Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

puppeteer VS jsdom

Compare puppeteer VS jsdom and see what are their differences

puppeteer logo puppeteer

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

jsdom logo jsdom

A JavaScript implementation of various web standards, for use with Node.js - jsdom/jsdom
  • puppeteer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-02
  • jsdom Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-29

puppeteer features and specs

  • Headless Browsing
    Puppeteer allows headless browsing, which means you can automate and test web applications without opening a browser user interface, resulting in faster execution and lower resource usage.
  • Full Browser Control
    Enables full control over Chrome or Chromium browsers, allowing for comprehensive browser testing and automation, including taking screenshots, generating PDFs, and capturing web pages.
  • Rich API
    Offers a rich set of APIs that can control browsers, manage cookies, intercept network requests, and handle various browser events, making it versatile for different use cases.
  • Active Community
    Highly active open-source community with regular updates and a plethora of plugins and extensions, providing robust support and continuous improvements.
  • Compatibility
    Supports the latest JavaScript features and works seamlessly with popular libraries and frameworks, providing a modern development experience.

Possible disadvantages of puppeteer

  • Restricted to Chrome/Chromium
    Puppeteer is primarily designed to work with Chrome and Chromium browsers, limiting cross-browser testing capabilities compared to other tools that support multiple browsers.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running multiple instances of headless browsers can be resource-intensive in terms of CPU and memory usage, potentially affecting performance on limited hardware.
  • Learning Curve
    Requires some learning curve for developers unfamiliar with browser automation or the Puppeteer API, making initial setup and usage potentially time-consuming.
  • Lacks JavaScript Redaction
    Unlike some other tools, Puppeteer does not natively support JavaScript error redaction, which means developers must manage error handling and debugging themselves.
  • Not Ideal for GUI Tests
    Since Puppeteer is headless by default, it might not be ideal for GUI end-to-end tests that require visual validation, requiring additional tools or configurations to enable full browser displays.

jsdom features and specs

  • Browser-like Environment
    jsdom provides a virtual representation of the browser's DOM environment, which allows developers to run scripts that usually require a browser.
  • Node.js Integration
    Being a Node.js library, jsdom can be easily integrated into server-side applications, enabling server-side DOM manipulation.
  • Testing Facilitation
    jsdom is commonly used in testing frameworks to simulate browser environments, allowing for headless testing of front-end code.
  • Standard-compliant
    jsdom strives to be compliant with web standards, which ensures consistent behavior with real browser environments.
  • Rich API
    It provides a rich set of APIs that mimic the browser DOM, making it comprehensive for developers needing browser-like functionality.

Possible disadvantages of jsdom

  • Performance Overhead
    jsdom can be slower than real browser environments because it runs in Node.js and not in a optimized browser engine.
  • Limited Browser Features
    While jsdom supports many DOM features, it might not support all the modern APIs and features available in the latest browsers.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running multiple jsdom instances can be resource-intensive, which may not be ideal for applications with large-scale DOM manipulation.
  • JavaScript Only
    Being specific to JavaScript and Node.js, jsdom is not suitable for developers working primarily in other programming environments.
  • Complexity in Setup
    Setting up and configuring jsdom for specific use cases can be more complex compared to some alternatives, requiring more effort from the developer.

puppeteer videos

Puppeteer - Video Review

More videos:

  • Review - GameSpot Reviews - Puppeteer
  • Review - CGR Undertow - PUPPETEER review for PlayStation 3

jsdom videos

JSDom & Enzyme: Different Test Styles for React Apps - Dan La Feir @ ReactNYC

More videos:

  • Review - Frontend Pairing - Discovering missing JSDOM APIs that didn’t allow to test Toast UI in jest

