Browser Use vs Zenrows
Browser Use rents stealth cloud browsers that last up to four hours, plus a hosted agent you send tasks to. Zenrows is a web data service whose remote Chrome sessions close within 15 minutes, sold next to Fetch, Extract, Crawl and Batch APIs on one credit balance.
The companies and products
Browser Use
Browser Use makes the popular open-source browser-agent library and runs Browser Use Cloud, a service of managed browsers and a hosted agent that uses them.
Browser Use Cloud is a different kind of product from boat: you get a hardened Chromium browser in their cloud that you drive over CDP with Playwright or Puppeteer, or a hosted agent that you send tasks to through an API. It comes with stealth fingerprints, CAPTCHA solving and residential proxies, and you pay per browser-hour. It is built for teams that need many browsers that get past anti-bot checks, not a machine to run their own code on.
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. “3rd cheapest of 367” means 2 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 | Browser Use: 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 has a shell, Docker or a disk, so a coding agent can browse there but cannot build or test anything. | 48th of 367, with limits $301 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 outlasts both: Browser Use agent browsers stop after 4 hours and Zenrows sessions after 15 minutes. | 63rd of 366, with limits $750 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 | 216th of 345, with limits $71 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 | 199th of 361, with limits $270 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 | 227th of 360, with limits $1,010 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 Agent evals that mix code, files and a browser need a whole machine per run, which neither Browser Use nor Zenrows offers. | 226th of 364, with limits $90 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 | 219th of 377, with limits $64 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 | 212th of 368, with limits $25 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 Neither streams a desktop: Browser Use shows a live view of the browser and Zenrows gives screenshots over CDP, while boat streams a full Linux desktop at 60fps. | 83rd of 369, with limits $133 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: Browser Use ranks 3rd and Zenrows ranks 5th, and boat follows at 7th when the agent also needs a shell or files. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $140 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 at startup scale; boat ranks 6th because each bot gets a whole machine with a disk that keeps its files and no session cap. | 14th cheapest of 346 $198 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 Browser Use ranks 1st here thanks to stealth fingerprints and CAPTCHA solving, while Zenrows meters bandwidth at 25,000 credits per GB and closes sessions within 15 minutes. | Cheapest of 338 $2,950 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 Red-team agents need their own tools and a shell, and both products give them only a browser. | 50th of 360, with limits $68 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 | Browser Use | Zenrows | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A managed Chromium browser over CDP, or a hosted agent you send tasks to | A remote Chrome session over CDP, next to Fetch, Extract, Crawl and Batch APIs | A full Linux VM with its own kernel and root, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Session length | Agent browsers stop after 4 hours; idle ones are cleaned up after about 20 minutes | 1 to 15 minutes, 3 by default, then the session closes | No cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| State between sessions | Browser profiles keep cookies and logins; workspaces sync up to 950 MiB of 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 on the machine running the browser | No shell; browser control over CDP only | SSH, root, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm |
| Browser control | Their hardened Chromium fork, driven with Playwright or Puppeteer over CDP | Puppeteer or Playwright over CDP; viewport, user agent and some device settings are blocked | Chromium on your own VM: install any tool or extension and change any setting |
| Stealth and CAPTCHAs | Stealth on by default, per-session fingerprints and automatic CAPTCHA solving (off in the EU) | Anti-bot bypass on its tools; Browser Sessions cannot solve CAPTCHAs, the Fetch API has anti-CAPTCHA features | None built in; Chromium on datacenter IPs |
| Outbound IPs | Residential proxies in 195+ countries, on by default, or bring your own | Over 55 million residential IPs in 190+ countries, rotating on every request, with country targeting | Traffic leaves from EU data centers; run your own proxy client if you need other IPs |
| Agents | A hosted browser agent with a choice of models, a session queue and an events API | Tools for your agent to call, through a hosted or local MCP server; no agent runs inside | Claude Code, Codex and five more coding agents preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Desktop and live view | Live view of the browser you can embed for review or takeover, plus a recording | No desktop stream; screenshots and page actions through CDP or MCP tools | A full Linux desktop streamed at 60fps with computer use, embeddable and recorded |
| Keeping secrets from the agent | Secrets typed into the page by alias; the model never sees them, but the value reaches the browser | Not documented; auth is your Zenrows API key | Credentials proxy: real keys never enter the sandbox, for model providers and any HTTPS API |
| Hosting | No way to serve your own ports | None; you connect out to a shared Zenrows endpoint | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP |
| Where it runs | US, plus an EU deployment in Frankfurt with a smaller feature set | Primarily hosted on DigitalOcean, no region to choose; proxy exits worldwide | EU only (Germany, Finland, France), with EU data residency |
| Open source | The browser-use agent library is MIT and runs on your own machine | No | No |
| How you pay | $0.02 per browser-hour from prepaid credits that never expire, plus traffic | Monthly credit plans shared by all products; 5 credits per browser minute plus bandwidth | Per second from plan credit; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Browser Use | Zenrows | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Not published | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | No | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | 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) | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | No | No | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Not published | 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 | No | 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 | No | No | No |
| Open source | Yes | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | No | 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. Browser Use and Zenrows do not publish the CPU or memory behind a browser 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. Browser Use 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 | Browser Use, 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 · Pay as you go · 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 | $25 · Pay as you go · 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 | $178 · Spend tier 50 · 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 | $150 · Spend tier 500 · 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 | $210 · Spend tier 1000 · with limits | $2,499 · Scale S5 (annual) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Browser Use: Browser Use bills $0.02 per browser-hour, rounded up to whole minutes, from prepaid credits that never expire. Traffic is extra ($5 per GB through the residential proxy, $0.20 per GB direct), and agent runs add model tokens plus a 20% fee.
