to extract travel data at scale with Puppeteer

August 31, 2023

Headless Chrome with a GPU instance is fast!

The Power of GPU in Headless Chrome: Elevating Performance and Experience

August 22, 2023

WaitUntil option for Puppeteer and Playwright

Picking the best waitUntil option to use can be tricky, let's dive into the details of how each one works and how to pick the best one for each scenario.

July 18, 2023

Browserless now runs in LangChain

We’ve begun the process of integrating Browserless with the popular LangChain AI library, starting with Browserless’ REST APIs.

June 14, 2023

Using browserless to train your LLM

Large language models are only as good as the data you ingest into them. Read more about browserless and how to us it to train your LLMs!

March 21, 2023

How to use Puppeteer on Vercel

Using puppeteer on Vercel is hard! Here we dive into how to do it with the power of browserless

March 13, 2023

Announcing a new puppeteer benchmarking tool

Announcing a new puppeteer benchmarking tool to see how puppeteer performs version over version.

February 23, 2023

Scaling Puppeteer and Chrome Horizontally

This guide includes all the snippets you need to succeed at scaling puppeteer and chrome horizontally by using tools like nginx and docker.

February 2, 2023

Why we pick Puppeteer over Selenium almost every time

Choosing between Selenium and puppeteer can be hard, here's some suggestions of what we've found over the past several years to help.

December 30, 2022

Web Scraping Business Ideas for Everyone

In this article, we'll show you 12+ different web scraping ideas to use in your job or life.

December 8, 2022

Introducing Unit-based Pricing

New unit-based pricing is intuitive, predictable, and includes 7-day trial. Try Browserless today for free.

December 7, 2022

Turning sites into structured data | How to get JSON file from Wikipedia

In this article, we'll show you how you can turn any site into a structured data. The example is Wikipedia website to JSON.

October 18, 2022

What is Data Scraping? The Tutorial for Beginners

In this article, we'll answer on "what is Data Scraping" and how you can use Browserless to start scraping web data.

September 30, 2022

The Full Guide to Web Scraping & Automation with JavaScript and NodeJS

In this article, we'll share all steps that you need to take to start doing web automation and web scraping with NodeJS & JavaScript

September 16, 2022

What is Browser Automation? Guide to Get Started

In this article, we'll cover different browser automation use cases, tools and how to get started with automating browsers.

September 16, 2022

The best open source web automation tools for 2022

In this article, we'll share the best open source web automation tools and libraries for 2022. Check out to find your fav tool!

September 2, 2022

Getting started on web scraping with Selenium WebDriver and Python

In this article we'll show you how to use Selenium for web scraping. We'll show you a real example of how python web scraping works.

August 26, 2022

Getting started with Website Test Automation | Browserless guide

In this article, we'll dive deeper into web automation test examples. We'll share a few use cases on website test automation.

August 26, 2022

Zillow scraper guide | How to build your own Zillow web scraping tool

In this article we'll share real code that will let you build your own Zillow scraper tool. Copy & paste it to start your Zillow scraping.

August 19, 2022

Playwright vs Puppeteer: Which one to choose for Browser automation?

In this article, we'll dive deeper into browser automation and what framework you should use: playwright vs puppeteer.

August 3, 2022

How to create a time-lapse traffic with Browserless

Take a look at how to create time-lapse traffic using Browserless open source web automation tool for developers.

July 1, 2022

How to scrape data from Google Maps using Puppeteer & Browserless [Tutorial]

In this article, we'll show you how you can build your own Google Maps scraper so you can implement scraping Google Maps easily.

June 30, 2022

How Okra is using top-level browser automation with Browserless [Case Study]

Would you like to see how to implement browser automation in your business, check out how Okra did it with Browserless

June 28, 2022

How to scrape Google Shopping using Puppeteer and Browserless

In this article we'll show you how to scrape Google Shopping prices and results using Puppeteer and Browserless.

