[Blog](https://scrapfly.io/blog) / [blocking](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/blocking) / [8 Best Python HTTP Clients for Web Scraping in 2026](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/best-python-http-clients) # 8 Best Python HTTP Clients for Web Scraping in 2026 by [Hisham Medhat](https://scrapfly.io/blog/author/hisham) Aug 11, 2026 20 min read [\#blocking](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/blocking) [\#http](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/http) [\#python](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/python) [ ](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fposts%2Fbest-python-http-clients "Share on LinkedIn") [ ](https://x.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fposts%2Fbest-python-http-clients&text=8%20Best%20Python%20HTTP%20Clients%20for%20Web%20Scraping%20in%202026 "Share on X") [ ](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fposts%2Fbest-python-http-clients "Share on Facebook") Summarize this article with [ ](https://chat.openai.com/?q=Summarize%20this%20article%20and%20explain%20how%20Scrapfly%20helps%20me%20scrape%20any%20website%20at%20scale%20and%20bypass%20anti-bot%20systems%20for%20my%20use%20case%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fposts%2Fbest-python-http-clients) [ ](https://claude.ai/new?q=Summarize%20this%20article%20and%20explain%20how%20Scrapfly%20helps%20me%20scrape%20any%20website%20at%20scale%20and%20bypass%20anti-bot%20systems%20for%20my%20use%20case%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fposts%2Fbest-python-http-clients) [ ](https://x.com/i/grok?text=Summarize%20this%20article%20and%20explain%20how%20Scrapfly%20helps%20me%20scrape%20any%20website%20at%20scale%20and%20bypass%20anti-bot%20systems%20for%20my%20use%20case%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fposts%2Fbest-python-http-clients) [ ](https://www.perplexity.ai/search/new?q=Summarize%20this%20article%20and%20explain%20how%20Scrapfly%20helps%20me%20scrape%20any%20website%20at%20scale%20and%20bypass%20anti-bot%20systems%20for%20my%20use%20case%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fposts%2Fbest-python-http-clients) [ ](https://www.google.com/search?udm=50&aep=11&q=Summarize%20this%20article%20and%20explain%20how%20Scrapfly%20helps%20me%20scrape%20any%20website%20at%20scale%20and%20bypass%20anti-bot%20systems%20for%20my%20use%20case%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fposts%2Fbest-python-http-clients) Almost every Python scraper starts the same way, with `import requests` at the top of the file. It works until one target answers 403 to every call, or a run that should take four minutes is still going after three hours. Concurrency, the HTTP versions you can negotiate, and the TLS handshake a server sees all come from the client rather than from your code. Eight clients are worth knowing in 2026, and no two of them sit in the same place on all three axes. [How TLS Fingerprint is Used to Block Web Scrapers?TLS fingeprinting is a popular way to identify web scrapers that not many developers are aware of. What is it and how can we fortify our scrapers to avoid being detected?](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/how-to-avoid-web-scraping-blocking-tls) ## Key Takeaways - **There is no single best client:** the job decides, not the star count. - **requests fits small scripts:** no async, no HTTP/2, and a documented feature freeze. - **HTTPX covers sync and async:** one API, but no release since December 2024. - **aiohttp wins on concurrency:** it is async only, and HTTP/1.1 is its ceiling. - **niquests upgrades requests in one import:** HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 behind the old API. - **HTTP/2 is not camouflage:** turning it on leaves your TLS fingerprint unchanged. - **Impersonation clients need active upkeep:** profiles age out as Chrome ships releases. **Get web scraping tips in your inbox**Trusted by 100K+ developers and 30K+ enterprises. Unsubscribe anytime. ## Which Python HTTP Client Is Best? No client wins every job. Pick by the constraint that is stopping you now, and pick again when a different one starts stopping you. Start from the job in front of you: - A short, sequential script: requests - Thousands of concurrent fetches: aiohttp - Hands-on control