Web Unblocker vs. Browser as a service for scraping

Features and differences between web unblockers and browsers as a service

More than five years ago, you could scrape the web (at a significant scale) with just cURL and a bunch of different IPs. Today, the complexity of websites and the availability of advanced protection from bots make our job harder every month.

In addition, companies with a budget never seen before in the industry are hammering the web with their crawlers (it happened for Tripleganger, IfixIT, and GameUI Database), pushing website owners to adopt anti-bot solutions or putting their websites behind logins or paywalls.

This means that our scrapes must be capable of including specialized tools and techniques to avoid being detected, and, in some cases, we want to delegate this hassle to commercial solutions. Two of the most powerful tools used for this scope are web unblockers and browser-as-a-service platforms.

Web unblockers and BaaS (Browser-as-a-Service) have become key tools in modern scrapers’ toolkits because they abstract away much of the cat-and-mouse game of getting past anti-scraping barriers. Instead of building a proxy rotation system, the interaction logic with the target website, writing custom headless browser tweaks, and solving CAPTCHAs on your own, you can leverage these services to handle those challenges automatically.

In this post, we’ll explain what each of these solutions entails, compare their features and use cases, and help you understand when to use one versus the other in your data extraction projects.

---

Before proceeding, let me thank NetNut, the platinum partner of the month. They have prepared a juicy offer for you: up to 1 TB of web unblocker for free.

---

What is a Web Unblocker?

A Web Unblocker is essentially an all-in-one proxy-based solution designed to “unlock” websites that are hard to scrape. It goes beyond a basic proxy by adding intelligent anti-block mechanisms on top of IP rotation. In practical terms, a web unblocker is an API or proxy endpoint that you route your requests through; behind the scenes, it will do whatever is necessary to fetch the target webpage without getting blocked. This means the service will rotate through pools of IP addresses (often residential or mobile IPs), manage request headers and cookies, handle challenges like CAPTCHAs, and even employ headless browsers if needed – all automatically. In short, it’s a “super proxy” that manages the entire unblocking process for you.

Core features of web unblockers typically include:

• Automatic IP rotation: Your requests are routed through a large network of IPs (residential, mobile, etc.) that change as needed to avoid bans. Many unblockers perform automatic retries with new IPs if a request fails. This ensures that even if one IP gets flagged, the next attempt from a different address can succeed. Geo-targeting is usually supported, so you can scrape content from different countries or cities.

• CAPTCHA solving: When faced with CAPTCHAs, the service will solve them for you or use AI/third-party solvers so that you don’t have to deal with interruptions. This includes handling reCAPTCHA challenges, image puzzles, slider verifications, etc., allowing scraping to continue seamlessly.

• Header and fingerprint management: Web unblockers automatically tweak request headers, cookies, and other identifying parameters to mimic real browsers and human behavior. They may randomize or “fingerprint” the client in a way that appears organic, preventing anti-bot scripts from recognizing a bot pattern. Everything from User-Agent strings to TLS fingerprints might be adjusted behind the scenes.

• Optional browser automation: Some unblocker services can invoke a headless browser for you when simple requests aren’t enough. For example, if a site heavily relies on JavaScript to display content, the unblocker might detect this and fetch the page using a real browser engine, then return the fully rendered HTML to you. This is still transparent – you just get the final HTML or data without managing a browser yourself.

• Ease of integration: You typically use a web unblocker by pointing your scraper’s proxy setting to the unblocker’s endpoint or using their API URL. From the developer’s perspective, it’s often just one line of configuration to activate the unblocked, just like you would do with a proxy. The goal is to require minimal code changes: you parse the HTML/JSON response as usual, and the unblocker handles the dirty work of getting that response.

---

Thanks to the gold partners of the month: Smartproxy, IPRoyal, Oxylabs, Massive, Rayobyte, Scrapeless, SOAX and ScraperAPI. They’re offering great deals to the community. Have a look yourself.

