Browserless — scrape

When to Use

Price monitoring: Target .product-price or [data-price] selectors to extract prices from e-commerce pages into a structured dataset for comparison workflows.
Lead generation: Scrape contact names, email addresses, and job titles from directory or profile pages using targeted CSS selectors.
News and content aggregation: Extract article titles, publication dates, and summary text from news sites by selector without dealing with full HTML parsing.
Inventory and availability tracking: Poll a supplier's product page for stock-status element text and trigger alerts when it changes to "Out of Stock".
Job board monitoring: Scrape job listings by selector to feed a downstream AI classification or filtering node.

scrape vs. content: scrape returns only the targeted element data as structured JSON — ideal when you know your selectors in advance. Use content when you need the full HTML and will parse it in a subsequent node or AI step.

Configuration

Connection

Field	Required	Description
`BaseUrl`	Required	Browserless instance URL.
`Token`	Optional	API token for cloud Browserless.

Operation

Field	Required	Description
`url`	Required	The page URL to scrape. Supports BizFirst expressions.
`elements`	Required	Array of element descriptor objects. Each object must have a `selector` (CSS selector string) and optionally a `timeout` (ms to wait for the selector to appear). Multiple selectors can be listed to extract several fields in a single request.
`gotoOptions`	Optional	Navigation options JSON: `waitUntil` and `timeout`.
`waitForSelector`	Optional	Wait for a specific selector before beginning element extraction.
`waitForTimeout`	Optional	Fixed delay in milliseconds after page load before extraction.
`waitForFunction`	Optional	JavaScript expression to poll before extraction.
`debug`	Optional	Debug object — when set, Browserless includes additional diagnostic data alongside results. Useful during development to verify selector matches.
`setExtraHTTPHeaders`	Optional	Additional request headers.
`cookies`	Optional	Cookies to set before navigation.
`rejectResourceTypes`	Optional	Resource types to block to speed up page load.
`blockAds`	Optional	Default `true`.
`bestAttempt`	Optional	Default `true`. Return partial results even if some sub-resources failed.
`useCustomBody`	Optional	Send `customBodyJson` verbatim as the request body.
`customBodyJson`	Optional	Raw JSON body when `useCustomBody` is `true`.

Sample Configuration

{
  "operation": "scrape",
  "baseUrl": "https://chrome.browserless.io",
  "token": "{{ $env.BROWSERLESS_TOKEN }}",
  "url": "https://store.example.com/products/{{ $input.productSlug }}",
  "elements": [
    { "selector": ".product-title",       "timeout": 8000 },
    { "selector": ".product-price",       "timeout": 8000 },
    { "selector": ".product-availability","timeout": 5000 },
    { "selector": ".product-rating span", "timeout": 5000 }
  ],
  "gotoOptions": { "waitUntil": "networkidle2", "timeout": 20000 },
  "rejectResourceTypes": ["image", "media", "font"],
  "blockAds": true
}

Validation Errors

Error Code	Cause
`VAL_MISSING_URL`	`url` is empty and no `html` source was provided.
`VAL_MISSING_ELEMENTS`	The `elements` array is empty or not provided.
`CFG_INVALID`	Node settings could not be resolved to a scrape configuration.
`BROWSERLESS_BAD_REQUEST`	`customBodyJson` is not valid JSON or does not match the scrape request shape.

Output

Success Port

Field	Type	Description
`status`	string	Always `"success"`.
`errorCode`	string	Always empty on success.
`operation`	string	Always `"scrape"`.
`url`	string	URL that was scraped.
`count`	int	Total number of element result records across all selectors.
`items`	array	Array of result objects. Each object has: `selector` (the CSS selector that matched), `text` (trimmed text content), `html` (inner HTML), `attributes` (array of attribute name/value pairs).

Error Port

Field	Type	Description
`status`	string	Always `"error"`.
`errorCode`	string	Machine-readable error code.
`errorMessage`	string	Human-readable failure description.
`operation`	string	Always `"scrape"`.
`httpStatusCode`	int	HTTP status code from Browserless, if available.

