Puppeteer Sharp is an MIT-licensed .NET port of the official Node.js Puppeteer API, giving C# developers headless Chrome automation for screenshots, PDF generation, content extraction, and end-to-end testing without leaving the .NET toolchain.

What it is

Puppeteer Sharp is a C# library that reimplements the official Node.js Puppeteer API on top of .NET. It ships through NuGet in three packages: PuppeteerSharp for full cross-browser automation, PuppeteerSharp.Cdp for Chrome-only AOT applications where binary size matters, and PuppeteerSharp.AspNetFramework as the companion library for ASP.NET Classic. The library comes in two flavours — a NetStandard 2.0 build targeting .NET Framework 4.6.1 and .NET Core 2.0 or greater, and a .NET 8 build. Source lives at hardkoded/puppeteer-sharp under the MIT licence, with documentation and API reference hosted at puppeteersharp.com.

The problem it solves is toolchain fragmentation. Browser automation in the Node.js world is dominated by Puppeteer, but a C# team that needs to drive Chrome or Chromium — for screenshots, PDF rendering, crawling, or browser tests — would otherwise have to maintain a separate Node.js process, a second runtime, and a second set of deployment dependencies alongside its .NET application. Puppeteer Sharp replaces that parallel Node.js stack: the same API shape (LaunchAsync, NewPageAsync, GoToAsync, ScreenshotAsync, PdfAsync) is available directly inside a .NET process, so automation code lives in the same solution, uses the same build pipeline, and deploys with the same artifacts as the rest of the application.

Key capabilities

• Cross-browser automation through the PuppeteerSharp package; Chrome-only deployments use PuppeteerSharp.Cdp when AOT compilation and small binary size matter.
• Screenshot generation with ScreenshotAsync, including a configurable viewport via SetViewportAsync with ViewPortOptions Width and Height.
• PDF rendering with PdfAsync, where waiting on EvaluateExpressionHandleAsync("document.fonts.ready") prevents fonts loaded from a CDN from rendering as missing text.
• Browser management through BrowserFetcher and DownloadAsync, which fetch the browser binary that Puppeteer.LaunchAsync then launches with LaunchOptions such as Headless = true.
• HTML injection and extraction with SetContentAsync and GetContentAsync, useful for rendering generated markup or pulling back page state.
• Firefox testing via WebDriver BiDi, added in the PuppeteerSharp 21 release line.
• AOT compilation support, added in the PuppeteerSharp 19 release line.

Who uses it and how

• C# teams running e2e and browser test suites, keeping test code in the same .NET projects and CI pipeline as the application under test.
• Crawling and scraping workloads, where GoToAsync plus GetContentAsync or in-page evaluation drives extraction pipelines.
• Reporting and document services that render HTML to PDF or capture screenshots server-side, including the font-readiness wait that HTML-to-PDF rendering requires.
• ASP.NET Classic applications, which use the PuppeteerSharp.AspNetFramework companion package to run the library in that hosting model.
• Linux deployments, which need an X-server present even for headless runs; the upstream Puppeteer troubleshooting guide is the reference for Chrome-on-Linux issues.

Getting started

Install the PuppeteerSharp package from NuGet, then call BrowserFetcher.DownloadAsync() to fetch the browser and Puppeteer.LaunchAsync with LaunchOptions to start it. API documentation and working snippets for screenshots, PDFs, and HTML injection are published at puppeteersharp.com, with questions handled on Stack Overflow and the #puppeteer-sharp Slack channel.

How it compares

The reference implementation for this API is the official Node.js Puppeteer, and Puppeteer Sharp tracks it deliberately as a port rather than an independent design; existing Puppeteer knowledge transfers, and release notes are framed around the upstream API. Among the tools named in the project's facts, it therefore occupies the .NET side of the same automation model rather than competing with it, which is why the maintainers point users at the Node.js repository for browser troubleshooting.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster must operate the browser binary that BrowserFetcher downloads, keep it versioned in CI, and provide an X-server on Linux hosts, so the runtime footprint is larger than a pure library dependency. Teams that want a managed browser service, avoid .NET, or only need static HTML parsing should not pick it. The README is largely usage snippets and links rather than a full install and quickstart guide, so expect to lean on the API documentation and community channels for setup details.

var browserFetcher = new BrowserFetcher();
await browserFetcher.DownloadAsync();
await using var browser = await Puppeteer.LaunchAsync(
    new LaunchOptions { Headless = true });
await using var page = await browser.NewPageAsync();
await page.GoToAsync("http://www.google.com");
await page.ScreenshotAsync(outputFile);

await Page.SetViewportAsync(new ViewPortOptions
{
    Width = 500,
    Height = 500
});

var browserFetcher = new BrowserFetcher();
await browserFetcher.DownloadAsync();
await using var browser = await Puppeteer.LaunchAsync(new LaunchOptions { Headless = true });
await using var page = await browser.NewPageAsync();
await page.GoToAsync("http://www.google.com"); // In case of fonts being loaded from a CDN, use WaitUntilNavigation.Networkidle0 as a second param.
await page.EvaluateExpressionHandleAsync("document.fonts.ready"); // Wait for fonts to be loaded. Omitting this might result in no text rendered in pdf.
await page.PdfAsync(outputFile);

await using var page = await browser.NewPageAsync();
await page.SetContentAsync("<div>My Receipt</div>");
var result = await page.GetContentAsync();

await using var page = await browser.NewPageAsync();
var seven = await page.EvaluateExpressionAsync<int>("4 + 3");
var someObject = await page.EvaluateFunctionAsync<JsonElement>("(value) => ({a: value})", 5);
Console.WriteLine(someObject.GetProperty("a").GetString());

using (var page = await browser.NewPageAsync())
{
    await page.GoToAsync("http://www.spapage.com");
    await page.WaitForSelectorAsync("div.main-content")
    await page.PdfAsync(outputFile));
}

using (var page = await browser.NewPageAsync())
{
    await page.GoToAsync("http://www.spapage.com");
    var watchDog = page.WaitForFunctionAsync("()=> window.innerWidth < 100");
    await page.SetViewportAsync(new ViewPortOptions { Width = 50, Height = 50 });
    await watchDog;
}

var options = new ConnectOptions()
{
    BrowserWSEndpoint = $"wss://www.externalbrowser.io?token={apikey}"
};

var url = "https://www.google.com/";

using (var browser = await PuppeteerSharp.Puppeteer.ConnectAsync(options))
{
    using (var page = await browser.NewPageAsync())
    {
        await page.GoToAsync(url);
        await page.PdfAsync("wot.pdf");
    }
}