i built chromium headless_shell for ubuntu 16 in the last 3 months to compare it to my phantomjs 2.1.1 build (cookie patch and ghostdriver selenium 2.53 patch). i was disappointed in what chromium headless_shell had to offer.

good: slightly faster on javascript heavy pages, full dowload and upload support, selenium support for alerts/popups

bad: slower startup, slower average performance, no mobile support, no screenshot support, takes at least 2x cpu and memory compared to phantomjs

for me phantomjs/ghostdriver is faster than chromedriver. plus chromedriver has an annoying click "feature"[1] that can break selenium tests.

[1] https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/help/cl...