Automated captcha solving for headless browsing

Other Questions Headless Browser
1

Hey everyone! I’m working on a project that involves automated web scraping. I’ve been using a headless browser to crawl websites, but I’ve hit a snag with captchas. After a few page loads, the sites start throwing captchas at me.

I’m wondering if anyone has experience combining OCR (optical character recognition) with headless browsing to tackle this issue? Is it even possible? Right now I’m using Puppeteer, but I’m open to other tools if they’d work better for this task.

Here’s a quick example of what I’ve tried so far:

const browser = await puppeteer.launch({ headless: true });
const page = await browser.newPage();

for (let i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  await page.screenshot({ path: `screenshot_${i}.png` });
}

await browser.close();

This works fine until the captcha shows up. Any ideas on how to add OCR to this setup? Thanks in advance for your help!

2

I’ve encountered similar issues with CAPTCHA challenges during automated scraping. In my experience, OCR works for basic, text-based CAPTCHAs, but it quickly falls short when facing more robust systems like reCAPTCHA. I’ve had success with tools that integrate CAPTCHA solving services, such as using 2Captcha with the puppeteer-extra-plugin-recaptcha. This approach helps in bypassing the challenge but may introduce additional delay and cost. It’s also effective to use anti-detection plugins like puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth to reduce the rate of CAPTCHA triggers. Always ensure you adhere to website terms of service when scraping.

3

hey claire, ive run into similar issues. have u tried using puppeteer-extra with the recaptcha plugin? it can integrate with 2captcha to solve em automatically. heres a quick example:

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-extra')
const RecaptchaPlugin = require('puppeteer-extra-plugin-recaptcha')

puppeteer.use(RecaptchaPlugin({
  provider: { id: '2captcha', token: 'YOUR_API_KEY' }
}))

// rest of ur code here

hope this helps!

4

As someone who’s spent a fair amount of time wrestling with CAPTCHAs in automated scraping, I can tell you it’s definitely a tricky problem. In my experience, OCR can work for simple text-based CAPTCHAs, but it’s often not enough for more sophisticated systems like reCAPTCHA.

One approach that’s worked well for me is using a CAPTCHA solving service like 2Captcha in combination with Puppeteer. You can integrate this using the puppeteer-extra-plugin-recaptcha plugin. It’s not perfect, but it’s gotten me past many CAPTCHA roadblocks.

Another tip: try to make your scraper behave more like a human user. Randomize your request intervals, use realistic user agents, and consider using a proxy rotation service. This can help you avoid triggering CAPTCHAs in the first place.

Just remember to always respect the website’s terms of service and rate limits. Happy scraping!