Browserless is live · free plan, paid from $25/mo billed annually · last verified 23 Oct 2026 · viability healthy
Browserless
Browserless gives AI agents and Puppeteer/Playwright scripts a managed headless browser with stealth, CAPTCHA solving, and proxies built in.
If your Puppeteer or Playwright script works in a demo and dies in prod, Browserless is close to a drop-in fix — one line swap, and stealth, CAPTCHA solving, reconnects, and proxies come bundled rather than metered as separate add-ons. The 2026 agent work (MCP tools, typed BAP SDKs, Authenticated Profiles, /agent/run in beta) is aimed squarely at people shipping agents. If your priority is the biggest residential IP pool or a visual builder, look elsewhere.
Verdict generatedVerified 7d ago · liveness 87/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/browserless
- Engineering teams already running Puppeteer or Playwright that need production reliability without a rewrite
- Scraping teams fighting anti-bot defenses on JavaScript-heavy targets
- AI agent developers who need persistent, authenticated browser sessions across runs
- Ops and QA teams generating screenshots, PDFs, and Lighthouse audits from URLs
- Teams wanting a drag-and-drop, no-code automation builder
- Projects written on Selenium or other non-Puppeteer/Playwright/CDP frameworks
- Buyers whose main requirement is the largest possible residential IP network
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Skip Browserless if your automation stack isn't Puppeteer, Playwright, or CDP-based and you don't want to rewrite it — the one-line connect() migration is the entire pitch.
A session longer than 30 seconds burns an extra unit for every additional 30 seconds, so a 5-minute job costs roughly 10 units before any proxy or CAPTCHA charges.
Free (1k units/mo, 2 concurrency) covers a prototype; Prototyping at $25/mo billed annually (20k units) is the cheapest real workload; most production teams land on Starter at $140/mo billed annually (180k units) or Scale at $350/mo billed annually (500k units). That is roughly comparable to Browserbase and ScrapingBee entry pricing but well under Bright Data's enterprise contracts once bundled proxies are counted — though heavy residential-proxy volume can flip that math.
In short
Browserless — Browserless gives AI agents and Puppeteer/Playwright scripts a managed headless browser with stealth, CAPTCHA solving, and proxies built in. Best for Engineering teams already running Puppeteer or Playwright that need production reliability without a rewrite, Scraping teams fighting anti-bot defenses on JavaScript-heavy targets, AI agent developers who need persistent, authenticated browser sessions across runs. Free to start; paid plans from $25/mo billed annually.
No head-to-head comparison for Browserless yet — the alternatives below are the closest matches we list.
What is Browserless?
Browserless — Browserless gives AI agents and Puppeteer/Playwright scripts a managed headless browser with stealth, CAPTCHA solving, and proxies built in. Best for Engineering teams already running Puppeteer or Playwright that need production reliability without a rewrite, Scraping teams fighting anti-bot defenses on JavaScript-heavy targets, AI agent developers who need persistent, authenticated browser sessions across runs. Free to start; paid plans from $25/mo billed annually.
Browserless is managed headless browser infrastructure for anyone whose code needs real Chrome at scale. If you already write Puppeteer, Playwright, or CDP, the migration is a single line: swap launch() for connect() against a WebSocket endpoint and the rest of your script stays intact. Underneath, the company runs managed Chrome, WebKit, and Firefox that autoscale through traffic spikes, backed by eight years in production, 175M+ Docker pulls, and a claimed 99.9% uptime. The surface splits by job. Scrapers get anti-bot bypass with stealth fingerprints, automatic CAPTCHA solving, session persistence that trims proxy spend, and REST endpoints like /unblock, /smart-scrape, /search, /crawl, and /map. Reporting and QA teams get /screenshot and /pdf from any URL. Automation teams get form fills, multi-step flows, and uptime checks — all through the same API across cloud, managed, or self-hosted deployment. The bet that's paying off is the AI agent layer. An MCP server hands search, scrape, and crawl tools to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client. Authenticated Profiles sync logged-in browser sessions to the cloud, and Autologin with 1Password resolves credentials server-side so they never land in screenshots. A built-in Browser Agent drives a real browser across multi-step tasks, and an /agent/run endpoint (beta, Cloud plans) takes a plain-English task and returns structured JSON. Recent releases tightened the developer experience further: the Browser Automation Protocol gives typed TypeScript and Python SDKs over BrowserQL with autocomplete and typed responses, request logs expose endpoint, region, latency, error, and per-run unit cost, /smart-scrape accepts an actions array of up to 20 steps, and emailed one-time login codes can be pulled from a dedicated IMAP inbox. Positioning-wise, Browserless competes with Browserbase on agent-native browser sessions and with Bright Data on proxy depth — it leans hardest on API-first, code-in-your-own-framework control.
