nodrivervsplaywright

AGPL-3.0 14 2 4,003

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

14,506 5 82 Apache-2.0

Feb 24 2021 53.2 million (month) 1.58.0(2026-01-30 15:09:24 ago)

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.

playwright is a Python package that allows developers to automate web browsers for end-to-end testing, web scraping, and web performance analysis. It is built on top of WebKit, Mozilla's Gecko, and Microsoft's EdgeHTML, and it is designed to be fast, reliable, and easy to use.

playwright is similar to Selenium, but it provides a more modern and powerful API, with features such as automatic waiting for elements, automatic retries, and built-in support for browser contexts, which allow you to open multiple pages in a single browser instance.

Playwright also provides an asynchronous client which makes scaling playwright-powered web scrapers easier than alternatives (like Selenium)

Highlights

anti-detectcdpasyncfast

Example Use

```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()) ```

```python from playwright import sync_playwright # Start Playwright with sync_playwright() as playwright: # Launch a browser instance browser = playwright.chromium.launch() # Open a new context (tab) context = browser.new_context() # Create a new page in the context page = context.new_page() # Navigate to a website page.goto("https://www.example.com") # Find an element by its id element = page.get_by_id("example-id") # Interact with the element element.click() # Fill an input form page.get_by_name("example-name").fill("example text") # Find and click a button page.get_by_xpath("//button[text()='Search']").click() # Wait for the page to load page.wait_for_selector("#results") # Get the page title print(page.title) # Close the browser browser.close() ```