playwrightvsnodriver

Apache-2.0 613 29 86,137

185.2 million (month) Jan 23 2015 1.59.1(2026-04-11 23:54:46 ago)

4,003 2 14 AGPL-3.0

Jan 15 2024 321.9 thousand (month) 0.48.1(2025-11-09 05:57:23 ago)

Playwright is a Node.js library that provides a high-level API to automate web browsers. It allows you to automate browser tasks such as generating screenshots, creating PDFs, and testing web pages by simulating user interactions. Playwright is similar to Puppeteer, but it supports more browsers and it also provide capabilities for automation of browser like Microsoft Edge and Safari.

Playwright is commonly used for web scraping, end-to-end testing, and browser automation.
Playwright is a spiritual successor to Puppeter and is available in more languages and has access to more browser types.

nodriver is a Python library for browser automation that communicates directly with the browser via the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP), without relying on Selenium or chromedriver. It is the successor to undetected-chromedriver, created by the same author, and is designed from the ground up to be undetectable by anti-bot systems.

Key advantages over traditional browser automation:

No chromedriver dependency Communicates directly with Chrome/Chromium via CDP websocket, eliminating the most common detection vector (chromedriver fingerprint).
Undetectable by default Does not set the navigator.webdriver flag, does not inject automation-related JavaScript, and avoids CDP detection patterns that anti-bot systems look for.
Fast and lightweight Without the Selenium/WebDriver protocol overhead, nodriver is significantly faster at launching browsers and executing commands.
Async-first Built entirely on Python's asyncio, enabling efficient concurrent browser automation.
Simple API Clean, Pythonic API that is easier to use than raw CDP or Selenium.

nodriver is particularly useful for scraping websites protected by advanced anti-bot systems like Cloudflare, DataDome, or PerimeterX, where standard Selenium or Playwright setups get detected and blocked.

Highlights

anti-detectcdpasyncfast

Example Use

```javascript const { chromium } = require('playwright'); (async () => { const browser = await chromium.launch(); const context = await browser.newContext(); const page = await context.newPage(); await page.goto('https://www.example.com/form'); // fill in the form await page.fill('input[name="name"]', 'John Doe'); await page.fill('input[name="email"]', 'johndoe@example.com'); await page.selectOption('select[name="country"]', 'US'); // submit the form await page.click('button[type="submit"]'); // wait for the page to load after the form is submitted await page.waitForNavigation(); // take a screenshot await page.screenshot({path: 'form-submission.png'}); await browser.close(); })(); ```

```python import nodriver as uc import asyncio async def main(): # Launch browser - undetected by default browser = await uc.start() # Open a new tab and navigate tab = await browser.get("https://example.com") # Wait for an element and interact with it search_box = await tab.find("input[name='q']") await search_box.send_keys("web scraping") # Click a button button = await tab.find("button[type='submit']") await button.click() # Wait for navigation and extract content await tab.wait_for("div.results") results = await tab.query_selector_all("div.result") for result in results: title = await result.query_selector("h3") print(await title.get_text()) # Take a screenshot await tab.save_screenshot("results.png") browser.stop() asyncio.run(main()) ```