Sample Output

{
  "status": "success",
  "errorCode": "",
  "operation": "scrape",
  "url": "https://store.example.com/products/widget-pro",
  "count": 4,
  "items": [
    {
      "selector": ".product-title",
      "text": "Widget Pro 2026 Edition",
      "html": "<h1 class=\"product-title\">Widget Pro 2026 Edition</h1>",
      "attributes": [{ "name": "class", "value": "product-title" }]
    },
    {
      "selector": ".product-price",
      "text": "$49.99",
      "html": "<span class=\"product-price\" data-currency=\"USD\">$49.99</span>",
      "attributes": [
        { "name": "class",         "value": "product-price" },
        { "name": "data-currency", "value": "USD" }
      ]
    },
    {
      "selector": ".product-availability",
      "text": "In stock",
      "html": "<span class=\"product-availability in-stock\">In stock</span>",
      "attributes": [{ "name": "class", "value": "product-availability in-stock" }]
    },
    {
      "selector": ".product-rating span",
      "text": "4.7",
      "html": "<span>4.7</span>",
      "attributes": []
    }
  ]
}

Expression Reference

Expression	Value
`{{ $output.BrowserlessNode.count }}`	Total number of extracted element records.
`{{ $output.BrowserlessNode.items }}`	Full array of item objects.
`{{ $output.BrowserlessNode.items[0].text }}`	Text of the first matched element.
`{{ $output.BrowserlessNode.items[0].selector }}`	CSS selector that produced the first item.
`{{ $output.BrowserlessNode.items[1].attributes[1].value }}`	Value of the second attribute of the second item.
`{{ $output.BrowserlessNode.url }}`	URL that was scraped.

Node Policies & GuardRails

Policy	Recommendation	Severity
Terms of service compliance	Always review the target website's robots.txt and terms of service before building scraping workflows. Scraping some sites may violate their policies.	High
URL validation	Validate and allowlist target domains to prevent SSRF when URLs come from user input.	High
Token storage	Store the API token in a workflow secret.	Critical
Selector fragility	CSS selectors break when sites redesign their markup. Build alerting for empty `items` arrays and monitor scrape results over time.	Medium
Rate limiting	Avoid hammering a target site — introduce a Delay node between loop iterations to respect crawl rates and avoid IP bans.	Medium

Examples

Example 1 — E-commerce product data extraction

{
  "operation": "scrape",
  "baseUrl": "https://chrome.browserless.io",
  "token": "{{ $env.BROWSERLESS_TOKEN }}",
  "url": "{{ $input.productUrl }}",
  "elements": [
    { "selector": "h1.product-name",   "timeout": 8000 },
    { "selector": "[data-price]",       "timeout": 8000 },
    { "selector": ".stock-badge",       "timeout": 5000 }
  ],
  "gotoOptions": { "waitUntil": "networkidle2", "timeout": 20000 },
  "rejectResourceTypes": ["image", "media", "font", "stylesheet"],
  "blockAds": true
}

Example 2 — Scrape a table of job listings

{
  "operation": "scrape",
  "baseUrl": "https://chrome.browserless.io",
  "token": "{{ $env.BROWSERLESS_TOKEN }}",
  "url": "https://jobs.example.com/listings?category={{ $input.category }}",
  "elements": [
    { "selector": ".job-card .job-title",    "timeout": 10000 },
    { "selector": ".job-card .company-name", "timeout": 10000 },
    { "selector": ".job-card .location",     "timeout": 10000 }
  ],
  "gotoOptions": { "waitUntil": "networkidle0", "timeout": 25000 }
}

Example 3 — Scrape with authentication cookies

{
  "operation": "scrape",
  "baseUrl": "https://chrome.browserless.io",
  "token": "{{ $env.BROWSERLESS_TOKEN }}",
  "url": "https://portal.example.com/account/usage",
  "elements": [
    { "selector": ".usage-current", "timeout": 8000 },
    { "selector": ".usage-limit",   "timeout": 8000 }
  ],
  "cookies": [
    { "name": "auth_session", "value": "{{ $env.PORTAL_SESSION }}", "domain": "portal.example.com" }
  ],
  "gotoOptions": { "waitUntil": "networkidle2", "timeout": 20000 }
}