Anchor Browser vs Zenrows
Anchor Browser rents a managed stealth Chromium in its own VM that can run for hours, with logins, CAPTCHA solving and hosted browser agents. Zenrows is a web data service whose Browser Sessions are remote Chrome tabs on rotating residential IPs that close after at most 15 minutes.
The companies and products
Anchor Browser
Anchor Browser is cloud browser infrastructure for AI agents: managed Chromium sessions you control over CDP or a REST API, plus a hosted browser agent.
Anchor Browser is a different kind of product from boat. Each session is a headful Chromium in its own VM that is erased when the session ends, and you drive it with Playwright or Puppeteer, with mouse and keyboard calls, or by sending a task in plain words to its hosted agent. It adds managed logins with MFA, residential proxies, stealth and CAPTCHA solving, and its own docs tell you to run your agent's code in a separate sandbox and connect to the browser over CDP.
Zenrows
Zenrows calls itself web data infrastructure built for agents and applications: APIs that fetch, extract, crawl and browse protected websites.
Browser Sessions (formerly Scraping Browser) is a remote Chrome you connect to over a WebSocket and drive with Puppeteer or Playwright through the Chrome DevTools Protocol. Each session runs on rotating residential IPs and closes after 1 to 15 minutes. It is a different kind of product from boat: a managed browser for scraping and web tasks, not a machine you get a shell on, so this page compares where the two overlap, which is browser and web agents.
Which use cases each one fits
For each use case, Battleships prices every sandbox provider on the same workload and sorts them from the cheapest monthly bill up. “28th cheapest of 367” means 27 of the other 366 providers run that workload, with every feature it needs, for less. “With limits” means the provider runs it but misses something, so it is listed after every full match. Open a use case for its whole ranking and what each provider misses.
| Use case and its workload | Anchor Browser: price rank | Zenrows: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Neither gives a coding agent a shell, Docker or a disk to build and test on; Anchor's own docs send that code to a separate sandbox. | 180th of 367, with limits $2,000 a month | 59th of 367, with limits $448 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that runs all month needs a machine that keeps its state; Anchor erases its VM after each session and a Zenrows tab closes within 15 minutes. | 71st of 366, with limits $1,845 a month | 126th of 366, with limits $833 a month | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month | 325th of 345, with limits $2,171 a month | 232nd of 345, with limits $166 a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month 300 sandboxes for your users is more than Anchor's Growth plan allows at once (200 browsers), and on both each one is a browser, not a machine. | 283rd of 361, with limits $2,000 a month | 203rd of 361, with limits $361 a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 298th of 360, with limits $12,510 a month | 229th of 360, with limits $1,111 a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month | 357th of 364, with limits $2,000 a month | 230th of 364, with limits $166 a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month | 284th of 377, with limits $500 a month | 221st of 377, with limits $83 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box needs SSH and a shell, and neither Anchor nor Zenrows exposes more than the browser over CDP. | 222nd of 368, with limits $42 a month | 232nd of 368, with limits $58 a month | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Anchor offers mouse, keyboard and a live view inside the browser, Zenrows only screenshots and page actions over CDP, and boat streams a full Linux desktop at 60fps. | 173rd of 369, with limits $500 a month | 93rd of 369, with limits $166 a month | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month Both are built for this: Anchor adds logins, stealth and CAPTCHA solving, Zenrows adds a huge rotating residential IP pool, and boat fits too when the agent also needs a shell and files. | 28th cheapest of 367 $560 a month | 5th cheapest of 367 $166 a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month Both fit startup-scale bots; Zenrows brings residential IPs and scraping APIs, Anchor brings stealth and CAPTCHAs, and boat runs your own scrapers, queues and databases on one machine. | 50th cheapest of 346 $500 a month | 18th cheapest of 346 $227 a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month Anchor is the stronger pick here thanks to stealth Chromium and CAPTCHA solving; Zenrows Browser Sessions cannot solve CAPTCHAs, and boat has no residential proxies of its own. | 5th of 338, with limits $6,175 a month | 70th of 338, with limits $1,791 a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 334th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month | 149th of 360, with limits $115 a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Anchor Browser | Zenrows | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A managed headful Chromium in its own VM, reached over CDP or Anchor's API | A remote Chrome session reached over CDP; isolation technology not published | A full Linux VM with its own kernel and root, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts, with Chromium inside |
