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A simple Python module to bypass Cloudflare's anti-bot page (also known as "I'm Under Attack Mode", or IUAM), implemented with Requests. Cloudflare changes their techniques periodically, so I will update this repo frequently.

This can be useful if you wish to scrape or crawl a website protected with Cloudflare. Cloudflare's anti-bot page currently just checks if the client supports Javascript, though they may add additional techniques in the future.

Due to Cloudflare continually changing and hardening their protection page, cloudscraper requires a JavaScript Engine/interpreter to solve Javascript challenges. This allows the script to easily impersonate a regular web browser without explicitly deobfuscating and parsing Cloudflare's Javascript.

For reference, this is the default message Cloudflare uses for these sorts of pages:

Checking your browser before accessing website.com.

This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly.

Please allow up to 5 seconds...

Any script using cloudscraper will sleep for ~5 seconds for the first visit to any site with Cloudflare anti-bots enabled, though no delay will occur after the first request.

Donations

If you feel like showing your love and/or appreciation for this project, then how about shouting me a coffee or beer :)

<a href="https://buymeacoff.ee/venomous" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.buymeacoffee.com/assets/img/custom_images/orange_img.png" alt="Buy Me A Coffee" style="height: 41px !important;width: 174px !important;box-shadow: 0px 3px 2px 0px rgba(190, 190, 190, 0.5) !important;-webkit-box-shadow: 0px 3px 2px 0px rgba(190, 190, 190, 0.5) !important;" ></a>

Installation

Simply run pip install cloudscraper. The PyPI package is at https://pypi.python.org/pypi/cloudscraper/

Alternatively, clone this repository and run python setup.py install.

Dependencies

python setup.py install will install the Python dependencies automatically. The javascript interpreters and/or engines you decide to use are the only things you need to install yourself, excluding js2py which is part of the requirements as the default.

Javascript Interpreters and Engines

We support the following Javascript interpreters/engines.

Usage

The simplest way to use cloudscraper is by calling create_scraper().

import cloudscraper

scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper()  # returns a CloudScraper instance
# Or: scraper = cloudscraper.CloudScraper()  # CloudScraper inherits from requests.Session
print(scraper.get("http://somesite.com").text)  # => "<!DOCTYPE html><html><head>..."

That's it...

Any requests made from this session object to websites protected by Cloudflare anti-bot will be handled automatically. Websites not using Cloudflare will be treated normally. You don't need to configure or call anything further, and you can effectively treat all websites as if they're not protected with anything.

You use cloudscraper exactly the same way you use Requests. cloudScraper works identically to a Requests Session object, just instead of calling requests.get() or requests.post(), you call scraper.get() or scraper.post().

Consult Requests' documentation for more information.

Options

Disable Cloudflare V1

Description

If you don't want to even attempt Cloudflare v1 (Deprecated) solving..

Parameters

ParameterValueDefault
disableCloudflareV1(boolean)False

Example

scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(disableCloudflareV1=True)

Brotli

Description

Brotli decompression support has been added, and it is enabled by default.

Parameters

ParameterValueDefault
allow_brotli(boolean)True

Example

scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(allow_brotli=False)

Browser / User-Agent Filtering

Description

Control how and which User-Agent is "randomly" selected.

Parameters

Can be passed as an argument to create_scraper(), get_tokens(), get_cookie_string().

ParameterValueDefault
browser(string) chrome or firefoxNone

Or

ParameterValueDefault
browser(dict)
browser dict Parameters
ParameterValueDefault
browser(string) chrome or firefoxNone
mobile(boolean)True
desktop(boolean)True
platform(string) 'linux', 'windows', 'darwin', 'android', 'ios'None
custom(string)None

Example

scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(browser='chrome')

or

# will give you only mobile chrome User-Agents on Android
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(
    browser={
        'browser': 'chrome',
        'platform': 'android',
        'desktop': False
    }
)

# will give you only desktop firefox User-Agents on Windows
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(
    browser={
        'browser': 'firefox',
        'platform': 'windows',
        'mobile': False
    }
)

# Custom will also try find the user-agent string in the browsers.json,
# If a match is found, it will use the headers and cipherSuite from that "browser",
# Otherwise a generic set of headers and cipherSuite will be used.
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(
    browser={
        'custom': 'ScraperBot/1.0',
    }
)

Debug

Description

Prints out header and content information of the request for debugging.

Parameters

Can be set as an attribute via your cloudscraper object or passed as an argument to create_scraper(), get_tokens(), get_cookie_string().

