Browserless Drivers

What?

What is Website Access?

Websites may often deny access to automated systems for various reasons, including:

• Blocking malicious bots/hackers from searching for vulnerabilities

• Preventing competitors from studying their data

• Rate limiting against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks

• Allowing users only from certain geographic areas

Website Access refers to the process of getting around these restrictions - especially at scale. While a small number of requests may not trigger these restrictions, the more data requests are sent - the higher the likelihood of an obstacle.

Web API Browserless Drivers

Nimble API capabilities are powered by a range of specialized Browserless Drivers, each optimized for specific types of web scraping tasks. These drivers allow you to overcome various challenges and efficiently retrieve data from different types of web pages:

Driver	Rendering?	Use Case	Complexity
VX6	No	Fast Native Requests	Low
VX8	Yes	Javascript Rendering	Medium
VX10	Yes	Advanced Website Access	High
VX12	Yes	Social Media Platforms	High
VX12-PRO	Yes	Person Data (LinkedIn)	High

Each of these Drivers uses a unique strategy (AI Fingerprinting, User Behavior Emulation, and more) to overcome a particular type of obstacle. Nimble's Drivers Optimization Engine determines the type of data source in real-time for each request, and automatically deploys the most suitable driver:

• Built from the ground-up by Nimble Labs AI experts for data collection purposes.

• Utilizes multiple advanced AI technologies to ensure successful data collection even from the most sophisticated websites that use anti-bot measures.

• Smart engines include human behavior emulation, synthetic fingerprinting, and more.

• Capable of rendering web pages as a real browser would, including executing JavaScript and AJAX calls, to access dynamically loaded data.

• Offers seamless integration with Nimble's IP Residential Proxies to access geo-restrictions and IP rate limits, ensuring uninterrupted access to global web data.

VX6 - Native Driver

What? Optimized for handling straightforward native queries that do not require page rendering.

When? Best used for fast native requests where page rendering is unnecessary. Ideal scenarios like retrieving Google SERP data quickly and cost-efficiently.

VX8 - Rendering Driver

What? Suitable for scenarios needing basic page rendering and unblocking capabilities, offering a balance between performance and complexity.

When? Perfect for client-side rendered websites, single-page applications (SPAs), and other webpages that require rendering to retrieve data, whether via HTML or network capture. Best suited for low to mid-level websites in terms of complexity, load, and access challenges measures.

VX10 - Advanced Website Access

What? Our most advanced option, designed for unlocking complex rendering tasks and equipped with advanced features to access websites effectively.

When? Ideal for the most challenging and complex use cases, supporting the toughest access challenges and backend technologies stack at scale.

VX12 - Social Media Driver

What? A dedicated driver specifically designed to retrieve data from popular social media platforms.

When? Best used for extracting data from Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

• Available only when using Social API Endpoint

VX12-PRO - Person Data Driver

What? A specialized driver for retrieving detailed information from LinkedIn profiles.

When? Exclusively used for extracting multiple data points from LinkedIn profiles.

• Available only when using Person API Endpoint

Why?

• Cost-Effectiveness: The cost of web scraping can increase with the complexity of the task due to higher compute and resource usage. To manage costs effectively, Nimble Browserless Drivers approach ensures that you are not only using the most suitable driver for your specific needs but also minimizing computational expenses.

• Performance: Nimble browser is designed for high-performance web scraping and can handle large-scale scraping tasks more efficiently.

• Browser fingerprinting and stealth capabilities: Nimble Browserless Drivers includes advanced techniques to avoid browser fingerprinting and bot detection, making it harder for websites to block your scraping efforts.

• Rate limiting - Websites may limit the number of requests a single user can make in a short timespan. Nimble Browserless Drivers works in conjunction with Nimble IP Residential Proxies to rotate proxies intelligently and work around rate limits while respecting and not overloading websites.

• Cached content - Websites may cache content (provide an old, stored version of their information) to improve performance for users, but this can negatively impact data quality. Nimble Browserless Drivers uses various mechanisms to ensure cached content is never served.

• Georestrictions - Some businesses only operate in certain countries, or may localize information by the user's locale. Nimble Browserless Drivers again uses Nimble IP Residential Proxies to empower users to send requests for anywhere in the world - ensuring access and localized data accuracy.

• CAPTCHA - Nimble Browserless Drivers never solves CAPTCHA challenges - ever. Nimble Browserless Drivers uses it's various Drivers to access data sources without triggering CAPTCHA challenges - ensuring access while also maintaining full compliance, governance, and trust. We call this

How?

Drivers Optimization Engine

Nimble API is powered by an intelligent Optimization Engine that automatically selects the most appropriate Browserless Driver for your task. This AI-driven engine evaluates the target domain and use case to determine the most cost-effective and performance-optimized driver, ensuring efficiency and effectiveness in website access & data retrieval.

This process not only simplifies the decision-making process but also ensures that you’re using the right tool for the job every time.

• Subscribed users in Enterprise Plan have the flexibility to manually select a specific driver if desired, but by default, the system will auto-select the most suitable driver to ensure optimal results.

• Users in Other Plans cannot select the driver selection and have limited access to VX10 Driver (up to 10%)

Social Drivers (VX12, VX12-PRO) are applicable only in Social API endpoints Social API and automatically configured. The driver param is not applicable in Social API

Driver Parameter in API Responses

• The driver parameter is included in every API request response, whether it is selected manually or by the optimization engine.

• This parameter provides transparency on which driver was used per request. Driver distribution will soon be available in the Nimble App.