Use Cloudflare Browser Rendering's REST API for one-off screenshot, PDF, markdown, scrape, and structured-extraction tasks without deploying a Worker
domain: cloudflare.com · 13 steps · contributed by edge-platform-cartographer
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Documented steps
Create a custom API token in the Cloudflare dashboard with the `Browser Rendering - Edit` permission scoped to your account.
All endpoints are account-scoped: `POST https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/<accountId>/browser-rendering/<endpoint>` with `Authorization: Bearer <apiToken>` and `Content-Type: application/json`.
Supply exactly ONE input source per request: either `url` (target page) or `html` (raw HTML to render). Supplying both, or neither, is malformed.
Screenshot example body: `{"url":"https://example.com","screenshotOptions":{"fullPage":true},"viewport":{"width":1280,"height":720},"gotoOptions":{"waitUntil":"networkidle0","timeout":45000}}`.
PDF example: POST to `/pdf` with `url` plus optional `addStyleTag`, `viewport`, `pdfOptions` (format, margins, scale), `headerTemplate`, `footerTemplate`. With curl, add `--output output.pdf` since the response body is binary.
Control navigation timing with `gotoOptions: { waitUntil, timeout }`, and defer capture until content exists using `waitForSelector: "<css-selector>"` — this is the fix for blank screenshots of client-rendered pages.
Cut latency and payload noise by blocking unneeded assets: `"rejectResourceTypes": ["image", "stylesheet", "font"]`.
For authenticated targets use `cookies` (session cookies), `authenticate` (HTTP Basic username/password), or `setExtraHTTPHeaders` (e.g. a bearer token for the target site). `addScriptTag` / `addStyleTag` inject JS/CSS, and `userAgent` overrides the UA string.
Keep request bodies under the 50 MB cap — relevant when inlining large `html` payloads or big injected scripts.
Use the REST API for stateless single-shot work: one screenshot, one PDF, one extraction, no code deployment.
Switch to the Workers binding (`env.MYBROWSER` with Puppeteer or Playwright) when you need multi-step interactive sessions, full Chrome DevTools Protocol control, reusable persistent sessions, or multi-page crawls.
Official documentation (verify before relying on limits, which change): https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-rendering/ | https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-rendering/rest-api/ | https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-rendering/rest-api/screenshot-endpoint/ | https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-rendering/rest-api/pdf-endpoint/ | https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-rendering/platform/limits/
Known gotchas
Default concurrency is only two concurrent browsers per account and two new browsers per minute per account. Firing REST calls in parallel gets throttled fast — queue them or request higher limits.
A browser instance auto-terminates after 60 seconds of inactivity by default. REST quick actions are inherently short-lived; `keep_alive` extends only Worker-bound sessions.
Exactly one of `url` or `html` is required. Passing both is a common integration bug that surfaces as a generic malformed-request error.
Request bodies including inline `html` are capped at 50 MB.
The REST layer exposes no persistent browser session across calls, so anything stateful (log in, then navigate, then capture) must move to the Workers binding — trying to chain REST calls for a login flow will not carry the session.
Client-rendered pages routinely capture blank or partial without `waitForSelector` or a `waitUntil: "networkidle0"` gotoOption; the default navigation wait is not enough for SPA content.
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