Key features
- One-line migration: swap Puppeteer/Playwright launch() for connect() against a WebSocket endpoint
- Managed headless Chrome, WebKit, and Firefox via Browsers as a Service
- Anti-bot bypass with stealth fingerprints sites don't flag
- Automatic CAPTCHA solving, billed at 10 units per successful solve
- Residential proxies at 6 units/MB and datacenter proxies at 2 units/MB
- Session reconnects keep browsers alive between runs
- REST APIs: /screenshot, /pdf, /unblock, /smart-scrape, /search, /map, /crawl, /content, /function
- /smart-scrape actions array: up to 20 wait, click, write, scroll, scrape, executeJavascript steps
- MCP server exposing search, scrape, and crawl tools to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client
- Built-in Browser Agent for multi-step tasks with file attachments and downloads
- /agent/run REST endpoint: plain-English task in, JSON out, with responseSchema, startUrl, allowedDomains (beta, Cloud)
- Authenticated Profiles: sync local logged-in sessions to the cloud via CLI
- Autologin with 1Password: credentials resolved server-side and locked from screenshots
- Emailed one-time-code capture from a dedicated IMAP inbox via mail:// references (Gmail tested)
- Browser Automation Protocol: typed TypeScript SDK (Python landing) over BrowserQL with autocomplete
Behind the verdict
We'd reach for Browserless when the browser is the bottleneck, not the logic. The pattern that fits: your model reasons fine, then Chrome crashes, loses the login, or stalls three steps into the job. That's the exact failure mode this service exists to absorb, and the one-line connect() swap means you keep your own framework instead of adopting theirs. The unit model is fair but wants watching. A unit is up to 30 seconds of browser time per connection, and long automations bill an extra unit per extra 30 seconds. Session reconnects count as fresh connections, so a script that reconnects often burns units faster than the raw session length suggests. Captcha solves cost 10 units each and proxies bill by megabyte — build those into your cost model before you scale a scraping job. Pick it if your team is already on Puppeteer, Playwright, or CDP and wants production reliability without a rewrite, or if you're building agents that need a persistent, signed-in browser across runs. The MCP server and typed BAP SDKs are genuinely useful for that crowd, and the Free tier's 1k units gives you a real test drive with no card. Pass if you want a drag-and-drop builder, or your stack is Selenium or another non-CDP framework. Also pass if the largest possible residential IP network is the buying decision — proxy reach here is a supporting feature, not the main event. The closest alternatives are Browserbase for agent-native sessions and Bright Data for proxy depth. Browserless's edge is code-in-your-own-framework control and self-hosting options on Enterprise. In practice, the platform-level caveat is that success rates depend heavily on the target site's defenses and your session strategy, so pilot on your hardest URLs before committing to a tier above Prototyping.
Limitations
- Browserless is managed headless browser infrastructure, not an AI model provider; its MCP server plugs into external clients like Claude or Cursor, and the built-in Browser Agent is a managed agent.
- Billing is metered in units of up to 30 seconds per browser connection, and longer automations use an extra unit every 30 seconds.
- Session reconnects count as new browser connections and incur a fresh unit charge.
- CAPTCHA solves cost 10 units each; proxy bandwidth costs 6 units/MB (residential) and 2 units/MB (datacenter).
- Session caps rise by tier: 2 minutes on Free, 15 on Prototyping, 30 on Starter, 60 on Scale.
