Best Headless Browsers for Scraping and Testing

What Is a Headless Browser?

A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface (GUI). Unlike traditional browsers, which display web pages visually, a headless browser operates entirely in the background.

You may be wondering, ”Great, but why?” Well, we all know how resource-intensive modern browsers are. By omitting the need for rendering and displaying pages visually, you can save a lot of resources. With the right tool, that opens the door to efficient browser automation.

How to Control a Headless Browser for Testing and Web Scraping

A headless browser does not have a graphical interface, but it is still a functioning tool for browsing the Internet. On its own, it is not enough for performing end-to-end testing or web scraping. To exploit its true potential for those purposes, it must be used with a browser automation tool.

These technologies allow you to programmatically instruct a browser to perform specific interactions, simulating human behavior on a webpage. This is what a headless browser library is all about. There is a plethora of libraries to do so, and here we will explore the best ones.

What to Consider When Comparing the Best Headless Browser Tools

Here are the most important aspects to keep in mind when evaluating headless browser tools:

• Pros and cons: The top benefits and drawbacks associated with the headless browser tool
• Supported programming languages: The list of programming languages supported by the library
• Supported browsers: The list of browsers the tool can control
• GitHub stars: The number of stars the repository of the headless browser library has on GitHub
• Latest release: The date of the latest release of the package at the time of writing
• Repository: A link to the repository of the library where you can find out more about the tool.

Conclusion

In this guide, you explored the best browser automation libraries to control a headless browser in different technologies. Finding the right tool for you depends on the programming language you need to use and the specific requirements of your project. Here, you had the opportunity to discover the best headless browser libraries

Regardless of your choice, keep in mind that programmatic requests made by headless browsers draw the attention of anti-bot technologies. In other words, your scraping operation will be stopped by those systems. Thankfully, Bright Data has you covered!

Scraping Browser is a cloud-based, headful, controllable browser that integrates with any automation browser library, including Puppeteer. As a full-featured solution, it can bypass and solve CAPTCHAs, IP bans, and rate limits for you. Render any web page in a browser without limitations and blocks!

Talk to one of our data experts about our scraping solutions or register and start your free trial now.