# webrecorder/browsertrix-crawler

Run a high-fidelity browser-based web archiving crawler in a single Docker container

Repository: https://github.com/webrecorder/browsertrix-crawler
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/browsertrix-crawler
Homepage: https://crawler.docs.browsertrix.com
Language: TypeScript
License: AGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: crawler, crawling, wacz, warc, web-archiving, web-crawler, webrecorder
Last push: 2026-08-26T07:04:15+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 99/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 98, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2130, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 13, "gap_med": 9.0, "n_releases_24m": 55}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1120, forks 149 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:39.573985+00:00)

## What it is
Browsertrix Crawler is a standalone browser-based high-fidelity web crawling system that runs in a single Docker container. It uses Puppeteer to control Brave Browser windows and captures pages via the Chrome Devtools Protocol, producing WARC/WACZ web archives.

## Use cases
- crawl websites into WARC/WACZ archives
- run a high-fidelity browser-based web crawler in Docker
- archive dynamic JavaScript-heavy pages with screenshots and autoscroll
- crawl sites behind logins using saved browser profiles
- run QA analysis on replayed web crawls
- capture websites for offline access or digital preservation

## When to choose
- you need browser-rendered, high-fidelity captures of modern JavaScript-heavy sites
- you want standards-compliant WARC/WACZ output for web archiving
- you need a self-contained crawler that runs in a single Docker container
- you need login-based crawling, custom behaviors, or per-seed scoping rules

## When to avoid
- you only need lightweight raw HTML fetching without browser rendering
- you cannot run Docker containers in your environment
- you need a distributed crawling cluster rather than a single-container crawler

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: web-scraping, cli, developer-tools
- domain: crawlers, web-development, developer-tools
- platform: cli, windows
- tags: web-archiving, warc, wacz, puppeteer, crawler, headless-browser, docker, automation, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- webrecorder/browsertrix-crawler (main) score 99

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:39.573985+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:41:07.900177+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/webrecorder/browsertrix-crawler (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:39.573985+00:00, sha 0ba57ddc578a)
  - homepage: https://crawler.docs.browsertrix.com (fetched 2026-08-29T12:45:03.549886+00:00, sha 96d3865ddfa0)
  - site_page: https://crawler.docs.browsertrix.com/develop/docs (fetched 2026-08-29T12:45:03.558671+00:00, sha 1781ee02a743)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.