| Session length | 180 minutes by default with no upper limit if you raise it; ends after 5 idle minutes by default | 1 to 15 minutes, 3 by default, then the session closes | No cap on paid plans; a stopped sandbox keeps its disk |
| State after a session | The VM is erased; profiles keep cookies, local storage and cache, and up to 10 volumes keep files | The session closes and frees its resources; no saved state documented | The whole disk is saved every minute and on stop; fork a running sandbox |
| Shell, code and Docker | No shell; from Growth you can run TypeScript snippets against the page | No shell; browser control over CDP only | SSH, any language, Docker, systemd and nested virtualization (/dev/kvm) |
| Browser control | Playwright or Puppeteer over CDP, a REST API, and mouse, keyboard and screenshot calls | Puppeteer or Playwright over CDP; viewport, user agent and some device settings are blocked | Chromium on your own VM: install Playwright, Puppeteer, extensions or any tool, and change any setting |
| Desktop and live view | Embeddable live view of the browser | No desktop stream; screenshots and page actions through CDP or MCP tools | A full Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, embeddable in your app |
| Outbound IPs | Residential proxies with country and city targeting, sticky IPs, or your own proxy | Over 55 million residential IPs in 190+ countries, rotating on every request, with country targeting | Traffic leaves from EU data centers; bring your own proxy if you need other IPs |
| Stealth and CAPTCHAs | CAPTCHA solving from Starter; full stealth Chromium on Growth; unique fingerprints on Enterprise | Anti-bot bypass on its tools; Browser Sessions cannot solve CAPTCHAs | None built in; you run your own tools |
| Logging in to sites | Managed identities with MFA keep logins across sessions, from Starter | No managed logins documented; sessions keep no state | Your agent logs in itself and stays logged in, because the disk is kept |
| Beyond the browser | Hosted browser agents with human-in-the-loop and webhooks, and a hosted MCP server | Fetch, Extract, Crawl and Batch APIs on one credit balance, and an MCP server | Claude Code, Codex and other coding agents preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Hosting | No ports of your own; only the CDP socket and the live view URL | None; you connect out to a shared Zenrows endpoint | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP |
| Keeping secrets from the agent | Secret values are hidden from the model and typed into the page | Not documented; auth is your Zenrows API key | Credentials proxy: real keys never enter the sandbox, for any HTTPS API |
| Regions | US by default; EU, Asia and Australia on Growth; your own cloud or on-premise on Enterprise | Primarily hosted on DigitalOcean, no region to choose; proxy exits worldwide | EU only (Germany, Finland, France), with EU data residency |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Anchor Browser | Zenrows | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | No | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | No | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | No | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | No | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | No | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | No | Not published | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | No | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | No | No |
| BYOC | Yes | No | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either one. Anchor Browser and Zenrows both sell browser time and do not publish the CPU or memory behind a session, and neither is in the CPU benchmark. boat scored 26.69 runs per second on the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js test at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Anchor Browser and Zenrows have no published run in this suite yet, so there is no like-for-like number to compare.
Pricing in five scenarios
Each bill is priced from the providers' public price lists by the open Battleships engine, with the cheapest plan that runs the scenario.
| Scenario | Anchor Browser, a month | Zenrows, a month | boat, a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, files kept between days | $7 · Free · with limits | $2,499 · Scale S5 (annual) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $42 · Free · with limits | $2,499 · Scale S5 (annual) · with limits | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $500 · Team · with limits | $2,499 · Scale S5 (annual) · with limits | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $2,000 · Growth · with limits | $2,499 · Scale S5 (annual) · with limits | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $2,510 · Growth · with limits | $2,499 · Scale S5 (annual) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Anchor Browser: Anchor bills $0.05 per browser-hour of active session time plus $0.01 for each browser created, paid from plan credits worth $1 each (Starter $50, Team $500, Growth $2,000). Proxy traffic is $8 per GB, direct traffic $0.20 per GB, and AI tasks are priced per step on top.
Zenrows: Zenrows sells monthly credit plans shared by all its products. A browser session costs 5 credits per minute plus bandwidth at 25,000 credits per GB, plan credits expire at each renewal, and the free plan gives 5,000 credits a month.
