Browserless
Browserless is a Docker-based service that provides remote headless browser automation for scripting, scraping, testing, and content fetching.
Platform availability
Available on 1 of 9 platforms
- Unraid
- TrueNAS (not listed)
- Umbrel (not listed)
- ZimaOS (not listed)
- Proxmox (not listed)
- Helm (not listed)
- Mac (not listed)
- Windows (not listed)
- Linux (not listed)
Health score?A 0-100 score computed nightly from four factors: maintained (40%: recent commits and steady activity), popular (25%: GitHub stars, log scale), easy to install (20%: platforms, install notes, setup guides, Docker image) and light to run (15%: minimum RAM, ARM support). When the source code has been checked, a fifth factor, security check (20%: automated scan for committed secrets, unsafe desktop-app settings, known-vulnerable dependencies and project hygiene; any serious finding caps it at 20), is added. Factors without data are left out and the rest are rescaled.
80/100 Excellent
- Maintained
- 100last commit 9 days ago
- Popular
- 8313,776 GitHub stars
- Easy to install
- 351 install platform, install notes, Docker image
- Light to run
- 602 GB minimum RAM, runs on ARM
- Security check
- 94no serious findings, 1 minor, CI, tests
Availability: platform listings confirmed today, links checked 17 days ago
- GitHub stars
- 13,776
- Open issues
- 13
- Last commit
- 2026-10-06
- Latest release
- v2.57.0
- Activity
- declining
Checked 9 days ago - source: GitHub (browserless/browserless)
Resources & Compatibility
Minimum requirements: 2 GB RAM. ARM (e.g. Raspberry Pi) is supported.
Checked 17 days ago - source: Docker Hub image tags and published docs
First-install notes
- Set TOKEN to protect the service Set the TOKEN environment variable to a long random secret before running npx browserless start. This protects browser automation endpoints; without it, anyone who can reach the service may use it and exhaust your machine's resources. source
- Limit concurrent jobs and queue depth Set CONCURRENT to the number of simultaneous browser sessions your machine can handle and QUEUED to how many extra jobs to accept. This prevents Browserless from starting too many Chromium instances at once, which can freeze the host if you skip it. source
- Set a request TIMEOUT Set TIMEOUT to a deliberate limit in milliseconds, such as 60000, for how long a single browser request may run. Without that limit, stuck browser requests can keep holding resources and block other jobs. source
Fetched 17 days ago - each note links to its source
Variants
Alternatives (1)
- BrowserStack - BrowserStack is the world’s largest cloud platform for software testing, with 20,000+ real Android and iOS devices that allow developers to…
Checked 14 days ago - source: AlternativeTo
Common questions
How do I connect Puppeteer or Playwright to a self-hosted Browserless instance?
Use the WebSocket endpoint on the mapped port 3000. For Firefox, use the Firefox image or multi image and connect to the Firefox Playwright endpoint.
How can I protect a self-hosted Browserless endpoint from anonymous use?
Set the TOKEN environment variable to a long random secret before starting Browserless. Without a token, anyone who can reach the service can use it and consume machine resources.
Can changedetection.io be used with the rewritten Browserless v2 in a self-hosted setup?
A self-hosted user reports updating their setup so changedetection.io works with Browserless v2.
Answers sourced from github.com, github.com, www.reddit.com
Community
Collected 16 days ago - public community threads