BROWSER USE

- Browser Use Agents: give Browser Use a task and receive completed work. API V4 is current for new integrations.
- Browser Infrastructure: connect your agent or automation to managed browsers through SDK, REST, or CDP. Starts at $0.02/browser-hour.
- Developer tools: Open Source, Browser Harness, SDK, and MCP support the two products above.

[Developer Index](https://browser-use.com/index.md)
[Product Map](https://browser-use.com/llms.txt)
[Full Product Context](https://browser-use.com/llms-full.txt)
[Pricing](https://browser-use.com/pricing.md)
[Cloud Docs](https://docs.browser-use.com/cloud/quickstart)
[Open Source Docs](https://docs.browser-use.com/open-source/introduction)

---

# Browserless alternatives

> The main Browserless alternatives are Browser Use Cloud, Anchor, Kernel, Browserbase, Steel and Hyperbrowser. On Stealth Bench V2 (100 bot-protected sites), Browser Use Cloud got through on 90.5% of visits vs Browserless 77.5%, at $0.02 per browser-hour vs $0.18 to $0.24 for Browserless overage.

[HTML page](https://browser-use.com/alternatives/browserless) · [Stealth benchmark](https://browser-use.com/benchmarks/browsers) · [Pricing](https://browser-use.com/pricing.md)

## Stealth, price and speed, side by side

| Provider | Got through (Stealth Bench V2) | Price per browser-hour | Session lifecycle (BrowserArena median) | Lifecycle score (ComputeSDK) |
|---|---:|---|---:|---:|
| Browser Use Cloud | 90.5% | $0.02 | 493 ms | 95.2 |
| Anchor | 82% | $0.05 | 2,800 ms | Not tested |
| Kernel | 80.5% | $0.06 to $0.48 | 318 ms | 96.4 |
| Browserbase | 78.5% | $0.10 to $0.12 | 877 ms | 92.8 |
| Browserless | 77.5% | $0.18 to $0.24 | No result | Not tested |
| Steel | 74.5% | $0.08 to $0.10 | 3,509 ms | 77.2 |
| Hyperbrowser | 73.5% | $0.10 | 1,417 ms | 94.0 |

- Got through: share of 200 visits (100 bot-protected sites, 2 runs) where a judge model, shown the page without the provider name, confirmed the real site loaded within 60 seconds. Measured September 25, 2026. Every provider ran with its own proxy, stealth mode and CAPTCHA solver on. The sites were picked because Browser Use Cloud historically got through where stock Chrome with a US proxy did not, so they are hard on purpose and not a balanced sample of the web or of anti-bot vendors. 17 of Browserless's 200 visits were unresolved and count as not through; had all of them got through, it would be 86%. An independent rerun put Browserless at 83% and Browser Use Cloud at 90%. [Method, code and raw results](https://browser-use.com/benchmarks/browsers)
- Prices, checked October 15, 2026, from each provider's public page:
  - Browser Use Cloud: pay as you go, billed by the minute, no subscription; residential proxies $5/GB. [Pricing](https://browser-use.com/pricing.md)
  - Browserless: overage, billed in 30-second units; plans $25 to $350/month; residential proxies 6 units/MB (residential; a unit costs $0.0015 to $0.0020 on overage). [Source](https://www.browserless.io/pricing)
  - Anchor: plus $0.01 per browser created; full stealth from the $2,000/month Growth plan. [Source](https://docs.anchorbrowser.io/pricing)
  - Kernel: headless to headful, billed per GB-second; plans $0 to $200/month. [Source](https://www.kernel.sh/docs/info/pricing)
  - Browserbase: after 100 or 500 hours included in $20 or $99/month plans; residential proxies $10 to $12/GB. [Source](https://www.browserbase.com/pricing)
  - Steel: $0.08 on the $250/month Scale plan; stealth browser on Enterprise. [Source](https://steel.dev/pricing)
  - Hyperbrowser: credits from a subscription or a direct purchase. [Source](https://hyperbrowser.ai/docs/pricing)
- Session lifecycle: median time to create a session, connect over CDP, load a page and release it, over 100 sequential runs, BrowserArena run of October 14, 2026. Browserless: all 100 runs failed to connect (401), so there is no number. ComputeSDK has not tested Browserless. [BrowserArena](https://www.browserarena.ai/?percentile=median&sort=latency&date=2026-10-14)
- Lifecycle score: ComputeSDK composite of median and tail total latency plus create latency, times success rate, run of October 9, 2026. Higher is better. [ComputeSDK](https://www.computesdk.com/benchmarks/browsers/lifecycle)

## When to pick which

- **Browser Use Cloud**: most sites let you in, lowest price per hour, no subscription. Also a [hosted agent](https://browser-use.com/web-agents.md) when you want the task done, not just a browser. The [browser-use](https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use) agent library is open source (MIT).
- **Browserless**: you want to run it on your own hardware with Docker, need Firefox and WebKit next to Chrome, or want one-shot [screenshot and PDF endpoints](https://www.browserless.io/). Long track record: Browserless says 8 years in production and 175M+ Docker pulls.
- **Anchor**: second on Stealth Bench V2, with managed logins for agents that sign in to third-party apps.
- **Kernel**: session start time matters most. Fastest of this group on both third-party lifecycle benchmarks.
- **Browserbase**: Stagehand is central to your stack, you run Selenium, or you want Search, Fetch and Functions from the same vendor.
- **Steel**: you want open-source browser infrastructure you can run yourself.
- **Hyperbrowser**: you want scraping and crawl APIs and sandboxes from the same vendor.

## Move a Playwright script from Browserless

Both speak Chromium over CDP. Where you passed the Browserless WebSocket URL with your token to `connectOverCDP`, create a browser with `client.browsers.create()` and pass its `cdpUrl`. Stop it with `client.browsers.stop(id)`; closing the CDP connection does not stop billing. Firefox and WebKit runs, BrowserQL scripts and the one-shot screenshot and PDF endpoints stay on Browserless; take screenshots in your Playwright script instead. The Browserless code follows [its Playwright docs](https://docs.browserless.io/Libraries/playwright).

```ts
// Before: Browserless
const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(
  `wss://production-sfo.browserless.io?token=${TOKEN}`,
);

// After: Browser Use Cloud
import { BrowserUse } from "browser-use-sdk/v4";
const client = new BrowserUse();
const session = await client.browsers.create();
const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(session.cdpUrl!);
// ...
await client.browsers.stop(session.id); // closing CDP does not stop billing
```

[Remote browser for Playwright](https://browser-use.com/playwright.md)

## Open source and self-hosting

- [browser-use](https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use), the agent library: MIT. Runs agents on your own Chrome or on Browser Use Cloud. The cloud browsers themselves are a hosted service.
- [steel-browser](https://github.com/steel-dev/steel-browser): Apache-2.0, self-hosted with Docker.
- [kernel-images](https://github.com/kernel/kernel-images): Apache-2.0, runs as a Docker container.
- [browserless](https://github.com/browserless/browserless): SSPL-1.0 or a commercial license. Its README says closed-source commercial use needs the commercial license.