Dev tools · September 27, 2024
Open-source Docker image to run Chrome browsers in your cloud
If you’ve ever worked with web scraping or automation using Puppeteer or Playwright, you know that running Chrome can be tricky. While headless mode (Chrome with no display) often works, some page elements only render in headed mode, forcing you to run Chrome with a display. This usually means bloating your Dockerfile with complex dependencies like xvfb. Updating your server or Lambda container to handle this can increase costs and lead to dependency hell. The Solution: I’ve built a streamlined solution—a Docker image that runs Chrome with all its necessary dependencies and exposes a FastAPI…
Open-source Docker image to run Chrome browsers in your cloud launched on September 27, 2024 with 20 votes, #778 of 5,281 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 2 years on.
In plain words
This open-source Docker image simplifies running Chrome browsers in cloud environments for web scraping and automation tasks. It packages Chrome with all necessary dependencies and exposes a FastAPI interface with a WebSocket endpoint, allowing developers using Puppeteer or Playwright to connect remotely without managing complex display dependencies like xvfb. The solution reduces Docker bloat, container costs, and dependency management complexity for serverless and containerized deployments.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Run chrome in your cloud. Connect to it from Playwright or Puppeteer using CDP. This will spin up the container and expose a websocket endpoint ws://localhost:8000/ws you connect to from Playwright. For example: Connecting to the websocket endpoint starts up a session of chrome in headful mode inside the container. You can have multiple concurrent connections which correspond to separate browser sessions. Finic is open source and Apache 2.0 licensed: https://github.com/finic-ai/finicfrom hub.docker.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
If you’ve ever worked with web scraping or automation using Puppeteer or Playwright, you know that running Chrome can be tricky. While headless mode (Chrome with no display) often works, some page elements only render in headed mode, forcing you to run Chrome with a display. This usually means bloating your…
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