of connection pooling and retries: urllib3 - An existing requests codebase that needs HTTP/3: niquests - A 403 that survives every header fix: curl\_cffi - Impersonation with a compiled core: primp - Browser-like fetching plus parsing helpers: Stealth-Requests - One library across sync and async, if a stalled dependency is acceptable: HTTPX The table below compares all eight, column by column. | Client | Sync | Async | HTTP/2 | HTTP/3 | TLS impersonation | WebSocket | License | Stars (Aug 2026) | Latest release | Maintenance (last commit) | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | requests | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Apache-2.0 | 54,246 | 2.34.2, May 2026 | Frozen features, Aug 2026 | | aiohttp | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Apache-2.0 | 16,519 | 3.14.3, Jul 2026 | Active, Aug 2026 | | urllib3 | Yes | No | Experimental | No | No | No | MIT | 4,049 | 2.7.0, May 2026 | Active, Aug 2026 | | niquests | Yes | Yes | Yes | Usually on a second request | With `utls` extra | With `ws` extra | Apache-2.0 | 2,417 | 3.21.0, Jul 2026 | Active, Aug 2026 | | curl\_cffi | Yes | Yes | Yes | Behind a flag | Yes | Yes | MIT | 6,288 | 0.16.0, Aug 2026 | Active, Aug 2026 | | primp | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not documented | Yes | Not documented | MIT | 572 | 1.3.1, May 2026 | Quiet, May 2026 | | Stealth-Requests | Yes | Yes | Via curl\_cffi | Via curl\_cffi flag | Chrome 136 profile | No | MIT | 558 | 2.0.6, Apr 2026 | Quiet, Apr 2026 | | HTTPX | Yes | Yes | With `httpx[http2]` | No | No | Via `httpx-ws` | BSD-3-Clause | 15,407 | 0.28.1, Dec 2024 | Stalled, Mar 2026 | Star counts, release dates and commit dates are a snapshot taken from GitHub and PyPI on August 11, 2026. The small projects move fastest, so re-check niquests, curl\_cffi, primp and Stealth-Requests before you build on them. The TLS impersonation column does not follow from any of the others. A client can speak HTTP/2 fluently and still announce itself as Python in the [TLS handshake](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/ja3-ja4-tls-fingerprinting-guide-to-detection-and-evasion). That split is why mainstream clients come first below and impersonation clients follow. HTTPX sits last on maintenance grounds, not capability. ## How Did We Rank These? The order came from fit for real scraping work, protocol support, impersonation ability, API ergonomics, and dated evidence of maintenance. Star count alone never set a position. Only fetch-layer clients qualified. HTML parsers, frameworks such as [Scrapy](https://scrapy.org), and browser automation tools solve other layers. Mixing them into one table hides the choice this article is about. Maintenance here means the last release on PyPI and the last commit on the default branch, both read on August 11, 2026. Where those numbers disagree with a project's reputation, the numbers appear in the entry. All eight are independent open-source projects. Three publish their own benchmarks, and curl\_cffi sells commercial support, so the speed claims below name whoever made them. ## Project Setup Four packages cover every snippet in this article: requests, HTTPX with its HTTP/2 extra, aiohttp, and curl\_cffi. Install them into a fresh virtual environment. bash```bash pip install requests "httpx[http2]" aiohttp curl_cffi ``` The quotes around `httpx[http2]` matter, because zsh on macOS reads bare brackets as a filename pattern and aborts with `no matches found`. Skip that extra and `httpx.Client(http2=True)` raises an `ImportError` instead of negotiating anything. Keep niquests out of this environment. It pulls in urllib3-future, which takes over the `urllib3` import name, and plain requests calls then negotiate HTTP/2, which contradicts the first output below. ## 1. requests: Best for Simple, Synchronous Scripts requests is the pick when the job is a handful of sequential calls and nothing about the target asks for async or a modern protocol. Nothing else in Python has as much documentation or as many answered questions behind it. At 54,246 stars and Apache-2.0, it is also the only entry with a stated policy against new features. Its [contributor docs](https://github.com/psf/requests/blob/main/docs/dev/contributing.rst) say that "Requests is in a perpetual feature freeze, only the BDFL can