# Obscura

> Lightweight Rust headless browser for AI agents and web scraping

Obscura is an open-source headless browser engine written in Rust, purpose-built for web scraping and AI agent automation. It embeds Google's V8 engine to execute real JavaScript, supports the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP), and acts as a drop-in replacement for headless Chrome in Puppeteer and Playwright setups. It starts instantly and uses a fraction of the memory (around 30MB) while including built-in anti-detection and tracker blocking.

Website: https://github.com/h4ckf0r0day/obscura

## What it is for

- Run automated web scraping pipelines with minimal memory and disk footprints
- Power AI agent web browsing workflows through the native Model Context Protocol (MCP) server
- Bypass basic bot detection and fingerprinting during automated browser tasks
- Replace resource-heavy headless Chrome instances in Puppeteer and Playwright scripts
- Capture full-page screenshots, render live screencasts, and export PDFs without running Chromium

## Features

- Drop-in CDP server compatible with Puppeteer and Playwright workflows
- Embedded V8 engine for executing real JavaScript and handling complex SPAs
- Built-in stealth anti-detection masking navigator.webdriver, hardware properties, and canvas fingerprints
- Integrated ad and tracker blocking across over 3,500 domains
- Native page rendering covering CSS layouts, screenshots, and PDF exports without Chromium
- Built-in Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for integration with Claude Desktop and Cursor
- Self-contained single binary with zero external dependencies, available for Linux, macOS, and Windows
- Parallel scraping CLI supporting concurrent worker processes, proxies, and structured JSON output

## Pricing

Open source. Free and open-source (Apache-2.0); hosted Obscura Cloud waitlist available.

## Details

- Type: GitHub repo
- Category: [Development](https://xiry.app/topics/development.md)
- Topic: [Web Scraping](https://xiry.app/topics/development/web-scraping.md)
- Open source: yes
- Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows, Command line
- For: Developers, web scrapers, and AI engineers needing high-efficiency, stealthy browser automation.
- Alternative to: Headless Chrome, Puppeteer, Playwright
- Tags: headless browser, web scraping, rust, puppeteer, playwright, mcp, ai agents

## Why it was saved

- [@ChrisLaubAI, 24 April 2026](https://x.com/ChrisLaubAI/status/2047628152139366766): Far lighter and faster than headless Chrome (30MB memory vs 200+MB, 70MB binary vs 300+MB, 85ms page load vs ~500ms, instant startup vs ~2s), with built-in anti-detect: per-session fingerprint randomization (GPU, canvas, audio, battery), 3,520 tracker domains blocked by default, navigator.webdriver masked to match real Chrome, and native function masking against detectors.

## Compare

- [Alternatives to Puppeteer](https://xiry.app/alternatives/puppeteer.md)
- [Alternatives to Playwright](https://xiry.app/alternatives/playwright.md)

## Related

- [Firecrawl](https://xiry.app/resources/firecrawl-1984): Turn websites and documents into clean, LLM-ready markdown or structured data. (Website, Freemium)
- [Parse](https://xiry.app/resources/parse): Turn any website into a structured REST API using natural language (Web app, Freemium)
- [Apify](https://xiry.app/resources/apify): Cloud platform and marketplace for web scraping, automation, and AI data extraction. (Web app, Freemium)
- [ScrapeGraphAI](https://xiry.app/resources/scrapegraphai): Open-source Python library and API for prompt-based web scraping using LLMs (GitHub repo, Freemium)
- [Chat4Data](https://xiry.app/resources/chat4data): AI Chrome extension for scraping web data using natural language chat prompts. (Browser extension, Freemium)
- [Cloud Scraping Browsers Comparison](https://xiry.app/resources/cloud-scraping-browsers-comparison): Feature and cost breakdown across cloud browser sandbox providers for scraping (Framework, Free)

Updated 10 October 2026. Page: https://xiry.app/resources/obscura

Make your own library: Xiry takes your saved reels, tweets, Reddit bookmarks and Watch Later videos, makes them searchable and pulls the useful stuff out, like this library. It's invite-only for now; join the waitlist at https://xiry.app/#waitlist.