Browserless keeps timing out on heavy sites

If Browserless is timing out on heavy sites, the usual fixes are:

1. Increase navigation / execution timeouts

   • Set a longer timeout for the Browserless session.
   • Also increase Puppeteer/Playwright timeouts (page.goto, waitForSelector, etc.).

2. Wait for a lighter readiness condition

   • Avoid networkidle0 / networkidle2 on sites with constant background requests.
   • Prefer a specific selector or a known DOM state.

3. Block unnecessary resources

   • Abort images, fonts, video, ads, analytics, and third-party scripts.
   • This often helps a lot on heavy pages.

4. Use a more capable Browserless plan / instance

   • Heavy pages may need more CPU/RAM than the default environment.
   • If you’re self-hosting, increase container memory and CPU limits.

5. Reduce concurrency

   • If many sessions run at once, queueing and timeouts become more likely.
   • Lower parallel jobs per Browserless instance.

6. Check for anti-bot / challenge pages

   • Some sites stall on CAPTCHA, consent, or bot-detection flows.
   • You may need to handle those explicitly.

7. Add retries

   • Retry the navigation once or twice with a longer timeout and resource blocking.

Example Puppeteer pattern:

await page.setDefaultNavigationTimeout(120000);
await page.setDefaultTimeout(60000);

await page.setRequestInterception(true);
page.on('request', req => {
  const type = req.resourceType();
  if (['image', 'font', 'media'].includes(type)) req.abort();
  else req.continue();
});

await page.goto(url, { waitUntil: 'domcontentloaded', timeout: 120000 });
await page.waitForSelector('main', { timeout: 60000 });

If you want, I can help you tune this for:

• Browserless cloud
• self-hosted Browserless
• Puppeteer
• Playwright

and give you a drop-in config/snippet.