Headless Browsers ================

✨ Get long term memory across all your AI tools with MemoryPlugin [sponsor]

A list of (almost) all headless web browsers in existence

A web browser without a graphical user interface, controlled programmatically. Used for automation, testing, and other purposes.

Browser engines

These browser engines fully render web pages or run JavaScript in a virtual DOM

Name | About | Supported Languages | License :------------ |:---------------| :----- | :----------- |Chromium Embedded Framework |CEF is a open source project based on the Google Chromium project. | JavaScript | BSD | |Erik | Headless browser on top of Kanna and WebKit.|Swift| MIT | |jBrowserDriver | A Selenium-compatible headless browser which is written in pure Java. WebKit-based. Works with any of the Selenium Server bindings.|Java| Apache License v2.0 | |PhantomJS | [[Unmaintained]](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/phantomjs/9aI5d-LDuNE) PhantomJS is a headless WebKit scriptable with a JavaScript API. It has fast and native support for various web standards: DOM handling, CSS selector, JSON, Canvas, and SVG. | JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Java, C#, Haskell, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, R(via Selenium) | BSD 3-Clause | |Splash | Splash is a javascript rendering service with an HTTP API. It's a lightweight browser with an HTTP API, implemented in Python using Twisted and QT.|Any| BSD 3-Clause | |Surf|Surf is an open source project that implements a virtual web browser that can be controlled programatically | Go | MIT

Multi drivers

These libraries can control multiple browser engines (typically using Selenium)

Name | About | Supported Languages | License :------------ |:---------------| :----- | :----------- |CasperJS | [[Unmaintained]](https://github.com/casperjs/casperjs) CasperJS is an open source navigation scripting & testing utility written in Javascript for the PhantomJS WebKit headless browser and SlimerJS (Gecko). | JavaScript | MIT | |Geb | Geb is a Groovy interface to WebDriver.|Groovy| Apache | |Playwright | Playwright is a Node library to automate the Chromium, WebKit and Firefox browsers with a single API |TypeScript| Apache | |playwright-dotnet | Playwright for .NET is a library to automate Chromium, Firefox and WebKit browsers with a single API. |.NET| MIT | |playwright-python | Playwright for Python is a library to automate Chromium, Firefox and WebKit browsers with a single API. |Python| Apache | |playwright-java | Playwright for Java is a library to automate Chromium, Firefox and WebKit browsers with a single API. |Java| Apache | |playwright-go | Playwright for Go is a library to automate Chromium, Firefox and WebKit browsers with a single API. |Go| MIT | |Selenium | Selenium is a suite of tools to automate web browsers across many platforms.|JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Java, C#, Haskell, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, R, C++| Apache | |Splinter | Splinter is an open source tool for testing web applications using Python. It lets you automate browser actions, such as visiting URLs and interacting with their items.|Python| - | |SST | SST (selenium-simple-test) is a web test framework that uses Python to generate functional browser-based tests.|Python| - | |Watir | The most elegant way to use Selenium WebDriver with Ruby.|Ruby| MIT |

PhantomJS drivers

These libraries control PhantomJS

Name | About | Supported Languages | License :------------ |:---------------| :----- | :----------- |Ghostbuster | Automated browser testing via phantom.js, with all of the pain taken out! That means you get a real browser, with a real DOM, and can do real testing!|JavaScript| Not specified | |jedi-crawler | Lightsabing Node/PhantomJS crawler; scrape dynamic content : without the hassle|JavaScript| Not specified | |Lotte| Lotte is a headless, automated testing framework built on top of PhantomJS and inspired by Ghostbuster. | JavaScript | MIT | |phantompy | Phantompy is a headless WebKit engine with powerful pythonic api build on top of Qt5 Webkit|Python| LGPL-2.1 | |X-RAY | Supports strings, arrays, arrays of objects, nested object structures, selector API, pagination, crawler, concurrency, throttles, delays, timeouts, and pluggable drivers (PhantomJS, HTTP)|JavaScript| MIT | |Horseman | Promise based Node.js module for PhantomJS. Features chainable API, understandable control-flow, support for multiple tabs, and built-in jQuery.|JavaScript| MIT |