Zenrows: Zenrows sells monthly credit plans shared by all its products, from a free plan up to Scale S5. A browser session costs 5 credits per minute plus bandwidth at 25,000 credits per GB, and plan credits expire at each renewal.
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
No scenario on this page fits Browser Use or Zenrows, because each asks for a general machine and both sell a browser session with no shell, of a size they do not publish. Browser Use agent browsers stop after 4 hours, and its concurrency grows with lifetime payments: 50 sessions need $200 paid (the docs still say $100), and 1,000 need $25,000. Zenrows sessions close after at most 15 minutes, it has no persistent disk, and even Scale S5 at $2,499 a month caps you at 400 sessions at once. boat fits every scenario except 1,000 short jobs at once, where its $2,000 plan queues the starts.
| Scenario | Browser Use | 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 Browser Use when
your browser tasks run up to a few hours on sites with strong bot checks, or when you want a hosted agent that takes a task in plain words.
- Sessions that last hours, not minutes. For browser tasks longer than a quick visit: agent browsers run up to 4 hours, while Zenrows sessions close within 15 minutes.
- CAPTCHA solving in the browser. For sites that throw CAPTCHAs mid-task: a hardened Chromium with random fingerprints solves them automatically in the US deployment.
- A hosted agent and an open library. For teams that want to send a task and get a result, or run the same MIT agent library on their own machine.
Use Zenrows when
you need quick page visits from rotating residential IPs, or scraping APIs and an MCP server that share one credit balance with the browser.
- A full web data toolbox. For scraping pipelines: Fetch, Extract, Crawl and Batch share one credit balance with the browser, and an MCP server hands them to agents.
- A huge rotating IP pool. For protected sites: over 55 million residential IPs in 190+ countries rotate on every request, with country targeting.
- Short visits and a free start. For quick, spiky page visits: a session costs 5 credits a minute, and the free plan gives 5,000 credits with no card.
Where boat fits
Browser Use and Zenrows both rent you a browser, and nothing around it. If what you are really running is agents that browse as part of bigger work, such as logging in once, saving files, running code or serving an app, boat gives each one a whole Linux machine with Chromium and a desktop inside. You give up built-in residential proxies and CAPTCHA solving, unless you bring your own proxy.
Work that outlasts the session
Browser Use agent browsers stop after 4 hours and Zenrows sessions after 15 minutes, so a long job is split and its login restored each time, about 32 times per eight-hour shift on Zenrows. boat has no cap on paid plans and saves the disk every minute.
A machine around the browser
Neither gives a shell, Docker or a disk, so code, downloads and results need a second machine and files cross between the two after every step. A boat sandbox has root, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm next to Chromium, and you can fork a running one.
A desktop, ports and keys kept out
Browser Use shows only the browser tab, Zenrows only screenshots, and neither can serve a port. boat streams a 60fps desktop, serves HTTPS on up to 50 ports, and its credentials proxy keeps real API keys out of the sandbox.
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 it has to keep working for hours or days. Compare it one to one: boat vs Browser Use and boat vs Zenrows.
Questions people ask
Is Browser Use cheaper than Zenrows?
In this page's five scenarios, yes: for 50 agents in parallel Browser Use comes to $178 against $2,499 a month on Zenrows' Scale S5 annual plan. Neither fits those scenarios as a general machine, and both bill traffic on top.
Which is faster, Browser Use or Zenrows?
There is no way to tell from published numbers. Neither publishes the CPU or memory behind a session, and neither is in the CPU benchmark, where boat scored 26.69 runs per second.
How long can a session run on Browser Use and Zenrows?
Browser Use agent browsers have a four-hour hard timeout, and idle ones are cleaned up after about 20 minutes. Zenrows sessions last 1 to 15 minutes, 3 by default. A boat sandbox has no session cap on paid plans.
Can Browser Use or Zenrows run Docker?
No. Both give you a browser you drive over CDP, with no shell on the machine underneath. boat gives you a full Linux VM with root, Docker and systemd, with Chromium inside.
Which one is better at getting past bot checks?
Both route traffic through residential IPs. Browser Use also solves CAPTCHAs inside its browser in the US, while Zenrows Browser Sessions cannot, though its Fetch API has anti-CAPTCHA features.
Is boat SOC 2 compliant?
SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status at status.ascii.dev and our data retention policy at docs.boat.dev/data-retention.
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