- The /agent/run endpoint is in beta and Cloud-only, and the BAP SDK is TypeScript-first with the Python package stated as landing shortly.
as of 2026-10-18
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Is Browserless still active?
Browserless is live · free plan, paid from $25/mo billed annually · last verified 23 Oct 2026 · viability healthy.
Viability score
How well maintained and how widely used is Browserless? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →What's new in Browserless
Checked todayAcross the latest 5 updates: 5 feature updates.
Sign in to sites that email a login code
Browserless can fetch an emailed one-time code from a dedicated IMAP inbox and type it into the login field, with the code never reaching your script. Gmail is tested; other providers best-effort, and SMS or push approvals still need a person.
Fix an expired login in place
Recover with autologin re-signs an Authenticated Profile into its saved sites while keeping the profile name and ID, so scripts using ?profile=<name> pick up the fresh login with no code changes.
Click, type, and scroll before you scrape
/smart-scrape takes an actions array of up to 20 steps (wait, click, write, scroll, scrape, executeJavascript) so you can dismiss banners and trigger lazy loading before capture, with each scrape action saving that step's HTML.
Write BrowserQL in TypeScript or Python instead of GraphQL
The Browser Automation Protocol is a typed SDK with page.goto() and page.click() over BrowserQL, giving autocomplete and typed responses. The TypeScript package ships now; the Python package is landing shortly.
Now you can see exactly why a request failed
Request logs show which endpoint handled each request, where it ran, latency, the error, and a per-run unit cost breakdown across browser time, proxy, captcha, and agent, searchable from 8 hours on Free to 7 days on Scale.
What do users say about Browserless?
What people actually say about Browserless — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
ResearchedDiscussed by users across 4 sources (Hacker News, YouTube, Product Hunt, GitHub) · researched Oct 14, 2026.
Weighted by the 49 posts each of 4 sources contributed.
- +One-line migration from launch() to connect() — existing Puppeteer and Playwright code runs unchanged
- +Self-hostable Docker image with 13,811 GitHub stars gives an escape hatch from the managed cloud
- +Strong pull with AI agent stacks: MCP server, Claude Computer Use, LangChain, and OpenClaw integrations cited unprompted
- +Managed Chrome, WebKit, and Firefox means no maintaining a browser fleet or handling autoscaling yourself
- +Authenticated Profiles and 1Password Autologin solve the 'stay signed in' problem for agent workflows
- −No per-session CPU/memory breakdown in /pressure, /metrics, or /sessions — unresolved per the Oct 2026 GitHub issue
- −Unit costs stack fast: CAPTCHAs at 10 units and residential proxies at 6 units/MB can blow past plan budgets
- −Free tier caps at 1k units/month with only two concurrent browsers, which is tight for any real scrape
- −Sessions cap at 2 minutes, forcing reconnect plumbing for longer-running agent flows
- −Platform discussion is scattered across HN and GitHub — no rich Reddit or Stack Overflow threads with troubleshooting answers
- • CAPTCHAs consume 10 units each on success — a scrape that triggers hundreds of solves eats units fast
- • Residential proxies at 6 units/MB can silently dominate spend on data-heavy scraping jobs
- • Datacenter proxies at 2 units/MB still add up for teams who assume proxies are bundled
- • Unit overages and concurrency add-ons aren't prominent upfront, so effective cost differs from headline tier price
How we verified this
Every listed fact about Browserless— pricing, features, links, status — is re-read from the vendor's own pages by our verification pipeline and each change is logged with a date; the last pass ran on 23 Oct 2026. Pages mix model-assisted synthesis with human review; see how we verify.
Verification history
We have re-verified Browserless 20 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — changed summary, pricing tiers, who it suits, our verdict, description, features
- — changed setup time, features, pricing tiers, our verdict, summary, who should skip it, switching out, switching in, pricing fit, limitations, hidden costs, description, use cases
- — changed integrations, who it suits, description, our verdict, features, who should skip it, pricing tiers, summary
- — changed limitations, pricing page
- — changed SSL certificate
- — changed who it suits, description, features, limitations, who should skip it, setup time, pricing fit, switching in, use cases, switching out, our verdict, hidden costs, summary
Showing the 6 most recent of 20 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
How much does Browserless cost in 2026?