add or approve of new features." A freeze is not abandonment. Version 2.34.2 shipped in May 2026, requires Python 3.10 or newer, and 2.33.0 before it closed a temp-file advisory. What the freeze does mean is that async and HTTP/2 are never arriving. You can see the second half of that in one call. This snippet sends a browser [header dict](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/python-requests-headers-guide) to an endpoint that echoes back what the server received. python```python import requests headers = { "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 " "(KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/146.0.0.0 Safari/537.36", "Accept-Language": "en-US,en;q=0.9", } response = requests.get("https://tls.peet.ws/api/all", headers=headers, timeout=30) response.raise_for_status() print("status:", response.status_code) print("negotiated protocol:", response.json()["http_version"]) ``` text```text status: 200 negotiated protocol: HTTP/1.1 ``` The headers claim Chrome 146, and the connection is still HTTP/1.1. From the same machine, requests and a raw [urllib3](https://urllib3.readthedocs.io/) connection pool produced the identical JA3 hash. That is because requests hands TLS to urllib3 and never touches it. Hold on to that inherited handshake, because it explains why a more modern client does not fix blocking either. ## 2. aiohttp: Best for High-Concurrency Async Scraping Reach for [aiohttp](https://docs.aiohttp.org/) when concurrency is the bottleneck and the code around it is already async. It has 16,519 stars, an Apache-2.0 license, a commit from August 11, 2026, and a server framework in the same package. There is no sync API, so a single blocking call means an event loop you did not want. The HTTP/2 request has been open as an issue since September 2021. The maintainers say it lands when they find time, unless someone contributes or funds it. Concurrency and that ceiling both show up in one run over three hosts. python```python import asyncio import time import aiohttp URLS = [ "https://example.com", "https://www.cloudflare.com/", "https://tls.peet.ws/api/all", ] async def fetch(session, url): async with session.get(url) as response: await response.read() return url, response.status, response.version async def main(): started = time.perf_counter() async with aiohttp.ClientSession(timeout=aiohttp.ClientTimeout(total=30)) as session: results = await asyncio.gather(*(fetch(session, url) for url in URLS)) for url, status, version in results: print(f"{status} HTTP/{version.major}.{version.minor} {url}") print(f"{len(URLS)} requests in {time.perf_counter() - started:.2f}s") asyncio.run(main()) ``` text```text 200 HTTP/1.1 https://example.com 200 HTTP/1.1 https://www.cloudflare.com/ 200 HTTP/1.1 https://tls.peet.ws/api/all 3 requests in 0.71s ``` Three fetches overlap inside one session, and HTTP/1.1 came back on every response. All three hosts serve HTTP/2 to a client that asks, so that is aiohttp's ceiling, not the targets'. Treat the elapsed time as one run, not a benchmark. Version 3.14.3 also carries a fix for a high-severity parser bug published in July 2026. Pin a current release before you point this at real volume. aiohttp writes its own HTTP stack, while requests borrows one from the library underneath it. [How to Rate Limit Async Requests in PythonQuick tutorial on how to limit asynchronous python connections when web scraping. This can reduce and balance out web scraping speed to avoid scraping pages too fast and blocking.](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/how-to-rate-limit-asynchronous-python-requests) ## 3. urllib3: Best Low-Level Foundation for Custom Control urllib3 puts the connection pool and the retry policy in your own hands, one layer below requests. It has 4,049 stars and an MIT license. Version 2.7.0, from May 2026, closed two high-severity advisories, a decompression-bomb bypass and a header leak on proxied redirects. urllib3 2.x ships an experimental `urllib3.http2` module, installed with `pip install "urllib3[h2]"` and switched on by calling `urllib3.http2.inject_into_urllib3()`, which forces ALPN to h2. The changelog itself calls it early development. Injection replaces the HTTPS connection class globally and drops HTTP/1.1 from the offer. The [Python packages