ParameterValueDefault
debug(boolean)False

Example

scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(debug=True)

Delays

Description

Cloudflare IUAM challenge requires the browser to wait ~5 seconds before submitting the challenge answer, If you would like to override this delay.

Parameters

Can be set as an attribute via your cloudscraper object or passed as an argument to create_scraper(), get_tokens(), get_cookie_string().

ParameterValueDefault
delay(float)extracted from IUAM page

Example

scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(delay=10)

Existing session

Description:

If you already have an existing Requests session, you can pass it to the function create_scraper() to continue using that session.

Parameters

ParameterValueDefault
sess(requests.session)None

Example

session = requests.session()
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(sess=session)

Note

Unfortunately, not all of Requests session attributes are easily transferable, so if you run into problems with this,

You should replace your initial session initialization call

From:

sess = requests.session()

To:

sess = cloudscraper.create_scraper()

JavaScript Engines and Interpreters

Description

cloudscraper currently supports the following JavaScript Engines/Interpreters

Parameters

Can be set as an attribute via your cloudscraper object or passed as an argument to create_scraper(), get_tokens(), get_cookie_string().

ParameterValueDefault
interpreter(string)native

Example

scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(interpreter='nodejs')

3rd Party Captcha Solvers

Description

cloudscraper currently supports the following 3rd party Captcha solvers, should you require them.

Note

I am working on adding more 3rd party solvers, if you wish to have a service added that is not currently supported, please raise a support ticket on github.

Required Parameters

Can be set as an attribute via your cloudscraper object or passed as an argument to create_scraper(), get_tokens(), get_cookie_string().

ParameterValueDefault
captcha(dict)None

2captcha

Required captcha Parameters
ParameterValueRequiredDefault
provider(string) 2captchayes
api_key(string)yes
no_proxy(boolean)noFalse
Note

if proxies are set you can disable sending the proxies to 2captcha by setting no_proxy to True

Example
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(
  captcha={
    'provider': '2captcha',
    'api_key': 'your_2captcha_api_key'
  }
)

anticaptcha

Required captcha Parameters
ParameterValueRequiredDefault
provider(string) anticaptchayes
api_key(string)yes
no_proxy(boolean)noFalse
Note

if proxies are set you can disable sending the proxies to anticaptcha by setting no_proxy to True

Example
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(
  captcha={
    'provider': 'anticaptcha',
    'api_key': 'your_anticaptcha_api_key'
  }
)

CapSolver

Required captcha Parameters
ParameterValueRequiredDefault
provider(string) captchaaiyes
api_key(string)yes
Example
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(
  captcha={
    'provider': 'capsolver',
    'api_key': 'your_captchaai_api_key'
  }
)

CapMonster Cloud

Required captcha Parameters
ParameterValueRequiredDefault
provider(string) capmonsteryes
clientKey(string)yes
no_proxy(boolean)noFalse
Note

if proxies are set you can disable sending the proxies to CapMonster by setting no_proxy to True

Example
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(
  captcha={
    'provider': 'capmonster',
    'clientKey': 'your_capmonster_clientKey'
  }
)

deathbycaptcha

Required captcha Parameters
ParameterValueRequiredDefault
provider(string) deathbycaptchayes
username(string)yes
password(string)yes
Example
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(
  captcha={
    'provider': 'deathbycaptcha',
    'username': 'your_deathbycaptcha_username',
    'password': 'your_deathbycaptcha_password',
  }
)

9kw

Required captcha Parameters
ParameterValueRequiredDefault
provider(string) 9kwyes
api_key(string)yes
maxtimeout(int)no180
Example
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(
  captcha={
    'provider': '9kw',
    'api_key': 'your_9kw_api_key',
    'maxtimeout': 300
  }
)

return_response

Use this if you want the requests response payload without solving the Captcha.

Required captcha Parameters
ParameterValueRequiredDefault
provider(string) return_responseyes
Example
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(
  captcha={'provider': 'return_response'}
)

Integration

It's easy to integrate cloudscraper with other applications and tools. Cloudflare uses two cookies as tokens: one to verify you made it past their challenge page and one to track your session. To bypass the challenge page, simply include both of these cookies (with the appropriate user-agent) in all HTTP requests you make.

To retrieve just the cookies (as a dictionary), use cloudscraper.get_tokens(). To retrieve them as a full Cookie HTTP header, use cloudscraper.get_cookie_string().

get_tokens and get_cookie_string both accept Requests' usual keyword arguments (like get_tokens(url, proxies={"http": "socks5://localhost:9050"})).

