Puppeteer vs. Selenium: Which Should You Choose?

Are you stuck deciding between Puppeteer and Selenium for web scraping? We've got you covered! Both are excellent browser automation libraries, and it's essential to consider your scraping needs and available resources when deciding.

In this article, you'll learn the differences between Puppeteer and Selenium to decide what works best for your project. Let's begin!

What Is Puppeteer?

Puppeteer is a Node.js browser automation library that supports headless Chromium or Chrome and Firefox over the DevTools protocol. It provides tools for automating user interactions like taking screenshots, generating PDFs, navigating pages, clicking, scrolling, hovering, and more.

One unique feature of Puppeteer is that you can generate Chrome or Firefox automation scripts directly from Chrome's built-in video recorder via the DevTools. This feature removes the need for manual scripting, making Puppeteer more accessible and user-friendly for developers, especially beginners. 

Let's see an example of a Puppeteer script that runs a headless Chrome instance. The code visits the e-commerce challenge page and extracts its full-page HTML:

// npm install puppeteer
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');

(async () => {
    // start Puppeteer in headless mode and open the target website
    const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
    const page = await browser.newPage();

    const url = 'https://www.scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/';
    const response = await page.goto(url);

    // get the content of the page
    const content = await page.content();
    console.log(content);

    await browser.close();
})();

Pros

• Beginner-friendly.
• Puppeteer has an event-driven architecture, removing the need for manual sleep calls in your code.
• It supports the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) and Remote Debugging Protocol (RDP).
• Request interception feature to modify requests on the fly.
• Ability to generate browser automation scripts from the Chrome DevTools recorder.
• Remote browser support makes for memory efficiency.

Cons

• Compared to Selenium, Puppeteer supports fewer browsers.
• Puppeteer focuses on JavaScript only, although there are unofficial ports for Python via Pyppeteer and PHP via PuPHPeteer (discontinued).

What Is Selenium?

Selenium is an open-source WebDriver-based web automation tool that supports many programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, Java, PHP, Ruby, C#, and Kotlin. Like Puppeteer, you can generate Selenium automation scripts without writing code using the Selenium IDE. However, the IDE is only available as a browser extension and has control limitations, as Selenium doesn't natively integrate with the DevTools protocol.

Selenium also supports the Selenium Grid, which allows you to run several scraping instances in parallel on local or remote servers.

As we did with Puppeteer, let's see what a basic Selenium scraper looks like using the same target site. The script imports Selenium, configures it to run Chrome in headless mode, visits the target site, and prints its full-page HTML:

// npm install selenium-webdriver
const { Builder, By } = require('selenium-webdriver');
const chrome = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome');

(async function scrapePage() {
    // initialize the WebDriver for Chrome in headless mode
    let options = new chrome.Options();

    // run Chrome in headless mode
    options.addArguments('--headless');

    let driver = await new Builder()
        .forBrowser('chrome')
        .setChromeOptions(options)
        .build();

    // visit the target URL
    await driver.get('https://www.scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/');

    // get the full-page HTML
    const pageHTML = await driver
        .findElement(By.css('html'))
        .getAttribute('outerHTML');

    // log the HTML to the console
    console.log(pageHTML);

    // quit the browser
    await driver.quit();
})();

Pros

• Selenium supports more programming languages.
• Multi-browser support.
• Selenium Grid is available to distribute automation over several machines.
• Selenium IDE for test automation generation.

Cons

• Limited support for the DevTools protocol.
• Dependent on an extension for automation script generation.

Puppeteer or Selenium: In-Depth Comparison

While Puppeteer and Selenium are browser automation tools commonly used for web scraping, their underlying architecture and capabilities differ. Puppeteer provides a high-level browser API based on the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP), enabling fine-grained control over browser internals, such as network interception, JavaScript execution, etc. Selenium, in contrast, relies on the WebDriver protocol, which is standardized for cross-browser compatibility but offers less direct access to browser internals.

Puppeteer is more suitable if your project requires heavy automation tasks like request interception, network manipulation, or advanced browser emulation. Selenium works best if you prioritize cross-browser compatibility and multi-language support over fine-grained browser control.

Let's summarize the comparison of both tools in the table below.

Let's go ahead and compare both tools in detail.

