I Tested an Open-Source Anti-Bot Firewall (Anubis) Against Requests, AsyncIO, Selenium, and Playwright

Description and use

The author tested Anubis using Requests, aiohttp, Selenium, and Playwright. All requests returned 200 OK, suggesting conservative settings or insufficient traffic to trigger enforcement.

Problem

Assess how Anubis, an open‑source anti‑bot firewall, handles common scraping tools and browser automation.

Outcome

All automated requests succeeded with 200 OK, suggesting Anubis did not enforce challenges under the tested conditions. Possible explanations include conservative configuration, insufficient traffic volume, or missing enforcement thresholds.

Workflow

• Identify publicly accessible sites running Anubis
• Perform 20 sequential Requests calls and record status
• Run 100 concurrent aiohttp requests and record status
• Launch Selenium and access the site, observe response
• Run Playwright and Playwright MCP, observe responses
• Analyze results and hypothesize reasons for lack of blocking

Evidence

Every request returned: 200 OK

Source

100 requests 100 x 200 OK 0 blocks

Source

Normal page access. No obvious blocking.

Source