Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Browserless VS html2canvas

Compare Browserless VS html2canvas and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Browserless logo Browserless

Headless browser automation built for developers.

html2canvas logo html2canvas

JavaScript library to take "screenshots" of webpages or parts of it, directly on the...
  • Browserless Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-16
  • html2canvas Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-09-15

Browserless features and specs

  • Scalability
    Browserless allows for scalable execution of browser automation scripts. It can handle multiple browser instances concurrently, which is beneficial for businesses needing to run numerous automated tasks in parallel.
  • Ease of Use
    The platform provides an API that simplifies the process of integrating browser automation into existing workflows. It's designed to be user-friendly even for those with limited experience in browser automation.
  • Reduced Infrastructure Overhead
    By using Browserless, businesses can offload the infrastructure burden of maintaining browser automation environments, reducing costs associated with hardware and maintenance.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    Browserless offers extensive documentation, making it easier for users to understand and utilize the platform efficiently, facilitating quicker onboarding and troubleshooting.
  • Security
    The platform includes security features such as encrypted connections and isolation of browser instances, providing a secure environment for executing tasks.

Possible disadvantages of Browserless

  • Cost
    While reducing infrastructure costs, Browserless introduces a subscription cost. For some small businesses or individual users, this cost might be prohibitive compared to running automation tasks on local machines.
  • Dependency on External Service
    Relying on a third-party service means any downtime or service issues with Browserless can directly impact your automation processes.
  • Limited Control
    Users might have limited control over specific browser settings and configurations as opposed to managing their own browser instances.
  • Learning Curve for APIs
    While the API is designed to be user-friendly, there is still a learning curve associated with understanding and effectively implementing it within one’s existing systems.
  • Potential Latency
    Since Browserless runs in the cloud, there may be latency issues depending on the user's network connection and proximity to the nearest service data center.

html2canvas features and specs

  • Client-Side Rendering
    html2canvas is a client-side library that can capture screenshots of web pages without requiring server-side processing, making it easy to integrate into web applications.
  • Open-Source
    Being open-source, developers have access to the source code, allowing them to modify and contribute to the project, ensuring transparency and community-driven improvements.
  • Ease of Use
    It provides a straightforward API, making it accessible for developers to quickly implement and use the library to capture screenshots.
  • Cross-Browser Support
    The library aims to support multiple browsers, enhancing its usability across different user platforms.

Possible disadvantages of html2canvas

  • Rendering Limitations
    html2canvas may not fully support all CSS properties or web elements, leading to inaccurate or incomplete screenshots in some cases.
  • Performance Overheads
    As a JavaScript library running in the browser, it may lead to increased CPU and memory usage, especially for large or complex web pages.
  • Security Concerns
    Rendering content on the client side may expose sensitive information within the page during the rendering process, posing security risks if not handled carefully.
  • Lack of Dynamic Content Handling
    Dynamic content like videos, animations, or elements with JavaScript-based changes during rendering might not be accurately captured.

Browserless videos

What is browserless?

html2canvas videos

No html2canvas videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Browserless and html2canvas)
Web Scraping
100 100%
0% 0
Browser Testing
0 0%
100% 100
Browser Automation
100 100%
0% 0
Development
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Browserless and html2canvas. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, html2canvas should be more popular than Browserless. It has been mentiond 17 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Browserless mentions (8)

  • Self-hosted, simple web browser service – send URL, get screenshots
    If you’re worried about the security risks, edge cases, maintenance pain and scaling challenges of self hosting there are various solid hosted alternatives: - https://browserless.io - low level browser control - https://scrapingbee.com - scraping specialists - https://urlbox.com - screenshot specialists* They’re all profitable and have been around for years so you can depend on the businesses and the tech. *... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Web Crawler and Scraper for AI
    Very cool - and impressive speed! How does it compare with headless browser services like https://browserless.io or https://browserbase.com ? - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Show HN: Finic – open-source platform for building browser automations
    Https://browserless.io might be what you’re looking for. Open source although they do have a SaaS option. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • browserless Alternatives?
    Hello, I am building a scraper and I want to know if anyone knows an alternative to browserless.io? Source: almost 2 years ago
  • (Free) Open-source PDF Generation/Export
    Otherwise, any pdf to hml chromium based solution hosted via docker, like gotenberg](https://github.com/gotenberg/gotenberg) or browserless.io(which is free if you create open source). Generating pdfs from html directly in .NET was always a pain. Wkhtml (and wrappers that use it) uses WebKit and comes with a load of issues of its own, similar to running and styling anything in Safari. Using chromium based engine... Source: about 2 years ago
View more

html2canvas mentions (17)

  • Gist Share
    So I went to trusty html2canvas It works really well with some caveats; which I hit. It does not render SVG backgrounds well, or complicated CSS3 gradients. To hack this I basically append a png background if screenshot is occurring, this happens only if the og:image hasn't been created/uploaded before. - Source: dev.to / about 2 hours ago
  • Build a Finance Tracker with Next.js, Strapi, and Chartjs: Part 3
    We'll use three libraries - html-to-pdfmake, pdfmake and html2canvas for the printing functionality. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Build a Finance Tracker with Next.js, Strapi, and Chartjs: Part 1
    Html2canvas to take screenshots of the webpage directly on the browser. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • This weird IFRAME thing wasted my 2 days (and counting...)
    My new approach: Whenever user will open the preview and it would load completely, I will take a screenshot programatically using html2canvas library and later store in the db. I wrote code and it worked as I thought except for one part. Everything was fine in the screenshot, except the preview part. IT WAS BLANK, LIKE COMPLETELY BLANK. Oh my god! How is this possible? What on earth is wrong that every solution I... - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • A Firefox-Only Minimap
    That's slightly harder, but still possible by first rendering the HTML onto a canvas. Example here: http://html2canvas.hertzen.com/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Browserless and html2canvas, you can also consider the following products

Rebrowser - Discover Rebrowser - the next-gen virtual browser that outperform headless and antidetect solutions. Enjoy real device fingerprints, mobile support, and AI-powered CAPTCHA solving for seamless browsing.

Html Screen Capture JS - Html Screen Capture JS is an open-source, lightweight, and fully customizable javascript/typescript library that captures a complete layout or a few areas of a layout and saves it in a mini HTML file for the user.

browserling - Live interactive cross-browser testing from your browser.

Cypress.io - Slow, difficult and unreliable testing for anything that runs in a browser. Install Cypress in seconds and take the pain out of front-end testing.

puppeteer - Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium...

DOM to Image - JavaScript library to generate an image from a DOM node using HTML5 canvas.