Browserless: Free to start; paid plans from $25/mo billed annually. Pricing last verified 23 Oct 2026.
Plans compared
Every published Browserless tier, its price as the vendor publishes it, who it fits, and what it adds over the tier below. The 12-month cost projection follows.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | FreeVendor: “$0/mo billed annually” | — | A solo developer testing whether Browserless unblocks one stubborn target, or prototyping an agent before committing budget.Adds: Free entry point: 1k units/month, 2 concurrent browsers, 2-minute sessions, 1-day session storage, 8-hour log window, with 6-unit/MB residential and 2-unit/MB datacenter proxies included. |
| Prototyping | $25/mo billed annually | monthly, billed annually | A small team running a real scrape or agent workflow in development, still under 20k units a month.Adds: $25/mo billed annually adds 20k units, 10 concurrent browsers, 15-minute sessions, 7-day storage, 24-hour logs, screen recording, and bring-your-own external proxies. |
| Starter | $140/mo billed annually | monthly, billed annually | A production scraping or reporting pipeline consuming 100k–200k units a month that needs faster support.Adds: $140/mo billed annually jumps to 180k units, 40 concurrent browsers, 30-minute sessions, 30-day storage, 3-day logs, email/chat/video support, and overage at $0.0017/unit. |
| Scale | $350/mo billed annually | monthly, billed annually | A scaling data or agent platform running several hundred thousand units a month across many workflows.Adds: $350/mo billed annually adds 500k units, 100 concurrent browsers, 60-minute sessions, 90-day storage, 7-day log search, and the lowest overage rate at $0.0015/unit. |
| Enterprise | Custom | quote | Organizations with data-residency rules, HIPAA obligations, or unit volumes in the millions that need private deployment.Adds: Custom pricing adds private or licensed self-hosting, hundreds or thousands of concurrent browsers, custom proxy limits with geotargeting, GPU infrastructure, SSO, SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA BAA, and a dedicated account manager. |
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Browserless's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Free (1k units/mo, 2 concurrency) covers a prototype; Prototyping at $25/mo billed annually (20k units) is the cheapest real workload; most production teams land on Starter at $140/mo billed annually (180k units) or Scale at $350/mo billed annually (500k units). That is roughly comparable to Browserbase and ScrapingBee entry pricing but well under Bright Data's enterprise contracts once bundled proxies are counted — though heavy residential-proxy volume can flip that math.
Has Browserless' pricing changed?
No plan price for Browserless has moved since we began logging in Aug 2026; the pricing page is re-read on every verification pass.
Who should pick Browserless?
Pick Browserless if you are Engineering teams already running Puppeteer or Playwright that need production reliability without a rewrite, Scraping teams fighting anti-bot defenses on JavaScript-heavy targets, AI agent developers who need persistent, authenticated browser sessions across runs, Ops and QA teams generating screenshots, PDFs, and Lighthouse audits from URLs.
Look elsewhere if you are Teams wanting a drag-and-drop, no-code automation builder, Projects written on Selenium or other non-Puppeteer/Playwright/CDP frameworks, Buyers whose main requirement is the largest possible residential IP network, Anyone who needs session lengths beyond the plan cap — Free caps at 2 minutes, Scale at 60.
Skip it if Skip Browserless if your automation stack isn't Puppeteer, Playwright, or CDP-based and you don't want to rewrite it — the one-line connect() migration is the entire pitch.
GeneratedReal-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Browserless actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
They already have a Puppeteer scraper that gets blocked on product pages. They repoint it at wss://chrome.browserless.io, turn on stealth fingerprints and CAPTCHA solving, and add /smart-scrape actions to click through cookie banners and infinite scroll before capture.
Outcome: The same code runs without a Chrome fleet to babysit; blocked pages resolve automatically and each request's unit cost shows up in the request log so they can see what stealth and CAPTCHA are actually costing per target.