June 24, 2022

How to scrape Glassdoor data using Browserless automation and Node [Tutorial]

We'll show you how to scrape Glassdoor using Node.js & Browserless. This Glassdoor scraping tutorial includes a copy & paste code example.

June 13, 2022

How to build your own Twitter scraper tool using Browserless and Node.js

Today we'll show your a code to scrape Twitter profile, followers and other data. If you're interested in Twitter scraping, check it out!

June 10, 2022

How to do web automation with Puppeteer-core & Browserless [3 code examples]

Today we'll show you how to use Puppeteer-core for automation.

June 10, 2022

How to automate a WebRTC video stream with Puppeteer & Browserless

We'll show you how to automate a WebRTC video stream with Puppeteer & Browserless.

June 6, 2022

How to web scrape Amazon using Puppeteer and Browserless [Copy & Paste code example]

We'll show how to scrape Amazon data like product reviews & seller prices easily [Copy & Paste Amazon web scraping code]

May 31, 2022

Web scrape YouTube videos with Browserless automation and Node.js [Copy & Paste code example]

We'll share with you the step by step guide on how to build your own Youtube scraper, so you can web scrape Youtube platform easily!

May 27, 2022

How BigBlueButton, an open source project, runs automated E2E tests with Browserless

Wanna see how our customers used Puppeteer & Browserless to automate PDF & PNG exporting from slide decks. Check it out!

May 18, 2022

How Samsara does stress test automation of their app with Browserless

How Samsara did stress test automation of their app with Browserless

May 18, 2022

How Cashfree implemented one-time-passwords with Browserless

Wanna see how our customers used Puppeteer & Browserless to implement one-time passwords in the banking industry! Check it out!

May 13, 2022

How Dropdeck automated slide deck exporting to PDF and generation of PNG thumbnails 🗂

Wanna see how our customers used Puppeteer & Browserless to automate PDF & PNG exporting from slide decks. Check it out!

May 13, 2022

How to manage sessions for web automation with Puppeteer + Browserless

We'll share session management tactics, so you know how to manage sessions for web automation with Puppeteer + Browserless!

May 6, 2022

How @IrishEnergyBot used web scraping to help create awareness around Green Energy 🌱

IrishEnegryBot did a great job around Puppeteer Web Scraping!

April 29, 2022

How to generate dashboard and report PDFs using Puppeteer

Full instructions for adding a PDF export feature to your dashboard or other UI views using Puppeteer. Includes details on formatting and consistent rendering.

April 1, 2022

Introducing: Headless IE

[April Fools Prank] Introducing Headless Internet Explorer

January 27, 2022

What is browserless?

This post gives an introduction to web automation with Browserless. Learn the most common use cases, libraries that work with browserless, and features the service provides.

March 10, 2021

🎉 Announcing the new Puppeteer debugging site!

Without a doubt, one of the most helpful tools when working with any browser automation library is a visual debugger. We've written quite a bit about it.

February 7, 2021

Amsterdam Data Center is now generally available

We're proud to announce that we have a new data center setup in Amsterdam! With the recent exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, we've heard from a lot our users about having a location that's still located in the EU for legal purposes.

January 21, 2021

Account features for 2021

One of the things we've heard often is that our Worker settings is confusing, and today we rectify that by removing a slew of unnecessary information, and adding three simple buttons: Force Restart, Relaunch, and Settings.

January 4, 2021

Headless Handbook Chapter 1: Introduction to browser automation

This is the first of seven chapters in an ongoing blog series on headless browsers and best practices.

December 15, 2020

New stealth mode in browserless.io

We're happy to announce that, as of version 1.42.0 of our docker image, we've added support for launching chromium in "stealth" mode. Using stealth mode is as simple as adding a stealth argument to your launch args.

September 30, 2020

How to fix Puppeteer font issues

If you've been printing PDF's in puppeteer for some time, you've no doubt encountered issues where fonts don't render properly. Blotchy, pixelated, or even plain incorrect renderings are common when using headless-browsers. Luckily, there's a few quick things you can do to fix the problem!

