Browserbase vs Browserless
Both rent cloud browsers for agents and scrapers, with stealth, CAPTCHA solving and proxies. Browserbase puts each Chrome in its own VM for up to 6 hours and adds search, fetch and functions around it, while Browserless runs Chrome, Firefox and WebKit in containers on sessions of up to 60 minutes and lets you run its open source image yourself.
The companies and products
Browserbase
Browserbase calls itself the complete platform to build and deploy agents that browse and interact with the web like humans: browsers, search, fetch, functions, model access and identity behind one API key.
Its core product is a headless Chrome session you drive over CDP with Playwright, Puppeteer or its open source Stagehand SDK, with proxies, CAPTCHA solving, saved browser profiles (Contexts), live view and session replays. Around it sit Search and Fetch APIs, short TypeScript Functions that run next to the browser, a Model Gateway and hosted Agents that work from a plain language goal. It is a browser platform, not a general sandbox: you get a browser, not a shell or root on the machine, so this page compares where the two overlap, which is agents that browse.
Browserless
Browserless calls itself a cloud browser automation platform: managed headless browsers you connect to with one line of code.
You point existing Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium code at a Browserless WebSocket URL, or use BrowserQL, its GraphQL language with stealth and CAPTCHA solving, REST endpoints for screenshots, PDFs and scraping, and an MCP server. Sessions are short (2 to 60 minutes by plan), and only the browser profile can be kept between them. It is a browser product, not a general sandbox: you get a browser, not a shell or root on the machine, so this page compares where the two overlap, which is agents that browse.
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. “24th cheapest of 367” means 23 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 | Browserbase: price rank | Browserless: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A coding agent needs a shell, Docker and a disk, and both give a browser only, so builds and tests fit boat. | 140th of 367, with limits $1,255 a month | 170th of 367, with limits $1,771 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that lives on its machine all month hits a 6-hour cap on Browserbase and a 60-minute cap on Browserless; boat has no session cap on paid plans. | 259th of 366, with limits $3,699 a month | 297th of 366, with limits $6,170 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 | 270th of 345, with limits $382 a month | 267th of 345, with limits $350 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 | 250th of 361, with limits $1,099 a month | 264th of 361, with limits $1,490 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 | 264th of 360, with limits $5,049 a month | 279th of 360, with limits $8,600 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 | 349th of 364, with limits $449 a month | 247th of 364, with limits $350 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 CI jobs need a shell, Docker and often /dev/kvm, which boat has and neither browser session does. | 244th of 377, with limits $152 a month | 241st of 377, with limits $140 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Neither keeps files or processes between sessions beyond a browser profile, so a dev box fits boat. | 251st of 368, with limits $96 a month | 336th of 368, with limits $350 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 Both act on web pages only, while boat streams a 60fps Linux desktop where an agent can use any app. | 159th of 369, with limits $416 a month | 141st of 369, with limits $350 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 All three fit: Browserless ranks 19th and Browserbase 24th as managed browsers, and boat ranks 7th with Chromium on a full VM where the agent can also run code. | 24th cheapest of 367 $449 a month | 19th cheapest of 367 $350 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; Browserbase adds Search and Fetch APIs and Browserless adds REST endpoints for screenshots, PDFs and scraped content. | 55th cheapest of 346 $537 a month | 47th cheapest of 346 $478 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 Browserbase ranks 13th and Browserless 20th for sites that block bots, both with residential proxies and CAPTCHA solving; boat uses datacenter IPs and ranks 71st. | 13th of 338, with limits $9,799 a month | 20th of 338, with limits $17,150 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 | 229th of 360, with limits $291 a month | 247th of 360, with limits $350 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 | Browserbase | Browserless | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | Managed headless Chrome, plus Search, Fetch, Functions, a Model Gateway and hosted browser Agents | Managed headless Chrome, Firefox and WebKit, plus BrowserQL, REST APIs and an MCP server | A full Linux VM per sandbox, with a desktop and Chromium inside |