They connect Claude or Cursor to the Browserless MCP server for search, scrape, and crawl tools, then create an Authenticated Profile from a 1Password service account so the agent starts each run signed in to the sites it needs, with emailed OTP codes fetched from a dedicated IMAP inbox.
Outcome: The agent stops stalling on login walls and 2FA mid-task; credentials never appear in screenshots, and if a saved profile goes stale they run Recover with autologin and every script using that profile name picks up the fresh login without a code change.
They call POST /screenshot with fullPage: true and /pdf against internal dashboards on a schedule, and use Live URLs when a dashboard needs a human 2FA step before capture.
Outcome: Pixel-accurate documents without maintaining a headless Chrome container, and one endpoint change instead of a queue-management problem when traffic spikes.
Use cases
- Scrape JavaScript-heavy e-commerce sites while bypassing anti-bot measures and CAPTCHAs.
- Automate PDF generation from user dashboards for billing or reporting at scale.
- Run AI agent browsing tasks via the MCP server with automatic CAPTCHA resolution.
- Monitor website availability and visual changes via scheduled screenshot APIs.
- Log in to a SaaS platform once with Authenticated Profiles, then run parallel workflows without re-authenticating.
- Extract structured data across multiple pages using the /crawl and /smart-scrape REST endpoints.
- Run an AI browsing task with a single REST call using /agent/run, posting a plain-English query to get JSON back.
- Stream a live session to a human to clear a login or 2FA prompt, then take control back in the script.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Browserless — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Puppeteer/Playwright teams: about 10 minutes to first successful run — swap launch() for connect(), add an API key, go. From-scratch TypeScript users: roughly an hour on BAP over BrowserQL. MCP users: minutes to add the server to Claude or Cursor, longer to wire Authenticated Profiles and 1Password Autologin, which is the real setup cost.
Switching to or from Browserless
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From a self-hosted Chrome/Puppeteer fleet: change launch() to puppeteer.connect({ browserWSEndpoint }) and keep the rest of the script unchanged.
- →From Selenium or a non-CDP framework: requires a rewrite to Puppeteer, Playwright, or BrowserQL first — Browserless does not accept Selenium drivers.
- →From Browserbase or ScrapingBee: point your existing Playwright connectOverCDP call at the Browserless WebSocket endpoint and add the token.
- →From hand-rolled proxy plus CAPTCHA services: drop the separate vendors and let /unblock and the built-in solver handle both, billed in units.
- ↗To Browserbase: swap the WebSocket endpoint and re-implement Authenticated Profiles and Autologin, which have no direct equivalent.
- ↗To Bright Data: move to their proxy and unblocking APIs, accepting a rewrite of the browser-connection layer.
- ↗To self-hosted Browserless: license the codebase and run the same API on Docker or Kubernetes, keeping scripts unchanged.
Integrations
Resources & guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Browserless”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Browserless” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Browserless.
Official links
What are the best Browserless alternatives?
The closest alternatives to Browserless we list are Browserbase, Stagehand and CloakBrowser. Ranked by direct product-type match, not category overlap.
| Alternative | Pricing | Starts at | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Browserbase | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Stagehand | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| CloakBrowser | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
Alternatives to Browserless
View all
Browserbase
Give AI agents cloud browsers to run the web like an API — logins, CAPTCHAs and forms handled.
Stagehand
Stagehand is the browser agent SDK that gives AI agents Playwright-style browser control with self-healing actions.
CloakBrowser
Stealth Chromium with 73 C++ source-level patches that keeps Playwright and Puppeteer scoring as a real browser
Tools that pair well with Browserless
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Browserless, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Browserbase
Give AI agents cloud browsers to run the web like an API — logins, CAPTCHAs and forms handled.
Stagehand
Stagehand is the browser agent SDK that gives AI agents Playwright-style browser control with self-healing actions.
CloakBrowser
Stealth Chromium with 73 C++ source-level patches that keeps Playwright and Puppeteer scoring as a real browser
Frequently asked questions
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