Headless Browsers

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.

Sponsored by 🅱️ Browserbase: Hosted Headless Web Browsers with built-in session recording, auto-scaling, proxies and captcha solving.
Compatible with Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium.

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] 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] 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