Chromium drivers

These libraries control Chromium

Name | About | Supported Languages | License :------------ |:---------------| :----- | :----------- |Awesomium | Chromium-based headless browser engine|C++, .NET| Free/Commercial | |Headless Chromium | Chromium feature activated with the --headlesss flag, currently availible in the nightly build of Chromium, not yet released|C++| Opensource | |Puppeteer | Headless Chrome Node API from the Chrome DevTools team|JavaScript| Apache | |PuppeteerSharp | PuppeteerSharp is a .NET port of the official Headless Chrome Node.JS Puppeteer API|.NET| MIT | |chrome-remote-interface | Chrome Debugging Protocol interface for Node.js|JavaScript| MIT | |Chromy | Features chainable API, mobile emulation, fundamental API such as javascript evaluation. |JavaScript| MIT | |chromedp | A faster, simpler way to drive browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari, Android, etc) without external dependencies (ie, Selenium, PhantomJS, etc) using the Chrome Debugging Protocol.|Go| MIT | |Chromeless | Chrome automation made simple. Runs locally or headless on AWS Lambda. | JavaScript | MIT | |Chrome PHP | PHP API to drive Chromium or Google Chrome via the Chrome Devtools Protocole. | PHP | Fair | |Wendigo | Test-oriented browser automation library using Puppeteer. | JavaScript | GPL-3.0 | |cdp4j | A web-automation library for Java. It can be used for automating the use of web pages and for testing web pages. It use Google Chrome DevTools Protocol to automate Chrome/Chromium based browsers. | Java | cdp4j Commercial License | |Pyppeteer | Python port of puppeteer JavaScript (headless) chrome/chromium browser automation library | Python | MIT | |Headless Chrome | A high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. | Rust | None

Webkit drivers

These drivers control an in-process instance of Webkit

Name | About | Supported Languages | License :------------ |:---------------| :----- | :----------- |Browserjet | Runs a custom build of webkit, controlled by node.js interface.|JavaScript| Not specified | |ghost.py | ghost.py is a webkit web client written in python.|Python| MIT | |headless_browser | Headless browser based on WebKit written in C++.|C++| Not Specified | |Jabba-Webkit | Jabba's headless webkit browser for scraping AJAX-powered webpages.|Python| Not specified | |Jasmine-Headless-Webkit | jasmine-headless-webkit uses the QtWebKit widget to run your specs without needing to render a pixel.|Python, JavaScript, Ruby| Free | |Python-Webkit | Python-Webkit is a python extension to Webkit to add full, complete access to Webkit's DOM|Python| GNU | |Spynner | Programmatic web browsing module with AJAX support for Python|Python| Not specified | |Webloop | Scriptable, headless WebKit with a Go API. | Go | BSD 3-Clause | |wkhtmltopdf wkhtmltox wkhtmltoimage | Command line tool rendering HTML into PDF and other image formats. | shell, C | LGPLv3 | |WKZombie | Functional headless browser (with JSON support) for iOS using WebKit and hpple/libxml2.|Swift| MIT |

Other drivers

These libraries control lesser known browsers or OS-provided web libraries

Name | About | Supported Languages | License :------------ |:---------------| :----- | :----------- |Cypress | Cypress supports end-to-end, integration and unit tests and makes debugging tests simple. Default engine is headless Electron. |JavaScript| MIT | |Nightmare | Nightmare is a high-level browser automation library built as an easier alternative to PhantomJS. It runs on the Electron engine. |JavaScript| MIT | |grope | A RubyCocoa interface to the macOS WebKit Framework |RubyCocoa| MIT | |SlimerJS | SlimerJS is similar to PhantomJs, except that it runs Gecko, the browser engine of Mozilla Firefox, instead of Webkit (And it is not yet truly headless).|JavaScript| Mozilla 2.0 | |SpecterJS | A scriptable headless Internet Explorer port of PhantomJS. | JavaScript | MIT | |trifleJS | A headless Internet Explorer browser using the .NET WebBrowser Class with a Javascript API running on the V8 engine.|JavaScript| MIT |