---

Web unblockers on the market

With the growth of the demand for web unblocker solutions, more companies have created their own versions. Let’s briefly list the most well-known ones, starting with our partners. This is not a complete list of web unblockers available and, if you want to know which one is the best performing, there will be soon a benchmark between them on this blog

• NetNut Website Unblocker: starting from 4.80 USD per GB

• Smartproxy Site Unblocker: starting from 10 USD per GB or 1.6 USD for 1000 requests

• Oxylabs Web Unblocker: starting from 7.5 USD per GB

• Scrapeless Universal API: starting from 0.2 USD per 1000 requests

• Rayobyte Web Unblocker: starting from 5 USD per GB

• SOAX Web Unblocker: starting from 4 USD

• ScraperAPI: starting from 2.4 USD per 1000 heavily protected website URLs

• Bright Data Web Unlocker: starting from 1.05USD for 1000 URLs

• Zenrows Universal Scraper: price not disclosed

• ScrapingBee: starting from 0.375 for 1000 requests

• Infatica web scraper: price not disclosed

• Nimble web API: starting from 1.4 USD per 1000 requests

• Zyte API: dynamic pricing, depending on the difficulty of the website

The key idea across all of them is outsourcing the anti-block strategy – you don’t need to swap proxies or solve puzzles constantly; the unblocker delivers the target content as if you were a normal user. This is especially useful for high-volume scraping of sites that have anti-scraping measures but don’t necessarily require full browser automation on your end. If your use case is, say, scraping pricing data from an e-commerce site or gathering search results, and you just want the HTML without getting banned, a web unblocker can save you a ton of headaches by handling the arms race of scraping defense evasion.

---

---

What is a Browser-as-a-Service?

A Browser-as-a-Service (BaaS) provides actual web browser instances in the cloud that you can use for automation. In simpler terms, it’s a managed service where you can run a real browser (like Chrome or Firefox) via an API or SDK, without hosting the browser yourself. These cloud browsers come with all the features of a regular browser – they load JavaScript, render HTML/CSS, maintain cookies, etc. – but are augmented with stealth and anti-detection measures for scraping. Essentially, BaaS gives you the power of a headless browser without the typical overhead (managing infrastructure, dealing with browser crashes, and constantly tweaking setups to avoid detection).

Where a Web Unblocker is like a smart proxy that returns HTML, a BaaS actually runs the page in a browser environment on a remote server. You can think of it as “renting” a browser that lives in the cloud. You send it commands (or simply a URL with some parameters), and it will do things like navigate to the page, wait for the content to load, execute any JavaScript on the page, and even simulate user actions if needed. Depending on the service capabilities, the result can be returned to you as the page’s HTML content, a screenshot, or structured data. Depending on the “stealth degree” of the browser, each solution might be more or less effective against anti-bot protections. Just like web unblockers, to be effective against heavily protected websites, they need to be able to provide the same features like CAPTCHA solving, IP rotation, fingerprint spoofing, and so on. Since they’re using a browser, they also need to mask their browser fingerprint and all those settings that could trigger a red flag to anti-bot solutions, so the “defending surface” they need to protect is way larger than a simple API. The advantage of running a real browser is that you can interact with a web page just like you would do using a browser automation tool, so you can click buttons, fill out forms, and see the content that is available only after Javascript is rendered.

---

---

I’ve already created a list of BaaS in this dedicated article, but let me share again the major projects available at the moment. Again, this is not a complete list, so feel free to write me if someone is missing.

• Bright Data Scraping Browser: This managed browser solution leverages Bright Data's experience in unblocking web extractions. It’s paid per GB, starting at 8.4 USD and lowering for higher volumes. I just saw that there’s an active promotion on the website where Bright Data doubles the money you put on your account, so it seems like a good day to start using it.

• Browserbase: stealth browser for your automation with plans starting from 39 USD per month with three concurrent browsers and 2 GB of proxies included.

• Browserless: start from free with no concurrency to 500 USD per month for 50 concurrent executions. It handles CAPTCHA solving and other anti-detect measures for bypassing anti-bot solutions.