Selenium is Compatible With More Languages

Selenium supports multiple programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, Java, PHP, Ruby, C#, and Kotlin. This makes it more versatile and accessible to a broader range of developers. 

Puppeteer is officially supported only in JavaScript, though unofficial ports exist for other languages, such as Python and PHP. This limitation means Puppeteer is primarily suited to developers with a JavaScript background.

Puppeteer Is Faster than Selenium

Speed is a critical factor to consider when choosing a web scraping tool. In our speed benchmark test, Puppeteer consistently outperformed Selenium.

We ran a 100-iteration benchmark to compare the average speed of Puppeteer and Selenium for scraping the same website on a machine with 16GB RAM and 2.6 GHz processor speed. Puppeteer completed the scraping task in 849.46ms, while it took Selenium 1008.08ms.

See the graphical presentation of the result below, from the fastest to the slowest.

Since Puppeteer is faster, it's the better choice for speed-critical web scraping tasks when Chromium and Firefox support suffices. However, Selenium remains a solid alternative for multi-browser compatibility.

Puppeteer is Easier to Use

Puppeteer's intuitive API and built-in support for modern web features make it beginner-friendly, especially for developers familiar with JavaScript. While Selenium supports multiple programming languages, its implementation, code structure, and syntax vary across languages. This can present a steeper learning curve for beginners or teams working in diverse environments.

Selenium Supports More Browsers

Selenium is suitable for cross-browser automation, as it supports Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera, and even legacy browsers like Internet Explorer. This flexibility can be valuable in avoiding detection during web scraping, especially when dealing with anti-bot measures that may be less effective on specific browsers. 

On the other hand, Puppeteer is primarily limited to Chrome and Firefox. While Puppeteer excels in tasks requiring advanced browser control via the DevTools Protocol, its lack of official multi-browser support makes it less suitable for projects requiring broad cross-browser compatibility.

How to Avoid Getting Blocked When Using Puppeteer or Selenium

Although Selenium and Puppeteer offer unique scraping features, they leak bot-like attributes, such as the HeadlessChrome User-Agent flag, missing or suspicious fingerprints, and more. These limitations make them vulnerable to anti-bot detection during scraping.

The best way to scrape at scale without getting blocked is to use a web scraping API like the ZenRows Scraper API. ZenRows helps you handle advanced fingerprint spoofing, request header management, premium proxy rotation, JavaScript rendering, anti-bot auto-bypass, and more. 

All you need is a single API in any programming language, and ZenRows will handle these complex tasks under the hood. 

Let's scrape this Anti-bot Challenge page with ZenRows to see how it works.

Sign up for free to open the Request Builder. Paste the target URL in the link box, and activate Premium Proxies and JS Rendering.

Select your programming language (Node.js, in this case) and choose the API connection mode. Then, copy and paste the generated code into your scraper file.

Here's what the generated code looks like:

// npm install axios
const axios = require('axios');

const url = 'https://www.scrapingcourse.com/antibot-challenge';
const apikey = '<YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY>';
axios({
    url: 'https://api.zenrows.com/v1/',
    method: 'GET',
    params: {
        url: url,
        apikey: apikey,
        js_render: 'true',
        premium_proxy: 'true',
    },
})
    .then((response) => console.log(response.data))
    .catch((error) => console.log(error));

The above code outputs the protected site's full-page HTML, showing that it bypassed the anti-bot measure:

<html lang="en">
<head>
    <!-- ... -->
    <title>Antibot Challenge - ScrapingCourse.com</title>
    <!-- ... -->
</head>
<body>
    <!-- ... -->
    <h2>
        You bypassed the Antibot challenge! :D
    </h2>
    <!-- other content omitted for brevity -->
</body>
</html>

Congratulations 🎉! You just bypassed an anti-bot-protected website using ZenRows.

Conclusion

You've seen the differences between Puppeteer and Selenium. Puppeteer is the better choice when speed and fine-grained browser control are essential. Selenium supports more languages and is more suitable if you need to run your scraping tasks across several browsers.

However, remember that neither library is optimized to bypass anti-bot measures. We recommend using ZenRows to avoid all anti-bot measures and scrape any website without limitations.

Try ZenRows for free now without a credit card!