# Performance Issue: 66x slower with new headless vs headless shell (Playwright v1.49+)

[mrjjwright]

Summary

Following Playwright v1.49 headless changes, Crawlee experiences 66x startup time degradation when using regular Chromium ("new headless") vs the dedicated headless shell.

Environment

• Crawlee: v3.13.5
• Playwright: v1.51.1

Test Results

We tested 2 configurations to isolate the root cause:

Configuration	Browser Type	Crawlee Delay	Details
Default (no options)	chromium_headless_shell	0.3s	✅ Fast - uses old headless shell
Channel only (channel: 'chromium')	Regular Chromium	18.6s	🐌 Slow - forces new headless

Link to test code

Root Cause

Per the official Playwright announcement, v1.49+ ships two browser types:

• Old headless shell (chromium_headless_shell): Lightweight, fast startup
• New headless (regular Chromium): Full browser with --headless=new, slower startup

The issue: Any configuration that forces regular Chromium (channel: 'chromium'`) triggers the slow "new headless" path. Only the default uses the fast headless shell.

Questions

1. Is this expected? Should new headless be 66x slower startup?

Thank you for maintaining this excellent library!

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Link to test code