curl_cffi
Python binding for curl-impersonate fork via cffi. For commercial support, visit impersonate.pro.
curl_cffi is the most popular Python binding for curl. Unlike other pure
python http clients like httpx or requests, curl_cffi can impersonate
browsers' TLS/JA3 and HTTP/2 fingerprints. If you are blocked by some
website for no obvious reason, you can give curl_cffi a try.
For JavaScript bindings, see impers, for solving JavaScript challenges, see brimp.
Python 3.10 is the minimum supported version since v0.14.
Recent highlights
- 🧭 Our new toy, brimp, a lightweight browser, works like curl_cffi with JavaScript enabled. Try it out today!
- 🆕 Added support for the new algorithm and extensions in Chrome 150/152.
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If you’re looking for a meeting recording API, consider checking out Recall.ai, an API that records Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, in-person meetings, and more.
Sponsors
Maintenance of this project is made possible by all the contributors and sponsors. If you'd like to sponsor this project and have your avatar or company logo appear below click here. 💖
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TLS fingerprinting alone isn't enough for modern bot protection. Hyper Solutions provides the missing piece - API endpoints that generate valid antibot tokens for:
Akamai • DataDome • Kasada • Incapsula
No browser automation. Just simple API calls that return the exact cookies and headers these systems require.
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cloro: SERP and AI search API for Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Grok
Impersonate Suite
curl-cffi is part of the impersonate suite.
- curl-impersonate. A curl distribution that impersonates browsers.
- curl_cffi. Python binding to curl-impersonate.
- brimp. Browser-impersonate, a lightweight browser
- impers. Node.js binding to curl-impersonate.
- impersonate.pro. Commercial support, more fingerprints and cloud offering.
Features
- Supports JA3/TLS and http2 fingerprints impersonation, including recent browsers and custom fingerprints.
- Much faster than requests/httpx, on par with aiohttp/pycurl, see benchmarks.
- Mimics the requests API, no need to learn another one.
- Pre-compiled, so you don't have to compile on your machine.
- Supports
asynciowith proxy rotation on each request. - Supports http 2.0, which requests does not.
- Supports http 3.0, with fingerprints and udp proxy.
- Supports websocket.
- MIT licensed.
| requests | aiohttp | httpx | pycurl | curl_cffi | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| http/2 | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| http/3 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ☑️1 | ✅2 |
| sync | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| async | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| websocket | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| native retry | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| fingerprints | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| speed | 🐇 | 🐇🐇 | 🐇 | 🐇🐇 | 🐇🐇 |
Notes:
- For pycurl, http/3 is usually disabled at compile time by default.
- http/3 support since v0.11.4, http/3 proxy and fingerprints since v0.15.0.
Install
pip install curl_cffi --upgrade
This should work on Linux, macOS and Windows out of the box.
On macOS, you can also install via Homebrew:
brew install lexiforest/tap/curl-cffi
To install beta releases:
pip install curl_cffi --upgrade --pre
To install unstable version from GitHub:
git clone https://github.com/lexiforest/curl_cffi/
cd curl_cffi
make preprocess
pip install .
Usage
curl_cffi comes with a low-level curl API and a high-level requests-like API.
curl_cffi also bundles with a CLI called curl-cffi.
CLI
Since v0.15, curl_cffi comes with a CLI called curl-cffi, you can use it for debugging
a certain url with the --impersonate option. It can also serve as a web_fetch
replacement for "agents".
curl-cffi get tls.browserleaks.com/json
# curl-cffi can be hard to type, use an alias if you want
alias imp=curl-cffi
imp get tls.browserleaks.com/json --impersonate chrome
For a complete CLI guide, see docs.
requests-like
import curl_cffi
# Notice the impersonate parameter
r = curl_cffi.get("https://tls.browserleaks.com/json", impersonate="chrome")
print(r.json())
# output: {..., "ja3n_hash": "aa56c057ad164ec4fdcb7a5a283be9fc", ...}
# the js3n fingerprint should be the same as target browser
# To keep using the latest browser version as `curl_cffi` updates,
# simply set impersonate="chrome" without specifying a version.
# Other similar values are: "safari" and "safari_ios"
r = curl_cffi.get("https://tls.browserleaks.com/json", impersonate="chrome")
# Use http/3 with impersonation
r = curl_cffi.get(
"https://fp.impersonate.pro/api/http3",
http_version="v3",
impersonate="chrome"
)
# To pin a specific version, use version numbers together.
r = curl_cffi.get("https://tls.browserleaks.com/json", impersonate="chrome124")
# To impersonate other than browsers, bring your own ja3/akamai strings
# See examples directory for details.
r = curl_cffi.get("https://tls.browserleaks.com/json", ja3=..., akamai=...)
# http/socks proxies are supported
proxies = {"https": "http://localhost:3128"}
r = curl_cffi.get("https://tls.browserleaks.com/json", impersonate="chrome", proxies=proxies)
proxies = {"https": "socks://localhost:3128"}
r = curl_cffi.get("https://tls.browserleaks.com/json", impersonate="chrome", proxies=proxies)
Sessions
s = curl_cffi.Session()
# httpbin is a http test website, this endpoint makes the server set cookies
s.get("https://httpbin.org/cookies/set/foo/bar")
print(s.cookies)
# <Cookies[<Cookie foo=bar for httpbin.org />]>
# retrieve cookies again to verify
r = s.get("https://httpbin.org/cookies")
print(r.json())
# {'cookies': {'foo': 'bar'}}
Supported impersonate browsers
curl_cffi supports the same browser versions preset as supported by our fork of curl-impersonate:
The open source version of curl_cffi includes versions when we are adding new capabilities for impersonating.
If you see a version, e.g. chrome135, was skipped, it's simply because there's nothing new or we were busy at that time.
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