If you're grabbing just HTML, I know you know HTTP::Tiny is nice lite'r option. I've never actually needed to use Mechanize - though always wanted to. I seem to have gone from just parsing HTML or JSON with LWP or HTTP::Tiny to using something like Playwright or Firefox::Marionette for interaction. Web::Scraper is super handy here. I know the "dream" is to have browserless browser objects, but frankly I don't know how this kind of thing can be sustainable - I think it's a miracle Mechanize still exists.