Automate Web Tasks with Zapier, Make & Browserless: No Code, Real Power

Key Takeaways

• Browserless bridges no-code tools with real browser automation: You can trigger full browser sessions from platforms like Zapier and Make using Browserless APIs. This allows non-developers to run tasks such as taking screenshots or DOM scraping without writing or hosting backend code.
• Make and Zapier handle dynamic websites through Browserless: Both tools support HTTP modules or webhook actions, which can call Browserless’s screenshot or BQL endpoints to interact with modern JavaScript-heavy pages that static scrapers can’t handle.
• You get real automation with privacy and scale: Every Browserless session runs in a clean, disposable Chrome container. No sessions are reused, making automation safer for tasks like product tracking, UI monitoring, and form interactions even on sites with bot detection.

Introduction

Web automation isn’t just for developers anymore. Platforms like Zapier and Make enable you to connect services and build workflows using simple visual interfaces. You can set up triggers, define actions, and automate routine tasks without writing a line of code. Browserless brings real browser capabilities into this mix. It’s a cloud-based API that enables you to control headless Chrome sessions to take screenshots, extract data, or interact with forms, just as a real user would. In this article, you’ll build two automations one in Zapier, one in Make that use Browserless to interact with live websites in a way that’s fast, accurate, and doesn’t require deploying a backend.

Tool Setup: What You Need

Before building your first automation, you’ll need a few accounts and one API key. Both Zapier and Make are online platforms that let you build workflows by connecting services with triggers and actions. You don’t need to install anything, just sign up, log in, and you’re ready to start wiring steps together visually.

You’ll also need a Browserless account. Browserless gives you API access to real Chrome sessions running in the cloud. With it, you can take screenshots, extract data, or submit forms as if you were manually navigating a browser. After signing up at browserless.io, you’ll receive an API key that authenticates your requests to their cloud services.

Once you have those two pieces, the next step is to learn how both Zapier and Make utilize webhooks. Webhooks are a way to send custom HTTP requests from inside an automation. In this case, they’ll be used to send POST requests directly to Browserless APIs. Zapier has a “Webhooks by Zapier” action, and Make has an HTTP module both allow you to control the method, headers, and body of each request.

Each platform has its flow model, but the logic is nearly identical. In Zapier, you start with a trigger, such as a schedule or form submission, and then pass data through to a webhook step.

In Make, you build a scenario that visually chains steps, including conditions and parameters as needed. Both can call any Browserless endpoint, whether it's the screenshot API or a custom BQL query.

If you want to skip setup and see working examples, Browserless provides API documentation with payload samples.

Example #1: Take a Website Screenshot with Zapier

Let’s say you want to keep tabs on how eBay displays search results for something popular like “Nintendo Switch.” The listings change constantly: sellers come and go, promotions rotate, and sometimes entire sections fail to load. If you’re an affiliate, seller, or just curious, screenshots can give you visibility that scraping can’t.

With Browserless and Zapier, you can set up a simple automation that opens the page each morning, takes a full-page screenshot, and sends it to Drive or Slack. Here’s what that flow looks like:

And here’s the kind of screenshot it captures:

It’s useful for checking:

• If listings are actually rendering (instead of timing out or erroring)
• Whether anything unexpected is showing up like used units dominating results
• How sponsored placements or badges shift over time

Since you’re capturing what a real browser sees, it’s like doing visual QA on the public web without writing tests or shipping code.

How the Zap Works

1. Schedule by Zapier

This kicks off the workflow on a fixed schedule. Daily at 9am, for example. Just a basic trigger to keep the checks running regularly.

2. Browserless: Capture a Screenshot

This is the main action. You’re sending a POST request to the Browserless /screenshot endpoint with a payload that looks like this:

{
  "url": "https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=nintendo+switch",
  "options": {
    "fullPage": true,
    "type": "png",
    "viewport": {
      "width": 1440,
      "height": 1000
    }
  }
}