sbrichardson / FlareSolverr

Proxy server to bypass Cloudflare protection

FlareSolverr

FlareSolverr is a proxy server to bypass Cloudflare protection.

How it works

FlareSolverr starts a proxy server and it waits for user requests in an idle state using few resources. When some request arrives, it uses puppeteer with the stealth plugin to create a headless browser (Chrome). It opens the URL with user parameters and waits until the Cloudflare challenge is solved (or timeout). The HTML code and the cookies are sent back to the user, and those cookies can be used to bypass Cloudflare using other HTTP clients.

NOTE: Web browsers consume a lot of memory. If you are running FlareSolverr on a machine with few RAM, do not make many requests at once. With each request a new browser is launched.

It is also possible to use a permanent session. However, if you use sessions, you should make sure to close them as soon as you are done using them.

Installation

Docker

It is recommended to install using a Docker container because the project depends on an external browser that is already included within the image.

Docker images are available in:

• GitHub Registry => https://github.com/orgs/FlareSolverr/packages/container/package/flaresolverr
• DockerHub => https://hub.docker.com/r/flaresolverr/flaresolverr

Supported architectures are:

Architecture	Tag
x86-64	linux/amd64
ARM64	linux/arm64
ARM32	linux/arm/v7

We provide a docker-compose.yml configuration file. Clone this repository and execute docker-compose up -d to start the container.

If you prefer the docker cli execute the following command.

docker run -d \
  --name=flaresolverr \
  -p 8191:8191 \
  -e LOG_LEVEL=info \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ghcr.io/flaresolverr/flaresolverr:latest

Precompiled binaries

This is the recommended way for Windows users.

• Download the FlareSolverr zip from the release's assets. It is available for Windows and Linux.
• Extract the zip file. FlareSolverr executable and chrome folder must be in the same directory.
• Execute FlareSolverr binary. In the environment variables section you can find how to change the configuration.

From source code

This is the recommended way for macOS users and for developers.

• Install NodeJS.
• Clone this repository and open a shell in that path.
• Run npm install command to install FlareSolverr dependencies.
• Run node node_modules/puppeteer/install.js to install Chromium.
• Run npm run build command to compile TypeScript code.
• Run npm start command to start FlareSolverr.

Systemd service

We provide an example Systemd unit file flaresolverr.service as reference. You have to modify the file to suit your needs: paths, user and environment variables.

Usage

Example request:

curl -L -X POST 'http://localhost:8191/v1' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
  "cmd": "request.get",
  "url":"http://www.google.com/",
  "userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleW...",
  "maxTimeout": 60000,
  "headers": {
    "X-Test": "Testing 123..."
  }
}'

Commands

+ sessions.create

This will launch a new browser instance which will retain cookies until you destroy it with sessions.destroy. This comes in handy, so you don't have to keep solving challenges over and over and you won't need to keep sending cookies for the browser to use.

This also speeds up the requests since it won't have to launch a new browser instance for every request.

Parameter	Notes
session	Optional. The session ID that you want to be assigned to the instance. If isn't set a random UUID will be assigned.
userAgent	Optional. Will be used by the headless browser.

+ sessions.list

Returns a list of all the active sessions. More for debugging if you are curious to see how many sessions are running. You should always make sure to properly close each session when you are done using them as too many may slow your computer down.

Example response:

{
  "sessions": [
    "session_id_1",
    "session_id_2",
    "session_id_3..."
  ]
}

+ sessions.destroy

This will properly shutdown a browser instance and remove all files associated with it to free up resources for a new session. When you no longer need to use a session you should make sure to close it.

Parameter	Notes
session	The session ID that you want to be destroyed.

+ request.get

Parameter	Notes
url	Mandatory
session	Optional. Will send the request from and existing browser instance. If one is not sent it will create a temporary instance that will be destroyed immediately after the request is completed.
headers	Optional. To specify user headers.
maxTimeout	Optional, default value 60000. Max timeout to solve the challenge in milliseconds.
cookies	Optional. Will be used by the headless browser. Follow this format.
returnOnlyCookies	Optional, default false. Only returns the cookies. Response data, headers and other parts of the response are removed.

