Stealth Web Scraper

Scrape any website — even those protected by Cloudflare, Turnstile CAPTCHAs, and other anti-bot systems. Built-in proxy rotation, browser fingerprint protection, and human behavior simulation. No extra setup needed.

Why this scraper?

Most web scrapers fail on protected websites. Cloudflare alone protects 20% of all websites (41M+ sites). This Actor uses a real browser engine with anti-detection technology to bypass these protections automatically.

Protection Level	Examples	Success Rate
No protection	Wikipedia, static sites	100%
Basic (JS challenge)	Many e-commerce sites	100%
Medium (Cloudflare standard)	Fiverr, job boards	86-100%
Strong (CF Turnstile CAPTCHA)	Clutch, Upwork	100%

Features

• Anti-bot bypass — Handles Cloudflare challenges, Turnstile CAPTCHAs, and browser fingerprint detection automatically
• Residential proxy rotation — Built-in proxy pool with intelligent rotation, cooldown, and blacklist management
• Browser fingerprint masking — Uses Patchright (undetectable Playwright fork) with stealth configuration
• Human behavior simulation — Random delays, mouse movements, and page interaction patterns
• CSS selector extraction — Optionally extract specific data fields using CSS selectors
• Flexible output — Get full HTML, plain text, or both for each page
• Concurrent scraping — Process up to 5 pages in parallel
• Automatic retries — 3 retry attempts per URL with proxy rotation on failure

How it works

1. Takes your list of URLs
2. Opens each URL in an undetectable browser with a rotating residential proxy
3. Detects and resolves any anti-bot challenges (Cloudflare, Turnstile, etc.)
4. Simulates human browsing behavior
5. Extracts and returns the page content

No API keys, no proxy configuration, no browser setup — it just works.

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
urls	array	Yes	List of URLs to scrape
extractSelectors	object	No	CSS selectors to extract specific fields (e.g. {"title": "h1", "price": ".price"})
outputFormat	string	No	html, text, or both (default: both)
waitForSelector	string	No	CSS selector to wait for before extracting (for JS-rendered pages)
maxConcurrency	integer	No	Parallel pages (1-5, default: 1)
pageTimeout	integer	No	Page load timeout in seconds (30-300, default: 90)

Output Fields

Field	Type	Description
url	string	The scraped URL
statusCode	integer	HTTP status code (200 = success)
blocked	boolean	Whether anti-bot protection blocked the request
title	string	Page title
html	string	Full page HTML (if outputFormat includes html)
text	string	Plain text content (if outputFormat includes text)
extracted	object	Extracted fields (if extractSelectors provided)
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of when the page was scraped

Example: Basic scraping

Input:

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.clutch.co/it-services",
    "https://www.fiverr.com/categories/programming-tech"
  ],
  "outputFormat": "text"
}

Output:

{
  "url": "https://www.clutch.co/it-services",
  "statusCode": 200,
  "blocked": false,
  "title": "Top IT Services Companies - 2026 Reviews | Clutch.co",
  "text": "Top IT Services Companies...",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-02T10:30:00.000Z"
}

Example: Extract specific fields

Input:

{
  "urls": ["https://example-shop.com/product/123"],
  "extractSelectors": {
    "productName": "h1.product-title",
    "price": ".price-current",
    "description": ".product-description",
    "reviews": ".review-text"
  },
  "outputFormat": "text"
}

Output:

{
  "url": "https://example-shop.com/product/123",
  "statusCode": 200,
  "blocked": false,
  "title": "Product Name - Example Shop",
  "text": "...",
  "extracted": {
    "productName": "Wireless Headphones Pro",
    "price": "$79.99",
    "description": "Premium noise-cancelling...",
    "reviews": ["Great sound quality!", "Best purchase ever"]
  },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-02T10:30:00.000Z"
}

Use Cases

• Price monitoring — Track product prices on e-commerce sites with anti-bot protection
• Lead generation — Scrape business directories and company listings
• Market research — Collect data from competitor websites
• Content aggregation — Gather articles, reviews, or listings from multiple sources
• SEO monitoring — Check search result pages and competitor content
• Real estate data — Scrape property listings from protected platforms
• Job market analysis — Collect job postings from protected job boards

Performance

• ~8-12 seconds per page (with anti-bot handling)
• ~5-7 seconds per page (unprotected sites)
• Concurrent mode: up to 5x faster with maxConcurrency setting
• 50 pages: ~5-10 minutes
• 200 pages: ~20-35 minutes

Compared to other scrapers

Feature	Free Apify Scrapers	Other Anti-Bot Actors	Stealth Web Scraper
Unprotected sites	Yes	Yes	Yes
Cloudflare bypass	No	Claims yes (rated 1-3/5)	Yes (verified 86-100%)
Turnstile CAPTCHA	No	Unreliable	Yes (verified 100%)
Built-in proxies	No	Some	Yes (residential)
Browser fingerprint	Basic	Basic	Advanced (Patchright)
PPE pricing	Free + compute	Mostly rental (dying)	Pay per page
Published success rates	No	No	Yes, per-site verified

Proxy

This Actor uses its own residential proxy pool. No additional proxy configuration is needed.

FAQ

Q: Can it scrape any website? A: It handles most websites including those with Cloudflare, Turnstile, and JavaScript-heavy rendering. Extremely aggressive anti-bot systems (like some banking sites) may still block requests.

Q: Do I need to provide my own proxies? A: No. Residential proxies are built-in and included in the price.

Q: How is this different from Apify's Web Scraper? A: Apify's official Web Scraper has no anti-bot bypass capability. It fails on Cloudflare-protected sites. This Actor uses an undetectable browser engine specifically designed to bypass anti-bot protections.

Q: Can I extract specific data from pages? A: Yes. Use the extractSelectors parameter with CSS selectors to extract specific fields. For complex extraction logic, you can process the returned HTML in your own code.

Q: What about JavaScript-rendered pages? A: The Actor uses a full browser engine, so JavaScript is fully executed. Use waitForSelector if you need to wait for specific dynamic content to load.