Puppeteer Alternative: Skip the Headless Chrome Setup and Use an API Instead

Puppeteer Alternative: Skip the Headless Chrome Setup and Use an API Instead You know the problem. You need to take screenshots. So you reach for Puppeteer. Two hours later, you're debugging: Installation failures on your build server Out-of-memory errors in production Docker images that bloated to 800MB+ Browser crashes after 1,000 requests Chromium version conflicts with your OS Puppeteer is powerful. It's also exhausting to maintain. There's a better way: use an API instead. Why Puppeteer Hurts Puppeteer is a Node.js library that controls a real Chrome browser. That power comes with a price. 1. Dependency Hell Installing Puppeteer downloads Chromium (200MB+). On some systems, this fails: ARM architectures (Raspberry Pi, M1 Macs) have spotty support Corporate proxies block the download CI/CD runners time out waiting for Chromium Version conflicts with system libraries npm install puppeteer # [30 seconds later on a good day, hours on a bad one] # Could fail silently if Chromium downlo