roundup](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/top-10-web-scraping-libraries-in-python) covers where urllib3 sits among parsers. Sitting under requests also means sharing its fingerprint. One client keeps that requests API and changes nearly everything behind it. ## 4. niquests: Best Drop-In Upgrade From requests [niquests](https://github.com/jawah/niquests) takes an existing requests codebase to modern protocols without a rewrite. Change `import requests` to `import niquests as requests` and the calls keep working, on 2,417 stars and Apache-2.0. niquests is the only entry that offers HTTP/3 and TLS impersonation behind a drop-in requests replacement. HTTP/3 and impersonation each come with conditions rather than a switch you flip. HTTP/3 rides on a native `qh3` wheel, and the upgrade is not immediate. A first request to an HTTP/3-capable host came back as h2. Only the second one in the same session moved to h3, after Alt-Svc advertised it. Impersonation arrives with the `utls` extra and then needs no code at all. Installing it moved the observed JA4 to a Chrome-family value. That matches curl\_cffi's prefix but differs in the final component, so it is close rather than identical. niquests pulls in urllib3-future, which overwrites the installed `urllib3` package on disk the first time the interpreter starts after install. urllib3-future documents that override, and you can only avoid it at install time, with `URLLIB3_NO_OVERRIDE=1 pip install --no-binary urllib3-future`. A co-installed requests behaves differently either way. That is as far as an API-compatible client goes on fingerprints. Getting a byte-level browser handshake means giving up pure Python. ## 5. curl\_cffi: Best for TLS Fingerprint Impersonation [curl\_cffi](https://github.com/lexiforest/curl_cffi) is the client-level fix when the block lands on your TLS or HTTP/2 fingerprint rather than your IP. It binds the [curl-impersonate](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/curl-impersonate-scrape-chrome-firefox-tls-http2-fingerprint) fork of libcurl, so the handshake comes from curl, not from CPython's `ssl` module. Version 0.16.0 arrived on August 1, 2026 with 37 documented impersonation targets and Chrome profiles up to `chrome146`. It also ships an async session, WebSocket support, and a retry strategy, and one keyword argument does the work. python```python from curl_cffi import requests # impersonate="chrome" swaps the client's TLS handshake for a real Chrome one response = requests.get("https://tls.peet.ws/api/all", impersonate="chrome") fingerprint = response.json() print("status:", response.status_code) print("ja4:", fingerprint["tls"]["ja4"]) print("user-agent:", fingerprint["user_agent"]) ``` text```text status: 200 ja4: t13d1516h2_8daaf6152771_d8a2da3f94cd user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/146.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ``` Plain requests from the same machine reported a `python-requests` User-Agent and a JA4 whose ALPN field reads `h1`, since urllib3 only ever offers HTTP/1.1, so the swap shows on both ends. The profile also picks the operating system it claims, which is why macOS appears above. Read JA4 rather than JA3 here. Under impersonation the JA3 hash changed on every request while JA4 held steady across five runs. A check built on JA3 will look broken when it is working. HTTP/3 is not the default here, and reaching it means passing `http_version="v3"`. Every release below 0.15.0 carries a high-severity redirect SSRF, CVE-2026-33752, patched on April 3, 2026. curl\_cffi gets its handshake from a C library. One other client reaches the same fingerprint from a Rust core. [11 Best Anti-Bot Bypass Tools for Web Scraping in 2026Compare the best anti-bot bypass tools for web scraping, from managed APIs to open-source stealth browsers. See which tools get past Cloudflare, DataDome, Akamai, and PerimeterX, and when to use each.](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/best-anti-bot-bypass-tools) Scrapfly #### Need to bypass anti-bot protection? Scrapfly's Anti-Scraping Protection handles Cloudflare, DataDome, and more — automatically. [Try Free →](https://scrapfly.io/register)## 6. primp: Best Fast Impersonation Client [primp](https://github.com/deedy5/primp/tree/main/crates/primp-python) suits you if you want impersonation from a Rust core behind a small