Puppeteer vs. Selenium?

Puppeteer is a Node.js library developed by the Google Chrome team. It focuses on directly controlling the Chromium browser through the DevTools protocol, providing precise page manipulation and performance analysis capabilities. Selenium, on the other hand, is a cross-platform, multi-language automated testing framework that is compatible with major browsers such as Firefox and Safari through the WebDriver protocol, emphasizing ecosystem scalability and enterprise-level testing needs.

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Five core differences between Puppeteer and Selenium

Architecture design and protocol support

Puppeteer:

Based on the Chromium kernel and the DevTools protocol, it communicates directly with the browser without the need for an intermediate driver.

It only supports Chrome/Chromium-based browsers, but allows deep access to the browser's internal state (such as memory usage and network request details).

Selenium:

It relies on the WebDriver protocol and requires the installation of separate drivers (such as geckodriver, chromedriver) for different browsers.

It supports multiple browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc.), but the protocol abstraction layer may increase communication latency.

Execution efficiency and resource consumption

Puppeteer:

Without the WebDriver middleware layer, the operation response speed is 20%-40% faster than Selenium.

The single-threaded model has low memory usage (approximately 200MB/instance), making it suitable for high-concurrency, lightweight tasks.

Selenium:

WebDriver protocol parsing incurs additional overhead, and performance degradation is significant in complex scenarios.

Multi-browser compatibility requires more system resources, and the memory consumption of a single instance can reach more than 500MB.

Features and API Design

Puppeteer:

It includes advanced features such as screenshot generation, PDF export, and network request interception.

It supports fine-grained control such as simulating mobile devices, geolocation, and CPU speed limiting.

Selenium:

Advanced features can be extended by relying on third-party libraries (such as Selenium-Wire).

It offers richer element positioning strategies (XPath, CSS Selector, etc.), making it suitable for testing complex page interactions.

Ecology and Expansion

Puppeteer:

There are relatively few community plugins, but the official team continues to update the Chromium-compatible version.

Distributed task management can be achieved through libraries such as Puppeteer Cluster.

Selenium:

It has a mature ecosystem of tools such as Selenium Grid (distributed testing) and Appium (mobile testing).

It supports bindings for multiple languages such as Java, Python, and C#, making it easy to integrate with enterprise CI/CD systems.

Anti-detection and stealth

Puppeteer:

By default, the navigator.webdriver property is exposed, making it easy for anti-scraping systems to detect.

The fingerprint characteristics need to be modified through a plugin (such as puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth).

Selenium:

Early versions exhibited obvious automation features, but modern drivers can disable the automation flag via parameters.

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Tool Selection Decision Framework: Tool Recommendations in Four Scenarios

High-frequency data collection using a single browser

Recommended tool: Puppeteer

Advantages:

Directly calling the Chromium API results in faster execution and higher resource efficiency.

Built-in network request interception function can accurately capture API data.

PYPROXY adaptation solution: Static ISP proxy locks in low-latency IPs to ensure data collection stability.

Cross-browser compatibility testing

Recommended tool: Selenium

Advantages:

The unified API supports cross-browser rendering difference verification.

Integrating Selenium Grid allows for parallel testing across different browser environments.

Large-scale distributed crawlers

Hybrid solution: Puppeteer + Selenium Grid

Implementation strategy:

Use Puppeteer to handle core data extraction tasks.

Tasks are scheduled to multiple nodes using Selenium Grid, and IP pool rotation is achieved using PYPROXY dynamic proxy.

Enterprise-level automated test pipeline

Recommended tool: Selenium

Advantages:

Seamlessly integrates with tools such as Jenkins and GitLab CI.

It supports generating JUnit format test reports, which comply with DevOps specifications.

Advanced Optimization: Three Practices to Improve Tool Performance

Reduce browser instance creation overhead

Puppeteer: Reuse BrowserContext instead of frequently launching a new browser.

Selenium: Uses RemoteWebDriver to connect to a persistent browser process.

Asynchronous operations and timeout control

Puppeteer: Processes multiple page operations in parallel using Promise.all.

Selenium: Explicit wait (WebDriverWait) replaces fixed sleep, improving script robustness.

Proxy IP Management and Anti-Blocking Strategies

General solution:

Assign a unique proxy IP to each browser instance (such as PYPROXY dynamic ISP proxy).

Monitor HTTP error codes (403/429) and trigger automatic IP switching logic.

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