Drive a headless browser from a Cloudflare Worker with the browser binding using @cloudflare/puppeteer or @cloudflare/playwright, including session reuse

Documented steps

1. Read https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-run/puppeteer/ or https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-run/playwright/ (product formerly named Browser Rendering).
2. Add the binding. wrangler.jsonc: {"browser": {"binding": "MYBROWSER"}} . wrangler.toml: [browser] binding = 'MYBROWSER'. Add remote: true for local dev against the real fleet.
3. Set compatibility_flags: ['nodejs_compat'] and a recent compatibility_date. Playwright requires compatibility_date 2025-09-15 or later.
4. Install the client: npm i -D @cloudflare/puppeteer (v1.1.0, based on Puppeteer v22.13.1) or npm i -D @cloudflare/playwright (v1.3.0, based on Playwright v1.58.2).
5. Puppeteer: import puppeteer from '@cloudflare/puppeteer'; const browser = await puppeteer.launch(env.MYBROWSER); const page = await browser.newPage(); await page.goto('https://example.com'); await browser.close();
6. Playwright: import { launch } from '@cloudflare/playwright'; const browser = await launch(env.MYBROWSER); const page = await browser.newPage(); await page.goto('https://example.com'); await browser.close();
7. Extend the idle timeout from the 60 second default up to 10 minutes: await puppeteer.launch(env.MYBROWSER, { keep_alive: 600000 }). This is an inactivity timeout, not a maximum session lifetime.
8. Before launching a new browser, check for a reusable one: puppeteer.sessions(env.MYBROWSER) or playwright.sessions(). Use .history() for recent open and closed sessions and .limits() for current usage against the cap.
9. Reuse explicitly (Playwright): const { sessionId } = await acquire(env.BROWSER); const browser = await connect(env.BROWSER, sessionId); ... await browser.close(); — close() here disconnects but leaves the underlying session alive for the next request.
10. Always call browser.close() in a finally block. Sessions left open hold a concurrency slot until the idle timeout expires.
11. Deploy with npx wrangler deploy.