Please read Requests' documentation on request arguments for more information.


User-Agent Handling

The two integration functions return a tuple of (cookie, user_agent_string).

You must use the same user-agent string for obtaining tokens and for making requests with those tokens, otherwise Cloudflare will flag you as a bot.

That means you have to pass the returned user_agent_string to whatever script, tool, or service you are passing the tokens to (e.g. curl, or a specialized scraping tool), and it must use that passed user-agent when it makes HTTP requests.


Integration examples

Remember, you must always use the same user-agent when retrieving or using these cookies. These functions all return a tuple of (cookie_dict, user_agent_string).


Retrieving a cookie dict through a proxy

get_tokens is a convenience function for returning a Python dict containing Cloudflare's session cookies. For demonstration, we will configure this request to use a proxy. (Please note that if you request Cloudflare clearance tokens through a proxy, you must always use the same proxy when those tokens are passed to the server. Cloudflare requires that the challenge-solving IP and the visitor IP stay the same.)

If you do not wish to use a proxy, just don't pass the proxies keyword argument. These convenience functions support all of Requests' normal keyword arguments, like params, data, and headers.

import cloudscraper

proxies = {"http": "http://localhost:8080", "https": "http://localhost:8080"}
tokens, user_agent = cloudscraper.get_tokens("http://somesite.com", proxies=proxies)
print(tokens)
# => {
    'cf_clearance': 'c8f913c707b818b47aa328d81cab57c349b1eee5-1426733163-3600',
    '__cfduid': 'dd8ec03dfdbcb8c2ea63e920f1335c1001426733158'
}

Retrieving a cookie string

get_cookie_string is a convenience function for returning the tokens as a string for use as a Cookie HTTP header value.

This is useful when crafting an HTTP request manually, or working with an external application or library that passes on raw cookie headers.

import cloudscraper

cookie_value, user_agent = cloudscraper.get_cookie_string('http://somesite.com')

print('GET / HTTP/1.1\nCookie: {}\nUser-Agent: {}\n'.format(cookie_value, user_agent))

# GET / HTTP/1.1
# Cookie: cf_clearance=c8f913c707b818b47aa328d81cab57c349b1eee5-1426733163-3600; __cfduid=dd8ec03dfdbcb8c2ea63e920f1335c1001426733158
# User-Agent: Some/User-Agent String

curl example

Here is an example of integrating cloudscraper with curl. As you can see, all you have to do is pass the cookies and user-agent to curl.

import subprocess
import cloudscraper

# With get_tokens() cookie dict:

# tokens, user_agent = cloudscraper.get_tokens("http://somesite.com")
# cookie_arg = 'cf_clearance={}; __cfduid={}'.format(tokens['cf_clearance'], tokens['__cfduid'])

# With get_cookie_string() cookie header; recommended for curl and similar external applications:

cookie_arg, user_agent = cloudscraper.get_cookie_string('http://somesite.com')

# With a custom user-agent string you can optionally provide:

# ua = "Scraping Bot"
# cookie_arg, user_agent = cloudscraper.get_cookie_string("http://somesite.com", user_agent=ua)

result = subprocess.check_output(
    [
        'curl',
        '--cookie',
        cookie_arg,
        '-A',
        user_agent,
        'http://somesite.com'
    ]
)

Trimmed down version. Prints page contents of any site protected with Cloudflare, via curl.

Warning: shell=True can be dangerous to use with subprocess in real code.

url = "http://somesite.com"
cookie_arg, user_agent = cloudscraper.get_cookie_string(url)
cmd = "curl --cookie {cookie_arg} -A {user_agent} {url}"
print(
    subprocess.check_output(
        cmd.format(
            cookie_arg=cookie_arg,
            user_agent=user_agent,
            url=url
        ),
        shell=True
    )
)

Cryptography

Description

Control communication between client and server

Parameters

Can be passed as an argument to create_scraper().

ParameterValueDefault
cipherSuite(string)None
ecdhCurve(string)prime256v1
server_hostname(string)None

Example

# Some servers require the use of a more complex ecdh curve than the default "prime256v1"
# It may can solve handshake failure
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(ecdhCurve='secp384r1')
# Manipulate server_hostname
scraper = cloudscraper.create_scraper(server_hostname='www.somesite.com')
scraper.get(
    'https://backend.hosting.com/',
    headers={'Host': 'www.somesite.com'}
)