Should I use Crawlee with Playwright or Puppeteer for Browser Automation?

When building browser automation projects with Crawlee, one of the most important decisions you'll face is choosing between Playwright and Puppeteer as your underlying browser automation library. Both are excellent choices, but they have distinct characteristics that make each better suited for different scenarios.

Quick Answer

Use Playwright if you need: - Cross-browser support (Chrome, Firefox, Safari/WebKit) - Better handling of modern web applications - Auto-waiting capabilities for elements - More reliable mobile emulation - Better debugging tools and tracing

Use Puppeteer if you need: - Chrome/Chromium-only automation - Slightly faster execution for Chrome-specific tasks - Smaller dependency footprint - More mature ecosystem with extensive community resources

Understanding Crawlee's Browser Support

Crawlee provides two specialized crawler classes for browser automation:

• PlaywrightCrawler - Built on top of Playwright
• PuppeteerCrawler - Built on top of Puppeteer

Both crawlers share the same core Crawlee features like request queuing, automatic retries, session management, and rate limiting. The main difference lies in the underlying browser automation library.

Detailed Comparison

1. Browser Compatibility

Playwright:

import { PlaywrightCrawler } from 'crawlee';

const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
    launchContext: {
        launcher: playwright.chromium, // or firefox, webkit
    },
    async requestHandler({ page, request, enqueueLinks }) {
        console.log(`Processing: ${request.url}`);
        const title = await page.title();
        console.log(`Title: ${title}`);
    },
});

Playwright supports Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit (Safari), allowing you to test across different browser engines. This is particularly valuable when scraping sites that behave differently across browsers.

Puppeteer:

import { PuppeteerCrawler } from 'crawlee';

const crawler = new PuppeteerCrawler({
    launchContext: {
        launchOptions: {
            headless: true,
        },
    },
    async requestHandler({ page, request }) {
        console.log(`Processing: ${request.url}`);
        const title = await page.title();
        console.log(`Title: ${title}`);
    },
});

Puppeteer primarily focuses on Chrome/Chromium. While this limits browser diversity, it means better optimization for Chrome-specific features.

2. API Differences and Developer Experience

Both libraries have similar APIs, but Playwright offers some enhancements:

Auto-waiting in Playwright:

// Playwright automatically waits for elements to be actionable
await page.click('button#submit'); // Waits for element to be visible and enabled
await page.fill('input[name="email"]', 'user@example.com'); // Waits for input to be editable

Explicit waiting in Puppeteer:

// Puppeteer often requires explicit waits
await page.waitForSelector('button#submit', { visible: true });
await page.click('button#submit');
await page.type('input[name="email"]', 'user@example.com');

Playwright's auto-waiting reduces the likelihood of flaky tests and scraping failures due to timing issues.

3. Performance Considerations

Puppeteer generally has a slight edge in raw speed for Chrome-only operations:

import { PuppeteerCrawler } from 'crawlee';

const crawler = new PuppeteerCrawler({
    maxConcurrency: 10, // Run 10 pages in parallel
    requestHandler: async ({ page, request }) => {
        // Fast Chrome-specific scraping
        const data = await page.evaluate(() => {
            return {
                products: Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.product')).map(p => ({
                    name: p.querySelector('.name')?.textContent,
                    price: p.querySelector('.price')?.textContent,
                })),
            };
        });
    },
});

Playwright may have slightly more overhead due to its cross-browser architecture, but the difference is negligible for most use cases:

import { PlaywrightCrawler } from 'crawlee';

const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
    maxConcurrency: 10,
    requestHandler: async ({ page, request }) => {
        // Cross-browser compatible scraping
        const products = await page.locator('.product').evaluateAll(elements => {
            return elements.map(p => ({
                name: p.querySelector('.name')?.textContent,
                price: p.querySelector('.price')?.textContent,
            }));
        });
    },
});

4. Handling Complex Scenarios

Network Interception and Modification:

Playwright offers more powerful network manipulation:

const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
    requestHandler: async ({ page }) => {
        // Block images and CSS to speed up scraping
        await page.route('**/*.{png,jpg,jpeg,gif,svg,css}', route => route.abort());

        // Modify requests
        await page.route('**/api/**', route => {
            route.continue({
                headers: {
                    ...route.request().headers(),
                    'X-Custom-Header': 'value',
                },
            });
        });
    },
});

Puppeteer also supports request interception, but with a slightly different API:

const crawler = new PuppeteerCrawler({
    requestHandler: async ({ page }) => {
        await page.setRequestInterception(true);

        page.on('request', request => {
            if (request.resourceType() === 'image') {
                request.abort();
            } else {
                request.continue();
            }
        });
    },
});

5. Mobile Emulation

Both support mobile device emulation, but Playwright's implementation is more comprehensive:

Playwright:

import { devices } from 'playwright';

const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
    launchContext: {
        launcher: playwright.chromium,
        launchOptions: {
            ...devices['iPhone 13 Pro'],
        },
    },
    requestHandler: async ({ page }) => {
        // Scrape mobile version of site
        const mobileContent = await page.content();
    },
});

Puppeteer:

import { KnownDevices } from 'puppeteer';

const crawler = new PuppeteerCrawler({
    preNavigationHooks: [async ({ page }) => {
        await page.emulate(KnownDevices['iPhone 13 Pro']);
    }],
    requestHandler: async ({ page }) => {
        const mobileContent = await page.content();
    },
});

6. Debugging and Development Tools

Playwright includes superior debugging capabilities:

const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
    launchContext: {
        launchOptions: {
            headless: false,
            slowMo: 100, // Slow down operations by 100ms
        },
    },
    requestHandler: async ({ page }) => {
        // Generate trace for debugging
        await page.context().tracing.start({ screenshots: true, snapshots: true });

        // Your scraping logic here

        await page.context().tracing.stop({ path: 'trace.zip' });
    },
});

The trace file can be viewed in Playwright's trace viewer, providing a timeline of all actions, screenshots, and network activity.

Real-World Use Cases

Use Playwright When:

1. Cross-browser testing: You need to verify your scraping logic works across multiple browsers
2. Complex SPAs: Modern single-page applications with heavy JavaScript that benefit from auto-waiting
3. Mobile scraping: Extracting data from mobile-optimized sites
4. Safari-specific sites: Scraping sites that only work properly in WebKit
5. Advanced debugging: You need detailed tracing and debugging capabilities

Use Puppeteer When:

1. Chrome-only projects: Your target sites work fine with Chrome/Chromium
2. Performance-critical: Every millisecond counts in your scraping pipeline
3. Existing Puppeteer code: You're migrating existing Puppeteer scripts to Crawlee
4. Smaller deployments: Docker images need to be as small as possible
5. Established patterns: You're familiar with Puppeteer's authentication handling and other patterns

Installation and Setup

Installing Crawlee with Playwright:

npm install crawlee playwright
# or
yarn add crawlee playwright

Installing Crawlee with Puppeteer:

npm install crawlee puppeteer
# or
yarn add crawlee puppeteer

Migration Between Libraries

Crawlee makes it relatively easy to switch between libraries if needed. Here's the same scraper implemented with both:

PlaywrightCrawler:

import { PlaywrightCrawler, Dataset } from 'crawlee';

const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
    requestHandler: async ({ page, request, enqueueLinks }) => {
        await enqueueLinks({
            globs: ['https://example.com/products/*'],
        });

        const products = await page.$$eval('.product', elements =>
            elements.map(el => ({
                name: el.querySelector('.name')?.textContent,
                price: el.querySelector('.price')?.textContent,
            }))
        );

        await Dataset.pushData(products);
    },
});

await crawler.run(['https://example.com']);

PuppeteerCrawler (nearly identical):

import { PuppeteerCrawler, Dataset } from 'crawlee';

const crawler = new PuppeteerCrawler({
    requestHandler: async ({ page, request, enqueueLinks }) {
        await enqueueLinks({
            globs: ['https://example.com/products/*'],
        });

        const products = await page.$$eval('.product', elements =>
            elements.map(el => ({
                name: el.querySelector('.name')?.textContent,
                price: el.querySelector('.price')?.textContent,
            }))
        );

        await Dataset.pushData(products);
    },
});

await crawler.run(['https://example.com']);

Performance Optimization Tips

Regardless of which library you choose, apply these optimizations:

1. Disable unnecessary features:

const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({ // or PuppeteerCrawler
    launchContext: {
        launchOptions: {
            args: [
                '--disable-gpu',
                '--disable-dev-shm-usage',
                '--disable-setuid-sandbox',
                '--no-sandbox',
            ],
        },
    },
});

1. Block unnecessary resources:

requestHandler: async ({ page }) => {
    await page.route('**/*.{png,jpg,jpeg,gif,svg,css,woff,woff2}', route => route.abort());
}

1. Reuse browser contexts: Crawlee handles this automatically, but ensure you're not creating unnecessary new contexts.

Conclusion

Both Playwright and Puppeteer are excellent choices for Crawlee-based browser automation. Choose Playwright for maximum compatibility, modern features, and superior debugging tools. Choose Puppeteer if you're working exclusively with Chrome, need maximum performance, or have existing Puppeteer expertise.

For most new projects, Playwright is the recommended choice due to its modern API, auto-waiting capabilities, and cross-browser support. However, Puppeteer remains a solid option for Chrome-focused scraping tasks where performance is paramount.

The good news is that Crawlee abstracts away many of the low-level differences, making it relatively easy to switch between libraries if your requirements change. Start with Playwright for its robust features, and only switch to Puppeteer if you identify specific performance bottlenecks that require Chrome-specific optimizations.