Web.BrowserContents

Accessing Data

Returns the HTML of a URL as rendered by a web browser, including JavaScript-generated content.

Examples on this page use shared sample tables. View them to understand the input data before reading the examples below.

Syntax

Web.BrowserContents(url as text, optional options as nullable record) as text

Parameters

NameTypeRequiredDescription
urltextYesThe URL of the web page to render.
optionsrecordNoAn optional record with options. Supports WaitFor to control when the browser considers the page fully loaded.

Return Value

text — The fully rendered HTML source of the web page after JavaScript execution, as a text value.

Remarks

Web.BrowserContents opens the specified URL in an embedded headless Chromium browser, executes JavaScript, waits for the page to render, and returns the resulting HTML source as text. This is fundamentally different from Web.Contents, which sends an HTTP request and returns only the raw server response without running any JavaScript. Use Web.BrowserContents when the data you need is generated client-side — for example, tables populated by a JavaScript framework (React, Angular, Vue), content loaded via AJAX after the initial page load, or data that requires scroll/interaction events to appear.

Availability: Web.BrowserContents is available only in Power BI Desktop. It is not supported in Power BI Service cloud refresh, Excel Desktop, Excel Online, dataflows, or Fabric Notebooks. For scheduled refresh in Power BI Service, the report must use an on-premises data gateway installed on a machine that has Chromium/Edge available (typically a Windows machine with Power BI Desktop or the gateway installed).

Authentication: Only anonymous (unauthenticated) access is supported. The function opens the URL in a browser that has no saved credentials. If the target page requires a login, cookies, or tokens, Web.BrowserContents cannot authenticate. For authenticated web sources, use Web.Contents with appropriate headers or credentials configured in the data source settings.

The WaitFor option: By default, the function waits for the page's initial load event. Use the WaitFor sub-record in the options parameter to customize this: - [WaitFor = [Timeout = #duration(0, 0, 0, 30)]] — wait up to 30 seconds, then capture whatever HTML has rendered. - [WaitFor = [Element = "table.results"]] — wait until an element matching the CSS selector table.results appears in the DOM before capturing HTML. This is the most reliable approach for dynamically loaded content.

Typical workflow: Web.BrowserContents returns raw HTML text. Pass it to Web.Page to automatically extract all

elements, or to Html.Table for precise CSS-selector-based extraction. Do not call Web.BrowserContents inside a function applied per-row (e.g., inside Table.AddColumn) — it renders a full browser instance each time and is very slow.

Examples

Example 1: Fetch the JavaScript-rendered HTML of a page

```powerquery

Web.BrowserContents("https://example.com/dynamic-table")

Example 2: Render a page and extract HTML tables using Web.Page

```powerquery

let
    Html = Web.BrowserContents("https://example.com/dynamic-table"),
    Tables = Web.Page(Html),
    FirstTable = Tables{0}[Data]
in
    FirstTable

Example 3: Wait for a specific DOM element to appear before capturing HTML

```powerquery

let
    Html = Web.BrowserContents(
        "https://example.com/slow-loading",
        [WaitFor = [Element = "table.data-table"]]
    ),
    Data = Html.Table(
        Html,
        {{"Name", "td.name"}, {"Score", "td.score"}},
        [RowSelector = "table.data-table tr.data-row"]
    )
in
    Data

Example 4: Wait with a fixed timeout duration

```powerquery

let
    Html = Web.BrowserContents(
        "https://example.com/dashboard",
        [WaitFor = [Timeout = #duration(0, 0, 0, 30)]]
    ),
    Tables = Web.Page(Html)
in
    Tables

Related Functions

Compatibility

✓ Power BI Desktop✗ Power BI Service✗ Excel Desktop✗ Excel Online✗ Dataflows✗ Fabric Notebooks