Python API. It has 572 stars, an MIT license, and 1.3.1 from May 2026, which is also the last month its default branch saw a commit. Async works through `primp.AsyncClient` and HTTP/2 through an `http2_only` argument. HTTP/3 and WebSocket appear nowhere in the 1.3.1 docs or type stubs. Its profile list runs `chrome_144` through `chrome_148`, plus Firefox, Safari, Edge and Opera, with a separate `impersonate_os` argument. Asking for `chrome_146` produced the same JA4 as curl\_cffi's Chrome profile. A July 2026 report on primp's [issue tracker](https://github.com/deedy5/primp/issues) says its impersonation advertises cipher suites it cannot negotiate. A separate, closed report from March 2025 covers the header interaction. With `impersonate` set, a headers dict loses only the keys the profile owns. In 1.3.1 a custom header still went out while `Accept-Language` came back as the profile's value. The repo is now a Rust workspace, so primp's Python docs live under `crates/primp-python`, and older links to the repo root miss them. Both impersonation clients so far leave parsing to you, and one wrapper closes that gap. ## 7. Stealth-Requests: Best requests-Style Stealth Client With Parsing [Stealth-Requests](https://github.com/jpjacobpadilla/Stealth-Requests) wraps browser-like fetching and parsing helpers in one requests-shaped API. It has 558 stars, an MIT license, and 2.0.6 from April 2026, and it calls curl\_cffi underneath. Two details in the source matter more than the README's stealth framing. The session hardcodes `impersonate='chrome136'`, and all 59 bundled User-Agent strings are Chrome 136, so its profile sits ten Chrome majors behind curl\_cffi's newest. Retry is opt-in, not automatic. You pass `retry=N`, and only then does it wait two seconds and try again. Its list of retryable codes covers [429](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/what-is-http-error-429-too-many-requests), 503 and 522. The parsing surface needs `pip install "stealth-requests[parsers]"`. Without that extra, `resp.meta`, `resp.links` and `resp.tables` raise an `ImportError`, and `markdown`, `soup` and `tree` are methods rather than properties. The package also declares `curl_cffi>=0.14.0`, below the version that fixed that SSRF, so pin curl\_cffi yourself. Its fingerprint is curl\_cffi's anyway, since the same JA4 and peetprint hash came back from all three impersonation clients. When all three fail on the same target, the next move is not a fourth client. ## 8. HTTPX: One API for Sync and Async, But Shipping Has Stopped [HTTPX](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/web-scraping-with-python-httpx) gives you one requests-shaped API for sync calls, async calls, and HTTP/2. After requests it is the most widely deployed client here, and it ranks last for one reason: it is the only entry that has not shipped a release in 2026. The maintenance record is the catch. The last stable release, 0.28.1, went to PyPI on December 6, 2024, and the default branch took one commit in all of 2026. The maintainers also switched GitHub Issues off, and 78 pull requests sit open. Pydantic publishes [httpx2](https://github.com/pydantic/httpx2), whose 2.10.0 release landed on August 9, 2026, as a live continuation. Its README says Pydantic "is picking up stewardship under the HTTPX2 name so that users have a reliably maintained path forward". That statement is not a drop-in guarantee, and neither future has settled. [Starlette](https://www.starlette.io/) 1.6.0 now declares `httpx2>=2.0.0` in its full extra while still listing httpx alongside it. Treat the migration as underway rather than done. For HTTPX itself, the snippet below prints what each end of the connection thinks it negotiated. python```python import asyncio import httpx URL = "https://tls.peet.ws/api/all" def fetch_sync(http2: bool) -> str: with httpx.Client(http2=http2, timeout=30) as client: response = client.get(URL) return f"{response.http_version} (server saw {response.json()['http_version']})" async def fetch_async(http2: bool) -> str: async with httpx.AsyncClient(http2=http2, timeout=30) as client: response = await client.get(URL) return f"{response.http_version} (server saw {response.json()['http_version']})" print("sync, http2=False:", fetch_sync(False)) print("sync, http2=True: ", fetch_sync(True)) print("async, http2=True: ", asyncio.run(fetch_async(True))) ``` text```text sync, http2=False: HTTP/1.1 (server saw HTTP/1.1) sync, http2=True: HTTP/2 (server saw h2) async, http2=True: HTTP/2 (server saw h2) ``` Client and server agree, so this is real ALPN negotiation, not a flag echoed back. The [three-way comparison](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/httpx-vs-requests-vs-aiohttp) answers the speed question in short form. The flag leaves the handshake alone, and aiohttp lands in exactly the same place. If you already run HTTPX, nothing is on fire. 0.28.1 keeps working, and a quiet repository does not break installed code. Stay where you are, and revisit when either httpx2 ships a stable 2.x that your own dependencies require, or Starlette drops plain httpx from its extras. For new code that wants one API across sync and async, niquests (entry 4) is the maintained equivalent, and aiohttp (entry 2) is the answer when async is all you need. ## When a Plain HTTP Client Isn't Enough A block that survives browser-grade TLS impersonation has stopped being a fetch-layer problem. Swapping clients only moves you between the first two of three rungs. A plain client is the first rung. An impersonating client is the second, and it fixes the handshake and nothing else. The third rung is a managed fetch layer or a real browser, which is where you go when the handshake was never the signal. The second rung is narrower than it looks. HTTPX and aiohttp produced the same JA3 and JA4 as each other, and turning on HTTP/2 in HTTPX left the JA3 hash unchanged. Protocol support and camouflage are separate axes. The systems doing the blocking also weigh IP reputation, header order, and behavior alongside the handshake. Scrapfly's [Web Scraping API](https://scrapfly.io/products/web-scraping-api) handles all of those layers behind one endpoint, so your parsing code keeps its shape. The [Python SDK](https://scrapfly.io/docs/sdk/python) is one of several, since Scrapfly also ships TypeScript, Go and Rust SDKs plus a Scrapy extension. Before you escalate, though, check whether the client you are escalating from still ships releases. ## Stealth Clients to Approach With Caution Two impersonation clients that still appear in older recommendations have stopped shipping altogether. [hrequests](https://github.com/daijro/hrequests) is the more painful case, because the design is good. It has 1,019 stars, a Go-backed TLS client, and no push to its default branch since December 1, 2024. One of its 47 open issues asks for Python 3.13 support, unanswered since July 2025. Its last code commit added Chrome 132 and Firefox 131 fingerprints, the ceiling of what it can pretend to be. [Python-Tls-Client](https://github.com/FlorianREGAZ/Python-Tls-Client), distributed on PyPI as `tls-client`, is quieter still. It has 819 stars and 66 open issues. Its master branch stopped at February 2, 2024, the same day as its 1.0.1 release. The same risk applies to the three impersonation clients recommended above. A [stealth client that stops updating](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/what-is-cloudscraper-and-new-alternatives) loses ground every time Chrome changes its handshake, so read the last commit date before the star count. Release dates narrow the field. No client helps at all when the data is missing from the response. ## Do You Need a Browser Instead? No HTTP client sees data that JavaScript writes into the page after load. Every client here returns the bytes the server sent. If the values you want are not in those bytes, no amount of impersonation puts them there. From there you can find the request the page makes for that data and call it directly. Or you run the page in a browser and read the rendered DOM, through [Playwright](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/web-scraping-with-playwright-and-python), [Selenium](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/web-scraping-with-selenium-and-python), [nodriver](https://ultrafunkamsterdam.github.io/nodriver/) or [Camoufox](https://camoufox.com/). Either path leaves you owning the fingerprint upkeep, which is the part a managed fetch layer takes over. [Best Stealth Browsers for Web Scraping in 2026A neutral, benchmark-literate ranking of the best open-source stealth browsers for web scraping in 2026, with the success, speed, and