Fake Browser Engine

These libraries are typically naive or HTML-only browsers

|Name | About | Supported Languages | License |:------------ |:---------------| :----- | :----------- |AngleSharp | .Net Http Parsing Library | .NET | MIT | |Guillotine | A .NET headless browser, written in C# | .NET | LGPL-3.0 | |benv | Stub a browser environment in node.js and headlessly test your client-side code.|JavaScript| MIT | |browser.rb | Headless Ruby browser on top of Nokogiri and TheRubyRacer|Ruby| Not specified | |BrowserKit | BrowserKit simulates the behavior of a web browser.|PHP| MIT | |DamonJS | Bot navigating urls and doing tasks.|JavaScript| Apache | |Headless | Headless browser support for fast web acceptance testing in .Net|.NET| MIT | |HeadlessBrowser | A very miniature headless browser, for testing the DOM on Node.js|JavaScript| Not specified | |HtmlUnit | HtmlUnit is a "GUI-Less browser for Java programs".|Java| Apache | |Jaunt | Java Web Scraping & Automation API|Java| Apache (monthly edition)| |Jauntium | Free Java library that allows you to easily automate Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, IE, and other modern web browers.|Java| Apache| |JSDom | A JavaScript implementation of the WHATWG DOM and HTML standards, for use with Node.js. |JavaScript| MIT | |MechanicalSoup | A Python library for automating interaction with websites.|Python| MIT | |mechanize | Stateful programmatic web browsing.|Python| BSD 3-Clause, ZPL 2.1 | |node-as-browser | Create a browser-like environment within Node.js |JavaScript| MIT | |RoboBrowser | A simple, Pythonic library for browsing the web without a standalone web browser.|Python| BSD 3-Clause | |SimpleBrowser | A flexible and intuitive web browser engine designed for automation tasks. Built on the .Net 4 framework.|.NET| BSD 3-Clause | |twill | Twill is a simple language that interacts with basic HTML pages (no JavaScript support).|Python| MIT | |WeasyPrint | WeasyPrint is a visual rendering engine for HTML and CSS that can export to PDF. It aims to support web standards for printing.|Python| BSD 3-Clause | |WWW::Mechanize | Headless browser for Perl with many plugins and extensions, notably Test::WWW:Mechanize for testing | Perl | Perl 5 | |X-RAY | Supports strings, arrays, arrays of objects, nested object structures, selector API, pagination, crawler, concurrency, throttles, delays, timeouts, and pluggable drivers (PhantomJS, HTTP)|JavaScript| MIT | |Xidel (Internet Tools) | An XQuery-based cli web scraper for static X/HTML pages and JSON-APIs. |FreePascal, XQuery| GPL-2| |Zombie.js | Zombie.js is a lightweight framework for testing client-side JavaScript code in a simulated environment. No browser required. | JavaScript | MIT |

Runs in a browser

Name | About | Supported Languages | License :------------ |:---------------| :----- | :----------- |DalekJS | [unmaintained and recommend TestCafé] Automated cross browser testing with JavaScript.|JavaScript| MIT | |TestCafé | Automated browser testing for the modern web development stack.|JavaScript| MIT | |Sahi | Sahi is a cross-browser automation/testing tool with the facility to record and playback scripts.|JavaScript, Java, Ruby, PHP| Apache / Commercial | |WatiN | Web Application Testing In .Net|.NET| Apache 2.0 |

Misc tools

Name | About | Supported Languages | License :------------ |:---------------| :----- | :----------- |browser-launcher | Detect and launch browser versions, headlessly or otherwise|JavaScript| MIT | |Headless Recorder | Chrome extension that records your browser interactions and generates a Playwright or Puppeteer script |JavaScript| MIT |