• Browser Scrape: in this case, the pricing is different, you pay per GB of traffic, starting from 10 USD, CAPTCHA solving and unblocking capabilities included.

• Browser Use: starts from free for the self-hosted solution to 30 USD per month for the hosted version, but I don’t see on the website any anti-detect feature.

• Hyperbrowser: You can start free with five concurrent browsers and pay 100 USD per month for 100 concurrent executions. In this case, stealth mode and CAPTCHA solving are included.

• Lightpanda: You can start by self-hosting the open-source solution and asking for an API Key for the managed one. This product's unique selling point is its efficiency and speed rather than stealth mode. As Katie mentioned in a previous post, they created a new browser designed for building AI agents rather than for humans.

• Rebrowser: starting from 49 USD per month, with five persistent profiles, one concurrent browser session, and three concurrent scraper requests.

Let me add to this list Zyte API, which can also use a browser in the background, and scrapers can interact with it.

---

---

Comparison Between the Two Solutions

Both web unblockers and browser-as-a-service platforms aim to accomplish the same end goal: access data from websites without getting blocked. However, they go about it in different ways, and each has its strengths and trade-offs. Let’s break down the comparison in terms of the pros and cons for each.

Pros of Web Unblockers:

• Easy integration: Very simple to use – you can usually integrate an unblocker by just changing your proxy configuration or API endpoint. There’s no need to write browser automation scripts; you make HTTP requests as normal. This makes it easy to plug into existing scrapers (e.g., switching a Scrapy spider to use an unblocker API is straightforward).

• High speed and concurrency: Because it’s essentially handling things at the network request level, a web unblocker can handle many requests in parallel (often dozens or more per second) without the heavy overhead of launching browsers each time. If you need to scrape thousands of pages quickly, this approach is more efficient.

• Cost-efficient for large volumes: Pricing for unblockers is often based on data transferred or a number of requests, which for simple pages can be quite cheap compared to running a full browser. If you’re scraping a lightweight page or APIs, you’re not paying for a whole browser environment to spin up. Also, some providers only charge for successful requests​, so you don’t pay for failures or retries.

• No maintenance: You don’t need to maintain a proxy pool, a headless browser cluster, or anti-bot scripts. The service abstracts that away. This reduces the dev and DevOps effort and lets you focus on parsing the data and building your application.

Cons of Web Unblockers:

• Limited by HTTP request scope: Unblockers work best for straightforward requests – fetch a URL and get the content. If your task requires complex interaction (clicking buttons, filling forms, navigating through multiple pages in sequence), a pure unblocker API might struggle. They’re not made for multi-step stateful sessions (though you can often maintain sessions via cookies if needed, but it’s not as natural as using a real browser).

• May not handle 100% of scenarios: Some ultra-sophisticated anti-bot systems might still detect patterns or something unusual if the unblocker’s strategies lag behind. Some antibots count the events happening on a page, like clicks and scrolls, and these can’t be created with an unblocker.

• Potential cost for heavy pages: Pricing by bandwidth means if you have to scrape pages that are very heavy (tons of HTML or large images that can’t be avoided), the cost could spike. Some unblockers make you pay per request, but in some cases, a headless browser you control could be cheaper.

Pros of Browsers-as-a-Service:

• Handles any web complexity: Because it’s an actual browser, virtually nothing on the web is off-limits. Client-side rendering, complex user interactions, infinite scroll, single-page applications – all of that is achievable. If a human with a browser can access the data, a BaaS solution can be scripted to do the same. This makes it the go-to for sites that are impossible to scrape with simple requests.

• High success rates through realism: A cloud browser is inherently harder to detect than a bot because it is a real browser. Especially with anti-detect customizations, it can look virtually indistinguishable from a normal user’s browser. This means you can achieve extremely high success rates on sites with aggressive anti-scraping — the service takes care of making the automation stealthy. They often keep up with the latest fingerprinting tricks that sites use.