maintenance tradeoffs.](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/best-stealth-browsers) ## Skip the Fingerprint Maintenance With Scrapfly Keeping impersonation profiles current is the part of this work that never finishes, and it is the part Scrapfly takes over. ScrapFly's [Web Scraping API](https://scrapfly.io/products/web-scraping-api) is a single HTTP endpoint for collecting web data at scale, with a **99.99% success rate** across **130M+ proxies in 190+ countries**. - [Anti-Scraping Protection bypass](https://scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/anti-scraping-protection) - automatically defeats Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX, Akamai, and 90+ other bot systems. - [Smart proxy rotation](https://scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/proxy) - residential and datacenter pools with country and ASN level geo-targeting. - [JavaScript rendering](https://scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/javascript-rendering) - render SPAs and JavaScript-built pages through real cloud browsers. - [Browser automation scenarios](https://scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/javascript-scenario) - scroll, click, fill forms, and wait for elements without managing a browser fleet. - [Format conversion](https://scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/getting-started#api_param_format) - return pages as HTML, JSON, clean text, or LLM ready Markdown. - [Session management](https://scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/session) - keep cookies, headers, and IPs consistent across multi step flows. - [Smart caching](https://scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/getting-started#api_param_cache) - cache successful responses to cut cost on repeat scraping jobs. - [Python](https://scrapfly.io/docs/sdk/python), [TypeScript](https://scrapfly.io/docs/sdk/typescript), [Scrapy](https://scrapfly.io/docs/sdk/scrapy), and [no-code integrations](https://scrapfly.io/docs/integration/getting-started) including [Make](https://scrapfly.io/integration/make), [n8n](https://scrapfly.io/integration/n8n), [Zapier](https://scrapfly.io/integration/zapier), [LangChain](https://scrapfly.io/integration/langchain), and [LlamaIndex](https://scrapfly.io/integration/llamaindex). In the workflow above the Web Scraping API replaces the fetch call, so the parsing code you already wrote stays exactly as it is. ### Web Scraping API Scrape any website with our powerful API. Anti-bot bypass, JavaScript rendering, and rotating proxies built-in. [Try Web Scraping API](https://scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/getting-started) ## FAQ Is HTTPX faster than requests?For concurrent work, usually, because HTTPX can run many requests in one event loop and requests runs them one after another. For a single call the gap is noise, so measure your own workload. Does requests support HTTP/2 or async?No, requests is synchronous and HTTP/1.1 only. Use HTTPX, niquests, curl\_cffi or primp for HTTP/2, and HTTPX, aiohttp, niquests, curl\_cffi or primp for async. What is TLS or JA3 fingerprint impersonation?It is making your client's TLS handshake look like a real browser's, so the handshake itself stops identifying you as a script. curl\_cffi, primp, niquests and Stealth-Requests can do it, while requests, HTTPX, aiohttp and urllib3 cannot. Is Scrapy an HTTP client?No, Scrapy is a scraping framework with a fetch layer inside it. This list covers standalone clients you can drop into any project, including a Scrapy spider. Which Python HTTP clients support HTTP/3?niquests and curl\_cffi, plus Stealth-Requests through the curl\_cffi session it wraps. niquests upgrades on a second request to the same host once it has seen Alt-Svc, and curl\_cffi needs an explicit HTTP/3 argument. Is web scraping with these clients legal?Scraping publicly available data is generally legal, and the client you choose does not change that. Check the target's terms of service and the rules covering personal or copyrighted data before you collect anything. ## Summary Three questions settle the choice. Does concurrency matter, which HTTP versions does the job need, and does the handshake get you blocked? For most work, requests is still the answer, aiohttp takes over on concurrency, and niquests carries a