FlareSolverr — Cloudflare Bypass

Use FlareSolverr to bypass Cloudflare protection when direct curl requests fail with 403 or Cloudflare challenge pages.

Setup

Run FlareSolverr (Docker recommended):

docker run -d --name flaresolverr -p 8191:8191 ghcr.io/flaresolverr/flaresolverr:latest

Set the environment variable:

export FLARESOLVERR_URL="http://localhost:8191"

Verify:

curl -s "$FLARESOLVERR_URL/health" | jq '.'
# Expected: {"status":"ok","version":"3.x.x"}

When to Use

Direct curl fails with 403 Forbidden
Cloudflare challenge page appears (JS challenge, captcha, "Checking your browser")
Bot detection blocks automated requests
Rate limiting or anti-scraping measures

Workflow

Try direct curl first (it's faster and simpler)
If blocked: Use FlareSolverr to get cookies/user-agent
Reuse session for subsequent requests (optional, for performance)

Basic Usage

Simple GET Request

curl -X POST "$FLARESOLVERR_URL/v1" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "cmd": "request.get",
    "url": "https://example.com/protected-page",
    "maxTimeout": 60000
  }' | jq '.'

Response Structure

{
  "status": "ok",
  "message": "Challenge solved!",
  "solution": {
    "url": "https://example.com/protected-page",
    "status": 200,
    "headers": {},
    "response": "<html>...</html>",
    "cookies": [
      {
        "name": "cf_clearance",
        "value": "...",
        "domain": ".example.com"
      }
    ],
    "userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 ..."
  },
  "startTimestamp": 1234567890,
  "endTimestamp": 1234567895,
  "version": "3.3.2"
}

Extract Page Content

curl -s -X POST "$FLARESOLVERR_URL/v1" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "cmd": "request.get",
    "url": "https://example.com/protected-page"
  }' | jq -r '.solution.response'

Extract Cookies

curl -s -X POST "$FLARESOLVERR_URL/v1" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "cmd": "request.get",
    "url": "https://example.com"
  }' | jq -r '.solution.cookies[] | "\(.name)=\(.value)"'

Session Management

Sessions allow reusing browser context (cookies, user-agent) for multiple requests, improving performance.

Create Session

curl -s -X POST "$FLARESOLVERR_URL/v1" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"cmd": "sessions.create"}' | jq -r '.session'

Use Session for Request

curl -s -X POST "$FLARESOLVERR_URL/v1" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "cmd": "request.get",
    "url": "https://example.com/page1",
    "session": "SESSION_ID"
  }' | jq -r '.solution.response'

List Active Sessions

curl -s -X POST "$FLARESOLVERR_URL/v1" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"cmd": "sessions.list"}' | jq '.sessions'

flaresolverr

Install via CLI (Recommended)