I’m looking for a Python library that can automate web browsing without showing a visible browser window. I need it to handle JavaScript properly and work with multiple threads at the same time. Most importantly, it has to run on Windows.
I already tested several options but ran into problems with each one:
- Mechanize and Twill - These don’t execute JavaScript at all
- Selenium - Shows the browser window which I don’t want
- Ghost - Doesn’t work on Windows machines
Does anyone know a good alternative that meets all these requirements? I’m working on a project that scrapes multiple sites simultaneously and really need something that can run invisibly while processing dynamic content.
Playwright’s perfect for this. I ditched Selenium after hitting the same frustrations and never went back. Runs headless by default, handles modern JS frameworks without breaking, and threading works great on Windows. The API’s way cleaner than Selenium - you can run multiple browser contexts at once, which makes concurrent scraping way more efficient. Just pip install it and you’re done. It bundles its own browser binaries so no driver headaches. Performance destroys headless Selenium, especially on JS-heavy sites.
selenium can run headless too - just add --headless to your Chrome/Firefox driver options. i’ve been using it for months on windows with threading and it works great on js-heavy sites. much easier than switching to a completely new library.
Try Pyppeteer - it’s the Python version of Puppeteer and runs headless on Windows by default. I switched from Selenium because it was too bloated, and Pyppeteer handles JavaScript perfectly. Threading’s solid too - I run 8-10 instances at once scraping different sites without problems. The chromium browser is way lighter than full Chrome, plus you get precise control over page interactions. Setup’s easy and it grabs the chromium binary automatically. Only catch is it’s Chrome-only, but that’s never been an issue since most sites work fine with it.