Scraping Dynamic Sites Using Puppeteer & Selenium

Most modern websites have dynamic content that loads via JavaScript, AJAX requests, and interactive frontends that break when traditional scrapers hit them. If you’ve ever pointed requests.get() at a modern e-commerce or job listing site, you’ve probably seen a whole lot of nothing.

That’s where headless browsers and proxies come in.

In this guide, we’ll walk through how to scrape JavaScript-heavy sites effectively using Puppeteer, Selenium, and ProxiesThatWork.

Why You Need Headless Browsers for Dynamic Sites

Unlike static websites, dynamic sites often:

• Render content after page load using JavaScript
• Send key data via asynchronous XHR (AJAX) calls
• Load elements conditionally based on scroll or interaction

Traditional HTTP scraping libraries (like Python's requests) only retrieve the HTML at initial load which misses all that juicy data rendered after the fact.

Headless browsers like Puppeteer (Node.js) and Selenium (multi-language) simulate real user behavior. They let you:

• Wait for content to fully load
• Trigger interactions (clicks, scrolls)
• Intercept network requests (for direct API data scraping)

But even with the right tools, one thing still gets in the way: IP bans.

Why You Need Proxies That Work with Headless Browsers

Most modern sites deploy bot protection systems (e.g., Cloudflare, Akamai) that:

• Flag suspicious request patterns
• Rate-limit repetitive behavior from the same IP
• Detect data center ranges

That’s where proxies like ProxiesThatWork shine:

• HTTP/HTTPS support for browsers and scripts
• IPv4-only for higher compatibility
• Static IPs you can trust for session persistence
• IP authentication only (no credentials to manage)
• Tested on 1,000+ real-world sites every 5 minutes

Getting Started with Puppeteer + Proxies

npm install puppeteer

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');

(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
    args: ['--proxy-server=http://YOUR_PROXY_IP:PORT']
  });

  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://example.com', { waitUntil: 'networkidle2' });

  const content = await page.content();
  console.log(content);

  await browser.close();
})();

Tips for Puppeteer scraping:

• Use waitForSelector() for specific content
• Rotate user agents
• Use stealth plugins if needed (like puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth)

Using Selenium + Proxies (Python)

pip install selenium

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

PROXY = "YOUR_PROXY_IP:PORT"

chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument(f'--proxy-server=http://{PROXY}')

driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)
driver.get("https://example.com")
print(driver.page_source)
driver.quit()

Tips for Selenium scraping:

• Always wait for JavaScript-rendered elements to appear
• Combine with BeautifulSoup if you need to parse HTML
• Handle timeouts and retries gracefully

Spotting AJAX and XHR Requests

Sometimes you don’t even need a headless browser. If the data loads via an XHR request to an internal API, you can intercept and scrape that directly.

In Puppeteer:

page.on('response', async (response) => {
  if (response.url().includes('/api/endpoint')) {
    const data = await response.json();
    console.log(data);
  }
});

In DevTools:

• Load the site
• Open Network tab > XHR filter
• Inspect the data requests
• Replicate in a script using your proxy

This method reduces overhead and makes scraping cleaner and faster.

Final Tips for Success

• Use proxy rotation if scraping large volumes
• Avoid headless detection: set realistic user agents, screen sizes, and navigator flags
• Throttle requests to mimic real users
• Check robots.txt if you're unsure about scraping legality
• Always test your proxy first using the Test Proxies tool in your dashboard

Wrapping Up

Scraping dynamic websites isn't impossible. It just requires the right stack:

• A headless browser to render the page
• A proxy to avoid bans
• A smart scraper to extract the data

With tools like Puppeteer, Selenium, and ProxiesThatWork, you're already most of the way there.