requests codebase forward or gives new code one API for both. When a 403 survives every header fix, curl\_cffi or primp changes what those clients cannot. HTTP/2 support and browser camouflage have nothing to do with each other, and an impersonation client is only as current as its last release. Legal Disclaimer and PrecautionsThis tutorial covers popular web scraping techniques for education. Interacting with public servers requires diligence and respect: - Do not scrape at rates that could damage the website. - Do not scrape data that's not available publicly. - Do not store PII of EU citizens protected by GDPR. - Do not repurpose *entire* public datasets which can be illegal in some countries. Scrapfly does not offer legal advice but these are good general rules to follow. For more you should consult a lawyer. [ Add as a preferred source ](https://google.com/preferences/source?q=scrapfly.io) Table of Contents Table of Contents- [Key Takeaways](#key-takeaways) - [Which Python HTTP Client Is Best?](#which-python-http-client-is-best) - [How Did We Rank These?](#how-did-we-rank-these) - [Project Setup](#project-setup) - [1. requests: Best for Simple, Synchronous Scripts](#1-requests-best-for-simple-synchronous-scripts) - [2. aiohttp: Best for High-Concurrency Async Scraping](#2-aiohttp-best-for-high-concurrency-async-scraping) - [3. urllib3: Best Low-Level Foundation for Custom Control](#3-urllib3-best-low-level-foundation-for-custom-control) - [4. niquests: Best Drop-In Upgrade From requests](#4-niquests-best-drop-in-upgrade-from-requests) - [5. curl\_cffi: Best for TLS Fingerprint Impersonation](#5-curl-cffi-best-for-tls-fingerprint-impersonation) - [6. primp: Best Fast Impersonation Client](#6-primp-best-fast-impersonation-client) - [7. Stealth-Requests: Best requests-Style Stealth Client With Parsing](#7-stealth-requests-best-requests-style-stealth-client-with-parsing) - [8. HTTPX: One API for Sync and Async, But Shipping Has Stopped](#8-httpx-one-api-for-sync-and-async-but-shipping-has-stopped) - [When a Plain HTTP Client Isn't Enough](#when-a-plain-http-client-isn-t-enough) - [Stealth Clients to Approach With Caution](#stealth-clients-to-approach-with-caution) - [Do You Need a Browser Instead?](#do-you-need-a-browser-instead) - [Skip the Fingerprint Maintenance With Scrapfly](#skip-the-fingerprint-maintenance-with-scrapfly) - [FAQ](#faq) - [Summary](#summary) Join the Newsletter Get monthly web scraping insights Scale Your Web Scraping Anti-bot bypass, browser rendering, and rotating proxies, all in one API. Start with 1,000 free credits. No credit card required 1,000 free API credits Anti-bot bypass included [Start Free](https://scrapfly.io/register) [View Docs](https://scrapfly.io/docs/onboarding) Not ready? Get our newsletter instead. ## Related Articles [ python httpx ### How to Web Scrape with HTTPX and Python Intro to using Python's httpx library for web scraping. Proxy and user agent rotation and common web scraping challenges... ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/web-scraping-with-python-httpx) [ blocking playwright ### Bypass Proxy Detection with Browser Fingerprint Impersonation Stop proxy blocks with browser fingerprint impersonation using this guide for Playwright, Selenium, curl-impersonate & S... ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/bypass-proxy-detection-with-browser-fingerprint-impersonation) [ http python ### Guide to Python requests POST method Discover how to use Python's requests library for POST requests, including JSON, form data, and file uploads, along with... ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/how-to-python-requests-post) ## Related Questions - [ Q Python httpx vs requests vs aiohttp - key differences ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/httpx-vs-requests-vs-aiohttp) - [ Q How to use proxies with Python httpx? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/how-to-use-proxies-python-httpx) - [ Q How to save and load cookies in Python requests? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/save-and-load-cookies-in-requests-python) - [ Q What Python libraries support HTTP2? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/what-python-libraries-support-http2) Bypass anti-bot protection automatically, **1,000 free credits** [Start Free](https://scrapfly.io/register)