• Allows interactive workflows: Need to log in with a username/password, navigate through a couple of pages, add some item to a cart, then scrape something? That’s feasible with a browser-based approach. You have the flexibility to script arbitrary sequences of actions. This opens up use cases beyond simple data extraction, like testing how a website behaves, performing actions on behalf of a user, or scraping data behind authenticated sessions.

• Persistent sessions and state: Many BaaS platforms let you maintain a session state. You can reuse cookies or even keep a browser instance running to maintain a logged-in state or cookies between requests. This is useful for scraping sites that heavily personalize or require login.

• Rich output options and debugging: With a real browser, you can do things like take screenshots of the page, PDF printouts, or even extract HAR files. This can aid debugging and also provide additional insights (like visual confirmation of what was scraped). Some services offer web-based dashboards to watch the browser or debug JavaScript. This can make development and error resolution easier – you can visually see if a selector is wrong or a page element didn’t load.

Cons of Browsers-as-a-Service:

• Slower and more resource-intensive: Spinning up a browser and loading a full page is inevitably slower than just doing an HTTP GET. Even with optimizations, you might be looking at a few seconds per page (depending on the site) as the browser loads resources and runs scripts. For large-scale scraping where each second counts, this can be a bottleneck. It’s also more CPU/memory heavy – each browser instance consumes far more resources than a simple HTTP client, which is why concurrency is limited.

• Higher cost per request: The added capabilities come at a price. BaaS is often charged per browser hour or per request, and those costs tend to be higher than proxy-based solutions for the same number of pages. For example, running 1,000 browser sessions might cost more than 1,000 requests through an unblocker, especially if each page is quick. Providers mitigate this by allowing you to do a lot within one session, but if you just need single-page fetches, you’re paying for the whole browser context each time.

• Concurrency limits: While you can scale BaaS, it’s usually under more constrained limits. A typical plan might allow, say, 5 or 10 concurrent browsers or maybe 50 on a higher plan. You can’t easily run, for instance, 500 browser instances simultaneously unless you have an enterprise setup (which gets costly). In contrast, web unblockers can handle hundreds of parallel requests if you have the bandwidth and IP pool. This means if you need to scrape millions of pages quickly, a pure browser approach might require significant time or investment to parallelize.

• The complexity of scripting: Using a browser service often means you need to write automation scripts (in Puppeteer, Selenium, Playwright, etc., or use the provider’s specific API). This is inherently more complex than a simple HTTP GET for a URL. There is more that can go wrong – your script has to wait for elements, handle pop-ups or errors on the page, etc. Some providers abstract this with easier APIs, but generally, there’s a learning curve. It also means your codebase for scraping might be heavier and require more maintenance (similar to writing end-to-end tests).

• Resource and stability issues: Even if someone else is managing the browsers, you might still face issues like pages timing out, browsers crashing on heavy pages, or memory leaks if you keep them open too long. BaaS platforms do a lot to keep things stable (auto-restart browsers and so on), but when scraping at scale with browsers, you often need robust error handling and retry logic in your code. It’s not completely “set and forget” – you have to design your scraping flow to account for occasional hiccups when automating a real browser.

---

---

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to choosing between a web unblocker and a browser-as-a-service – the best choice truly depends on your specific project needs. If your goal is to scrape at scale, as fast and cost-effectively as possible, and the target data can be fetched with HTTP requests, a web unblocker is usually the first tool to reach for. It simplifies your stack and handles the common blocking tactics so you can gather lots of data with minimal fuss. On the other hand, if you’re dealing with advanced anti-bot barriers or heavily interactive websites, a browser-as-a-service will be your savior by mimicking real browsing down to the last detail and tricking even the shrewdest of detection systems.

Many organizations find that a hybrid approach yields the best results – using unblockers for the easy stuff and resorting to cloud browsers for the hardest parts. Factors like budget, volume, and timeframe play a big role, too. Web unblockers tend to be cheaper when scraping millions of pages, whereas BaaS might be justified for smaller volumes or higher-value targets where completeness is critical. It’s also about development time: implementing a browser script is more involved, so if a quick fix is needed, an unblocker API call might do the job faster.