📋 Table of Contents
🚀 Get Started in Seconds!
Get up and running in three simple steps:
Step 1: Run the Docker image
docker run -p 3000:3000 ghcr.io/browserless/chromium
Step 2: Open the docs in your browser
Visit http://localhost:3000/docs
✅ Success! Your browser service is live at ws://localhost:3000
Step 3: Connect your script with Puppeteer or Playwright
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer-core';
const browser = await puppeteer.connect({
browserWSEndpoint: 'ws://localhost:3000',
});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
console.log(await page.title());
await browser.close();
import pw from 'playwright-core';
const browser = await pw.firefox.connect(
'ws://localhost:3000/firefox/playwright',
);
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
console.log(await page.title());
await browser.close();
Note: Use ghcr.io/browserless/firefox or ghcr.io/browserless/multi for Firefox/Webkit support.
Output:
Example Domain
✨ Features
General Features
- Parallelism and queueing — Handle multiple sessions with configurable concurrency limits
- Debug Viewer — Actively view and debug running browser sessions in real-time
- Unforked libraries — Works seamlessly with standard Puppeteer and Playwright
- Fonts & emoji — All system fonts and emoji support out-of-the-box
- Configurable timeouts — Set session timers and health-checks to keep things running smoothly
- Error tolerant — If Chrome crashes, Browserless won't
- ARM64 architecture support — Full support for ARM64 platforms including Apple Silicon; some browsers (Edge, Chrome) have limited ARM64 compatibility
Premium Features
Our Self-serve cloud and Enterprise offerings include all the general features plus extras, such as:
- BrowserQL for avoiding detectors and solving captchas
- Hybrid automations for streaming live browser sessions during scripts
- Persistent Sessions for persisting browser state (cookies, cache, localStorage) across multiple sessions with configurable data retention up to 90 days
- Session Replay for recording and debugging browser sessions with event capture and video playback
- Chrome Extensions Support for loading custom extensions including ad blockers, captcha solvers, etc.
- Advanced Captcha/Stealth Routes for enhanced anti-detection with Captcha solving, fingerprint randomization, and residential proxy rotation
- REST APIs for tasks such as retrieving HTML, PDFs or Screenshot etc.
- Inbuilt residential proxy for automatic IP rotation and geo-targeting with residential proxy networks
- for intelligently scraping any URL using cascading strategies (HTTP fetch, proxy, headless browser, captcha solving)
🚢 Customisable Deployment Options
Select the deployment model that best fits your needs:
🔓 Open Source (Self-Hosted)
Free, self-hosted solution with core browser automation capabilities.
Best for: Testing, development, and small projects
↓ Quickstart above
🏢 Enterprise Docker (Self-Hosted)
Full Enterprise features in a self-hosted container.
Best for: Production workloads requiring data sovereignty
→ Learn More
☁️ Cloud (Self-Serve)
Fully managed, pay-as-you-go service with automatic scaling.
Best for: Quick starts and rapid prototyping
→ Start Free
🔒 Private Deployment
Custom Enterprise infrastructure across major cloud providers.
Best for: Large-scale enterprise deployments
→ Contact Sales
Want to dive deeper? Check out this detailed guide for advanced stuff including Docker configuration, hosting providers, SDK extensions, and more.
💡 Why Browserless?
Running Chrome in the cloud or CI sucks.
Missing fonts. Random crashes. Dependency hell. Lambda limits. You know the drill.
Browserless solves this by handling browsers as a managed service — locally or in our cloud — so you can focus on automation, not infrastructure. We've taken care of the hard parts: system packages, font libraries, security patches, scaling strategies, and CVEs.
You still own your script. You still control your code. We just make sure the Browser runs smoothly, every time.
📜 Licensing
SPDX-License-Identifier: SSPL-1.0 OR Browserless Commercial License.
If you want to use Browserless to build commercial sites, applications, or in a continuous-integration system that's closed-source then you'll need to purchase a commercial license. This allows you to keep your software proprietary whilst still using browserless. You can purchase a commercial license here. A commercial license grants you:
- Priority support on issues and features.
- On-premise running as well as running on public cloud providers for commercial/CI purposes for proprietary systems.
- Ability to modify the source (forking) for your own purposes.
- A new admin user-interface.
Not only does it grant you a license to run such a critical piece of infrastructure, but you are also supporting further innovation in this space and our ability to contribute to it.
If you are creating an open source application under a license compatible with the Server Side License 1.0, you may use Browserless under those terms.
Happy hacking!
Need help? Reach out to us at [email protected]