Zenrows: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit spent per second while a sandbox runs. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Neither fits any of the five scenarios as written, because each asks for a general machine and both sell a browser session of a size they do not publish, with no shell, Docker or disk. On Zenrows the cap that bites first is session length: every session closes within 15 minutes, even on the Scale S5 plan, which also allows at most 400 at once. Anchor sessions can run for hours, but its plans cap browsers at once (200 on Growth), so 300 sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once go into Enterprise. boat fits four of the five; at 1,000 short jobs at once its $2,000 plan queues the starts.
| Scenario | Anchor Browser | Zenrows | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel |
|
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Anchor Browser when
your agents only need a browser but the website is hard: logins with MFA, CAPTCHAs, stealth and residential proxies, in sessions that may run for hours, or tasks handed to a hosted agent.
- Built to get past bot checks. For sites with strong bot checks: CAPTCHA solving, stealth Chromium and residential proxies targeted down to the city.
- Logins and browser agents as a service. For teams that want to send a task and get a result: managed logins with MFA, hosted browser agents and webhooks.
- Sessions that last for hours. For long browser tasks: sessions run 180 minutes by default and can be raised with no upper limit.
Use Zenrows when
you need to open protected pages for a few minutes at a time from residential IPs in many countries, or want scraping APIs and an MCP server that share one credit balance.
- Residential IPs in 190+ countries. For scraping protected sites: over 55 million residential IPs rotate on every request, and you can pick the country.
- A full web data toolbox. Fetch, Extract, Crawl and Batch share one credit balance with the browser, and an MCP server hands them to any agent.
- Pay per browser minute. For short, spiky page visits: a session costs 5 credits a minute, and the free plan needs no card.
Where boat fits
Anchor Browser and Zenrows both rent you a browser, and boat is a different kind of product: a whole Linux machine with Chromium and a desktop inside. If what you are really running is agents that browse as one step of bigger work, such as saving files, running code, building something or staying logged in for days, boat gives them one machine for all of it. If the hard part is the website itself, Anchor or Zenrows will do that part better.
A whole machine around the browser
Neither Anchor nor Zenrows gives you a shell, Docker or a disk, and Anchor's docs say to run agent code in a separate sandbox. That means two services to pay for and wire up, and every download crossing between them.
Work that stays put
Anchor erases its VM after every session, keeping only profiles and volumes, and a Zenrows tab closes within 15 minutes, about 32 reconnects in an eight-hour shift. boat saves the whole disk every minute, stops for free and can fork a running sandbox.
A real desktop and coding agents
Anchor's live view and Zenrows' screenshots show one browser, not a computer. boat streams a 60fps Linux desktop, runs Claude Code and Codex driven from outside, and keeps API keys out of the sandbox with its credentials proxy.
Use boat when your agent does more than browse: it needs a shell, files, Docker, a desktop or a server next to the browser, and has to keep its work between runs. Compare it one to one: boat vs Anchor Browser and boat vs Zenrows.
Questions people ask
Is Anchor Browser cheaper than Zenrows?
It depends on the job. In our browser-use agent model Zenrows comes to $166 a month against $560 on Anchor, and for startup-scale scraping $227 against $500 on Anchor. Anchor bills per browser-hour and Zenrows per browser minute in credits, and both charge for traffic on top.
Which is faster, Anchor Browser or Zenrows?
Neither publishes the CPU or memory behind a browser session, and neither is in the CPU benchmark, so there is no fair speed comparison. boat, measured on the same benchmark, scored 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
How long can a session run on Anchor Browser and on Zenrows?
An Anchor session runs 180 minutes by default, and you can raise that with no upper limit; it also ends after 5 idle minutes unless you change that. A Zenrows session lasts 1 to 15 minutes, 3 by default, then closes. boat has no session cap on paid plans.
Which is better at getting past bot checks?
Anchor solves CAPTCHAs from Starter and runs a full stealth Chromium on Growth, while Zenrows Browser Sessions cannot solve CAPTCHAs. Zenrows has a very large pool of over 55 million rotating residential IPs. boat runs Chromium on EU data center IPs with no stealth tools built in.
Can Anchor Browser or Zenrows run Docker?
No. Both give you a browser over CDP with no shell on the machine, and Anchor's docs say to run agent code in a separate sandbox. boat gives you a whole Linux VM with root, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm, with Chromium inside.
Do Anchor Browser and Zenrows keep files between sessions?
Anchor erases each session's VM but keeps browser profiles and files in up to 10 volumes. Zenrows documents no saved state once a session closes. boat saves the whole disk every minute and when a sandbox stops.
Try boat
Install the CLI, then run boat new.
7-day free trial