September 2, 2020

Hunting White Whales: JavaScript Memory leaks

It's what every Node developer fears: the process that keeps eating memory and won't stop, that's right we're talking about memory leaks today folks, and more specifically the NodeJS kind. This post shares is how we found, diagnosed, and fixed a particular memory leak that caused us some headaches in browserless.

June 9, 2020

How to screencast with just Puppeteer

Having recently rewritten our implementation of screencasting for Puppeteer, we decided that the implementation was interesting enough to go over in a blog post. We'll of course go over how we landed on the decision, and talk more about tradeoffs made for our particular API.

October 17, 2019

Pricing updates for January 1st, 2020

Effective January 1st, 2020 we'll be updating our prices. Learn more about the new rates and how they will impact you.

August 22, 2019

The small things that will kill your indie business

Today, I wanted to take a look at the darker side of running a business, mostly the small things that will absolutely kill it. My intent here is to shed light on symptoms so you can course-correct before they become and out of control problem.

May 3, 2019

Improving Puppeteer Performance

Today, I'd like to go over how browserless can help you mitigate some of these slower operations, and in certain cases even cut your loading time in half.

April 18, 2019

Painless Puppeteer Debugging

Puppeteer can be frustrating and time-consuming it can be to debug, that's we're happy to announce our new Live Debugger.

April 1, 2019

Usage-based accounts are live!

We're happy to announce that usage-based accounts on browserless are now live! Similar to our dedicated accounts, usage-based accounts come with all the API's that you now expect from the browserless service with the convenience of only paying for what you use.

March 13, 2019

Observations running more than 5 million headless sessions a week

At the time of this writing, we currently run nearly 5 million headless sessions a week. Given all of this growth and time passed, it's time once again for us to divulge what we've learned running a headless browser company at scale.

February 6, 2019

Sanely debugging puppeteer and fixes to common issues

It's my hope that, at the end of this post, you'll have much better tools and methods for debugging some of the tougher problems in headless Chrome. And if not you'll at least know where to get started!

January 7, 2019

Phantom pain: the first year running headless Chrome in production

Browserless has just recently had its first birthday! Though there is so much to write about, today I want to go over the core of what browserless does and pass on all of our biggest findings, whether you're just beginning your headless Chrome journey or have been doing so for a while.

August 8, 2018

New globally available workers!

We're happy to announce that you can now launch browserless instances across the globe! With this comes two new load-balancers that can better handle routing your traffic as well. No matter where you are you'll be closer to your browserless workers.

August 1, 2018

Things they don't teach you running a business by yourself

One of the most hotly talked about topics in tech right now is starting an indie business. As the sole-developer, founder, and doer of all things at browserless; I wanted to take chance and paint a better picture of what's like to be independent in the technology world.

June 4, 2018

Observations running 2 million headless browser sessions

We're excited to announce that we've recently just crossed over 2 million sessions served! We'd like to take some time and outline common best practices when running headless browsers (and puppeteer) in a production environment.

May 26, 2018

Browserless functions and usage-based accounts!

We're extremely excited to announce that we'll soon be entering a closed-beta for browserless functions and a new payment option: usage-based payment!

April 25, 2018

Running Chrome Headless on Linux

You've written your Puppeteer code, you've made sure it works, and now it's time to get your project running someplace. This might be on a hosting provider like Amazon Web Services or on your own hardware. In any case chances are that you're running some flavor of Linux, and if you're reading this then you've undoubtedly run into some issues getting Chrome to run properly.

February 22, 2018

Handling large images in puppeteer

Puppeteer has the ability to take screenshots of a website, but it comes with some size limitations. The solution is pretty easy and we share it here.

We have been writing, using and deploying headless browserless workloads for nearly 10 years.

We're committed to making headlessbrowser workloads as painless aspossible! I knew a solution like Browserlesscould dramatically simplify the work andmaintenance, but none existed, so Istarted Browserless.

Joel Griffith,
Founder & CEO