| Isolation | 1 browser per VM in its own subnet; the VM is destroyed after each session | Browsers in Docker containers that share the host kernel | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| What the agent can touch | The browser over CDP; hosted Agents and Functions get a shell in a short-lived runtime | The browser over CDP, BrowserQL or REST; no shell or SSH | The whole machine: root, SSH, any package, any process |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Not offered | Not offered in a session; you can self-host the Browserless Docker image | Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Session length | 15 minutes on Free, 6 hours on Developer and Startup, 6+ hours on Scale | 2 minutes on Free, 15 on Prototyping, 30 on Starter, 60 on Scale | No cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| Files after a session | Only the browser profile carries over, through a Context | Persisted sessions keep cookies, localStorage and cache for 1 to 90 days by plan | The disk persists, with snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Fork | No fork; a new session starts fresh or loads a saved Context | No fork; many sessions can start from one saved profile | Fork a running sandbox with its disk |
| Browsers | Chrome | Chrome, Firefox and WebKit | Chromium on a 60fps desktop, plus any browser you install |
| Bot detection | Residential proxies in 200+ countries, CAPTCHA solving on paid plans, Verified browsers on Scale | BrowserQL stealth with fingerprint mitigations, CAPTCHA solving, residential and datacenter proxies | Datacenter IPs and Chromium; no CAPTCHA solving |
| Agents | Its own hosted browser Agent from a plain language goal; open source Stagehand SDK | Its own managed browser agent (Agent Run API, beta), up to 15 minutes and 60 steps a turn | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the sandbox | Model Gateway reaches OpenAI, Anthropic and Google with your Browserbase key | 1Password fills logins into the page without the value reaching your code | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register |
| Reaching the machine | CDP connect URL and live view links; no ports to host on | Regional WebSocket and HTTPS endpoints and live URLs; no ports to host on | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Self-hosting | Hosted only | Open source Docker image under SSPL-1.0; commercial use needs a license | Hosted only |
| Regions | Oregon, Virginia, Frankfurt and Singapore | San Francisco, London and Amsterdam; New York on private fleets | EU only (Germany, Finland and France) |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Browserbase | Browserless | 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 | No | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | No | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | No | 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 | No | 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 | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | No | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | No | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | Yes | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Not published | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either. Neither Browserbase nor Browserless was in StarSling's public CPU benchmark, and neither publishes the vCPU or RAM behind a browser session. boat scores 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, with nothing to set it against here.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Browserbase and Browserless 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 | Browserbase, a month | Browserless, 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 | $99 · Startup · with limits | $350 · Scale annual · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $122 · Startup · with limits | $350 · Scale 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 | $841 · Startup · with limits | $1,026 · Scale 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 | $499 · Startup · with limits | $410 · Scale 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 | $1,049 · Startup · with limits | $1,400 · Scale annual · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Browserbase: Browserbase plans include browser hours: 100 on Developer ($20) and 500 on Startup ($99), then $0.12 or $0.10 per browser hour, billed by the minute with a one-minute minimum. Proxy data is extra after 1 GB or 5 GB, and Search, Fetch and Agents calls have their own allowances.
Browserless: Browserless bills in units: one unit is up to 30 seconds of a connected browser, and a reconnect starts a new block. Plans include 20,000, 180,000 or 500,000 units a month, proxy traffic and CAPTCHA solves use the same units, and annual billing is 30% lower and adds concurrency.
Browserless: You pick a monthly plan from $20, and all of it becomes usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
The Browserbase and Browserless prices in the table are for browser sessions with no published size and no disk that stays, so none of them is a 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine. Session caps are why the workday agent, the always-on agent and the 50-agent fleet fit neither: 6 hours on Browserbase Startup, 60 minutes on Browserless Scale. Both stop at 100 browsers at once on those plans, so 300 sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs need a sales plan. On boat the 1,000-job burst does not fit either, since bursts above 90 starts a minute are queued.
| Scenario | Browserbase | Browserless | 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 Browserbase when
your browsing jobs run for hours, you want each browser in its own VM, you need Search and Fetch APIs or Stagehand, or your targets are in Asia.
