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Browser tasks are the simplest way to get rendered output from any URL. Each request spins up a fresh Chromium instance, navigates to your target page through a residential proxy, and returns a result synchronously — no session to create, no cleanup required. One credit is consumed after request validation but before the browser launches, so a malformed request body never costs you credits. Request bodies are limited to 1 MiB and timeoutMs can be set up to 3,600,000 ms (one hour) to handle slow or complex pages.

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Task types

AdsCrawl offers three browser task endpoints, each optimized for a different output:

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HTML / Markdown

POST /html renders the target page and returns one of three content modes:
  • html (default) — the full rendered page HTML, or just the matched element when selector is set
  • markdown — Readability-extracted article content converted to Markdown
  • json — a structured Readability article object with title, byline, excerpt, textContent, length, and more
Use waitUntil: "domcontentloaded" for most HTML extraction tasks — it is faster than waiting for images and stylesheets to load. Switch to "networkidle" only when the content you need is fetched by XHR after page load.

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Screenshots

POST /screenshot captures a PNG image of the rendered page and streams it back directly as image/png. Key options:
  • fullPage: true (default) — captures the entire scrollable page
  • selector — captures only the first element matching the CSS selector; returns 422 CONTENT_SELECTOR_NOT_FOUND if the selector does not match
  • viewport — set width and height to control the rendering viewport before capture

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SPA Extraction

POST /spa-extract extracts structured fields from dynamic single-page applications. You can define your own fields, run page actions (click, fill, scroll) before extraction, and use waitFor to wait for an element or text to appear. Two modes are available:
  • inspect — returns page candidates and a suggested field plan without consuming extra credits
  • extract — returns the data defined in your fields map or a named template
AdsCrawl maintains a catalog of ready-made site templates (e.g., similarweb-overview, google-trends-explore, chrome-web-store-app-info). Retrieve the full list with GET /spa-extract/templates.

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How credits work

One credit is deducted per browser task request. The charge happens after validation (so bad requests are free) but before the browser launches (so navigation failures still cost one credit). Check your balance in the dashboard before running large batches.

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Proxy behavior

Every browser task runs through a proxy. You control which proxy is used with two optional fields: countryCode and proxy are mutually exclusive — pass one or the other, never both.

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Request limits

Browser tasks are stateless — each request creates a fresh browser context with no memory of previous visits. If you need to maintain cookies, local storage, or a logged-in session across multiple pages, use Remote CDP or Cloud Browsers instead.

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API reference

POST /html

Fetch rendered HTML, Markdown, or structured article JSON from any URL.

POST /screenshot

Capture a full-page or element-level PNG screenshot.

POST /spa-extract

Extract structured fields from dynamic SPAs with optional templates and actions.