Curl-impersonate: Special build of curl that can impersonate the major browsers
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2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
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HN comment orderThere's a fork of this that has some great improvements over to the top of the original and it is also actively maintained: https://github.com/lexiforest/curl-impersonate There's also Python bindings for the fork for anyone who uses Python: https://github.com/lexiforest/curl_cffi
I run a MITM proxy for adblocking/general filtering and within the past little while I've noticed CloudFlare and other "bot protection" tends to get me blocked out of increasingly more sites I come across in search results, so this will be very useful for fixing that. However, I should caution that in this era of companies being particularly user-hostile and authoritarian, especially Big Tech, I would be more careful with sharing stuff like this. Being forced to run JS is…
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 795
- Total comments
- 212
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-02-17 | Show HN: Curl modified to impersonate Firefox and mimic its TLS handshakeFirst breakout | lwthiker | 249 | 57 |
| 2023-09-08 | Curl-impersonate: Mimic real browsers' TLS handshake with curl | rane | 1 | 0 |
| 2025-04-03 | Curl-impersonate: Special build of curl that can impersonate the major browsersBest thread · Latest 20+ point return | mmh0000 | 545 | 155 |