- Longer sessions, each in its own VM. Useful for long browsing jobs: sessions run up to 6 hours, and each browser gets its own VM that is rebuilt afterwards.
- More than a browser. Useful when lookups need no browser: Search and Fetch APIs, short Functions next to the browser, and the open source Stagehand SDK.
- US, Europe and Asia. Useful if target sites or users are in Asia: browsers run in Oregon, Virginia, Frankfurt and Singapore.
Use Browserless when
short sessions are enough, you want Firefox or WebKit too, you need REST screenshots and PDFs, or browsers have to run on your own machines.
- Run it on your own machines. Useful if browsers must stay inside your network: the Browserless Docker image is open source and can be self-hosted, with a license for commercial use.
- Three browser engines. Useful for testing or sites that treat browsers differently: Chrome, Firefox and WebKit are all on offer.
- One-call REST endpoints. Useful for simple jobs: REST endpoints return screenshots, PDFs and scraped content without writing a browser script.
Where boat fits
Browserbase and Browserless are browser products, not general sandboxes. If what you are really running is agents that browse and then also have to code, build or keep files, look at boat: each agent gets a full Linux VM with Chromium on a desktop, and you can still call either browser API from inside it for sites that block bots.
A whole machine, not only a browser
On both, the agent gets a browser and no shell, Docker or /dev/kvm, so cloning a repo or starting a dev server needs a second provider and moving files between the two. Browserless can be self-hosted, but then you run the machines.
Runs as long as the task, keeps its disk
Browserbase ends a session after 6 hours and Browserless after 60 minutes on Scale, and only the browser profile carries over. boat has no session cap on paid plans and saves the disk every minute and on stop.
Coding agents and keys kept outside
Both offer only their own browser agent, so anything else means writing a harness around a session. boat ships Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode with a steer and events API, and its credentials proxy covers any HTTPS API.
Use boat when your agent browses and also works: installs, builds, Docker and dev servers on a full VM that keeps its disk and runs as long as the task takes, with coding agents and a key proxy built in. Compare it one to one: boat vs Browserbase and boat vs Browserless.
Questions people ask
Is Browserbase cheaper than Browserless?
For long jobs it usually is in the table: one coding agent on workdays comes to $99 on Browserbase against $350 on Browserless, and 1,000 short jobs at once to $1,049 against $1,400. Browserless is lower for sandboxes for your users, $410 against $499. None of these fit fully, since both are browser sessions without a disk.
Which is faster, Browserbase or Browserless?
Neither has a public CPU measurement, and neither publishes the vCPU or RAM behind a session, so there is no fair speed comparison. boat scores 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's benchmark.
Can Browserbase or Browserless run Docker?
Not inside a session: both give you a browser, not a shell on the machine. Browserless itself ships as a Docker image you can run on your own server, but that is your machine. Every boat sandbox has root, SSH, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
How long can a session run on each?
Browserbase allows up to 6 hours on Developer and Startup, and 6+ on Scale. Browserless allows 15 minutes on Prototyping, 30 on Starter and 60 on Scale, with custom limits on Enterprise. boat has no session cap on paid plans.
Which is better against bot detection?
Both are built for it. Browserbase has residential proxies in 200+ countries, CAPTCHA solving and Verified browsers on Scale; Browserless has BrowserQL stealth, fingerprint mitigations, CAPTCHA solving and residential proxies. boat uses datacenter IPs and solves no CAPTCHAs.
Can I use either with boat?
Yes. An agent on a boat sandbox can open a Browserbase or Browserless session over CDP or WebSocket and keep its code, files and tools on the boat VM. That puts protected browsing on the browser API and the rest of the work on a machine that keeps its disk.
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