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to puppeteer and jsdom)
Automated Testing
82 82%
18% 18
Browser Testing
80 80%
20% 20
Browser Automation
100 100%
0% 0
Development
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare puppeteer and jsdom

puppeteer Reviews

Top Selenium Alternatives
Puppeteer offers more direct and tighter integration with Chrome or Chromium through the DevTools Protocol, unlike Selenium which abstracts the browser interaction through WebDriver, making it more versatile across different browsers but potentially less optimized for specific browser internals like those Puppeteer accesses in Chrome.
Source: bugbug.io
Best Data Scraping Tools
It is completely free. Puppeteer is well backed and supported by Google Chrome and hence replacing Selenium and PhantomJS. It automatically installs an efficient, compatible Chromium binary in its setup, therefore reducing the burden of keeping track on your browser.
Puppeteer vs Selenium
If you're looking for a better alternative, try Endtest. It has Puppeteer's speed, it supports Selenium's browsers AND it has all the features that they're missing.
Source: dev.to
Introduction to Headless Browser Testing
The Puppeteer API can be used to take screenshots, create PDFs, navigate pages, and fetch information from pages. We’ll write some example code to see Puppeteer in action.

jsdom Reviews

We have no reviews of jsdom yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, puppeteer should be more popular than jsdom. It has been mentiond 106 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.

puppeteer mentions (106)

  • Top React Testing Libraries in 2025
    Puppeteer is a headless browser automation tool built on Chromium. It allows developers to simulate user interactions, capture screenshots, and perform UI tests with a high degree of accuracy. Puppeteer is particularly useful for testing cross-browser compatibility and visual elements in React applications. Its robust API enables precise control over browser actions, making it a valuable tool for UI testing and... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • End-to-End SEO Testing with Playwright and Lighthouse
    Vitest is a next-generation JavaScript testing framework powered by Vite. It’s an excellent alternative to Jest, offering native TypeScript support, a fast setup, and solid performance. However, while it has an experimental headless browser, it’s not ideal for advanced scenarios like running SEO audits in CI/CD pipelines. Instead, we can pair Vitest with Pupetter, a more mature tool for headless browser automation. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • The Puppeteer Language Experiment
    This project tests how the browser language can be changed with Puppeteer. It implements multiple options to set the language of Chrome and checks each option against BrowserLeaks to see how it affected the JavaScript proeprties and HTTP headers available by the browser. For more information, see my article The Puppeteer Language Experiment on DEV.to. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Scrapy Vs. Crawlee
    In Crawlee, you can scrape JavaScript rendered websites using the built-in headless Puppeteer and Playwright browsers. It is important to note that, by default, Crawlee scrapes in headless mode. If you don't want headless, then just set headless: false. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Sometimes things simply don't work
    I am not in any way associated with the developers at puppeteer, but if you are looking for a way to contribute, they are open source. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
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jsdom mentions (32)

  • Proton: Pluggable SSR + DOM | Or How I implemented better SSR from scratch
    Nah, I took a third path - looking for alternatives to JSDOM... And I found it - happy-dom. - Source: dev.to / 21 days ago
  • The Future of Htmx
    We do have pseudo-browsers written in pure js that you can theoretically use: https://github.com/jsdom/jsdom but they're about as reliable as you can expect: it's difficult to keep up the pace with the big three (or two) on standards compliance, and they usually don't even try. So the only reliable solution is a headless Chromium, Firefox, and/or WebKit-based noname browser like the sibling says.... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Go-DOM - A headless browser written in Go.
    Internally the test starts an HTTP server. Because the this runs in the test process, mocking and stubbing of business logic is possible. The test use jsdom to communicate with the HTTP server; which both parse the HTML response into a DOM, but also executes client-side script in a sandbox which has been initialised, e.g. With window as the global scope.3. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Excluding Dependencies: Bundling for Node and the Browser
    For example, I needed to parse an HTML string into a DOM Document. The browser already supports the DOMParser class, which is, unfortunately, not available in Node.js. Here, I have to fall back on JSDOM, which also exposes this class. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Migrating from Jest to Vitest for your React Application
    If you happen to be using React Testing Library in your project, you'll need to keep the jsdom dev dependency installed. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing puppeteer and jsdom, you can also consider the following products

Selenium - Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that.

html2canvas - JavaScript library to take "screenshots" of webpages or parts of it, directly on the...

Playwright - Playwright is automation software for Chromium, Firefox, Webkit using the Node.js library having a single API in place.

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.

Apify - Apify is a web scraping and automation platform that can turn any website into an API.

RasterizeHTML.js - Renders HTML into the browser's canvas.