Example response from running the curl above:

{
    "solution": {
        "url": "https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl",
        "status": 200,
        "headers": {
            "status": "200",
            "date": "Thu, 16 Jul 2020 04:15:49 GMT",
            "expires": "-1",
            "cache-control": "private, max-age=0",
            "content-type": "text/html; charset=UTF-8",
            "strict-transport-security": "max-age=31536000",
            "p3p": "CP=\"This is not a P3P policy! See g.co/p3phelp for more info.\"",
            "content-encoding": "br",
            "server": "gws",
            "content-length": "61587",
            "x-xss-protection": "0",
            "x-frame-options": "SAMEORIGIN",
            "set-cookie": "1P_JAR=2020-07-16-04; expires=Sat..."
        },
        "response":"<!DOCTYPE html>...",
        "cookies": [
            {
                "name": "NID",
                "value": "204=QE3Ocq15XalczqjuDy52HeseG3zAZuJzID3R57...",
                "domain": ".google.com",
                "path": "/",
                "expires": 1610684149.307722,
                "size": 178,
                "httpOnly": true,
                "secure": true,
                "session": false,
                "sameSite": "None"
            },
            {
                "name": "1P_JAR",
                "value": "2020-07-16-04",
                "domain": ".google.com",
                "path": "/",
                "expires": 1597464949.307626,
                "size": 19,
                "httpOnly": false,
                "secure": true,
                "session": false,
                "sameSite": "None"
            }
        ],
        "userAgent": "Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/5..."
    },
    "status": "ok",
    "message": "",
    "startTimestamp": 1594872947467,
    "endTimestamp": 1594872949617,
    "version": "1.0.0"
}

+ request.post

This is the same as request.get but it takes one more param:

Parameter	Notes
postData	Must be a string. If you want to POST a form, don't forget to set the Content-Type header to application/x-www-form-urlencoded or the server might not understand your request.

Download small files

If you need to access an image/pdf or small file, you should pass the download parameter to request.get setting it to true. Rather than access the html and return text it will return the buffer base64 encoded which you will be able to decode and save the image/pdf.

This method isn't recommended for videos or anything larger. As that should be streamed back to the client and at the moment there is nothing setup to do so. If this is something you need feel free to create an issue and/or submit a PR.

Environment variables

Name	Default	Notes
LOG_LEVEL	info	Verbosity of the logging. Use LOG_LEVEL=debug for more information.
LOG_HTML	false	Only for debugging. If true all HTML that passes through the proxy will be logged to the console in debug level.
CAPTCHA_SOLVER	none	Captcha solving method. It is used when a captcha is encountered. See the Captcha Solvers section.
TZ	UTC	Timezone used in the logs and the web browser. Example: TZ=Europe/London.
HEADLESS	true	Only for debugging. To run the web browser in headless mode or visible.
PORT	8191	Listening port. You don't need to change this if you are running on Docker.
HOST	0.0.0.0	Listening interface. You don't need to change this if you are running on Docker.

Environment variables are set differently depending on the operating system. Some examples:

• Docker: Take a look at the Docker section in this document. Environment variables can be set in the docker-compose.yml file or in the Docker CLI command.
• Linux: Run export LOG_LEVEL=debug and then start FlareSolverr in the same shell.
• Windows: Open cmd.exe, run set LOG_LEVEL=debug and then start FlareSolverr in the same shell.

Captcha Solvers

⚠️ At this time none of the captcha solvers work. You can check the status in the open issues. Any help is welcome.

Sometimes CloudFlare not only gives mathematical computations and browser tests, sometimes they also require the user to solve a captcha. If this is the case, FlareSolverr will return the error Captcha detected but no automatic solver is configured.

FlareSolverr can be customized to solve the captchas automatically by setting the environment variable CAPTCHA_SOLVER to the file name of one of the adapters inside the /captcha directory.

hcaptcha-solver

This method makes use of the hcaptcha-solver project.

NOTE: This solver works picking random images so it will fail in a lot of requests and it's hard to know if it is working or not. In a real use case with Sonarr/Radarr + Jackett it is still useful because those apps make a new request each 15 minutes. Eventually one of the requests is going to work and Jackett saves the cookie forever (until it stops working).

To use this solver you must set the environment variable:

CAPTCHA_SOLVER=hcaptcha-solver

CaptchaHarvester

This method makes use of the CaptchaHarvester project which allows users to collect their own tokens from ReCaptcha V2/V3 and hCaptcha for free.

To use this method you must set these environment variables:

CAPTCHA_SOLVER=harvester
HARVESTER_ENDPOINT=https://127.0.0.1:5000/token

Note: above I set HARVESTER_ENDPOINT to the default configuration of the captcha harvester's server, but that could change if you customize the command line flags. Simply put, HARVESTER_ENDPOINT should be set to the URI of the route that returns a token in plain text when called.

Related projects

• C# implementation => https://github.com/FlareSolverr/FlareSolverrSharp