What is a Headless Browser?

A headless browser is a web browser that runs without a graphical user interface (GUI) and is controlled programmatically. Compared to traditional browsers, they start faster and use less CPU and RAM, making them suitable for running on servers and at scale. Key use cases include automated testing, web scraping dynamic JavaScript-heavy websites, powering AI agents, and generating screenshots or PDFs. Despite their advantages, headless browsers have limitations, including being difficult to scale, more susceptible to anti-bot detection systems, and harder to debug.