Headless Browser API: Skip the Infrastructure, Keep the Power

Headless Browser API: Skip the Infrastructure, Keep the Power A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface. It's how developers automate screenshots, generate PDFs, test pages, and run browser-based workflows. For years, the only option was self-hosting: install Chrome, manage its memory footprint, handle crashes, maintain Docker images, debug production incidents. There's a better way: a headless browser API. What Is a Headless Browser API? Instead of running Chrome yourself, you send HTTP requests to a managed service that has Chrome running. You describe what you want (take a screenshot, generate a PDF, click a button), and the API gives you the result. Self-hosted Puppeteer: const puppeteer = require ( ' puppeteer ' ); const browser = await puppeteer . launch (); // You now own a Chrome process — memory, CPU, crashes, all on you const page = await browser . newPage (); await page . goto ( ' https://example.com ' ); const screenshot = await page . screensho