Hyperbrowser vs Anchor Browser
Both rent you a stealth Chrome in the cloud for your agents. Hyperbrowser adds short-lived Firecracker sandboxes for code and per-page web data APIs, while Anchor Browser stays a browser only and adds managed logins with MFA and hosted browser agents.
The companies and products
Hyperbrowser
Hyperbrowser calls itself the AI agents' gateway to the internet: cloud browsers, sandboxes, web data APIs and browser agents behind one API and one credit balance.
Its main product is a cloud Chrome session you drive with Playwright or Puppeteer, with stealth mode, residential proxies, CAPTCHA solving, saved profiles and recordings. Next to it Hyperbrowser sells Sandboxes, Firecracker VMs on Ubuntu 24.04 that live up to 24 hours, with memory snapshots, volumes and outbound rules, plus Fetch, Scrape and Search APIs and hosted browser agents. It is a browser and web data platform more than a general sandbox, so this page compares where it overlaps with boat: agents that browse, and agents that run code.
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.
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. “20th cheapest of 367” means 19 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 | Hyperbrowser: price rank | Anchor Browser: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Neither is built for a software factory: Hyperbrowser's sandboxes do not document Docker inside, and Anchor's docs send agent code to a separate sandbox. | 136th of 367, with limits $1,206 a month | 180th of 367, with limits $2,000 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 hits Hyperbrowser's 24-hour sandbox lifetime; Anchor sessions can run with no upper limit but keep only profiles and volume files. | 255th of 366, with limits $3,650 a month | 71st of 366, with limits $1,845 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 | 244th of 345, with limits $246 a month | 325th of 345, with limits $2,171 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 past Hyperbrowser's 100 on Scale and Anchor's 200 on Growth, and each one is a browser, not a machine. | 245th of 361, with limits $1,029 a month | 283rd of 361, with limits $2,000 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 | 262nd of 360, with limits $4,972 a month | 298th of 360, with limits $12,510 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 | 253rd of 364, with limits $400 a month | 357th of 364, with limits $2,000 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 | 238th of 377, with limits $120 a month | 284th of 377, with limits $500 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB | 240th of 368, with limits $73 a month | 222nd of 368, with limits $42 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 run computer-use models inside their browsers; boat streams a full Linux desktop at 60fps, so an agent can use apps beyond the browser. | 144th of 369, with limits $360 a month | 173rd of 369, with limits $500 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 fit browser-use agents: Hyperbrowser ranks 20th and Anchor Browser 28th, and boat fits too when the agent also needs a shell and files next to Chromium. | 20th cheapest of 367 $360 a month | 28th cheapest of 367 $560 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; Hyperbrowser also sells Fetch and Scrape APIs per page, while Anchor erases each browser's VM when the session ends. | 32nd cheapest of 346 $366 a month | 50th cheapest of 346 $500 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 Browser ranks 5th and Hyperbrowser 11th here, since both bring residential proxies, stealth and CAPTCHA solving, which boat does not. | 11th of 338, with limits $9,750 a month | 5th of 338, with limits $6,175 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 Hyperbrowser fits parallel red teaming far better than Anchor, because its Firecracker sandboxes can run code; boat gives each attacker a full VM. | 33rd of 360, with limits $356 a month | 334th of 360, with limits $2,000 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 | Hyperbrowser | Anchor Browser | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | Cloud browser sessions, plus Firecracker sandboxes and Fetch, Scrape and Search APIs | Managed headful Chromium sessions over CDP or REST, plus a hosted browser agent | A full Linux VM per sandbox, with a desktop and Chromium inside |
| Isolation | Firecracker VM per sandbox; browser session isolation technology not published | A dedicated VM per browser session, erased when the session ends | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Running your own code | Sandboxes up to 32 vCPU / 256 GiB with exec, process and PTY APIs; no SSH | No shell; from Growth, TypeScript snippets run against the page | SSH and root, any language, 4 vCPU / 8 GB by default and up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB |
| Docker and /dev/kvm | Docker builds images on your machine; Docker inside a sandbox is not documented | Not available | Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Session length | Browsers up to 12 hours; sandboxes up to 24 hours from VM start | 180 minutes by default with no upper limit if you raise it; ends after 5 idle minutes by default | No cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| Files after a session | A stopped sandbox is gone; files survive on a volume or in a memory snapshot | The VM is erased; profiles keep cookies and cache, and up to 10 volumes keep files | The whole disk is saved every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Snapshots and fork | Memory snapshot of a running sandbox, then start many new sandboxes from it | No snapshots or fork | Fork a running sandbox with its disk; no memory snapshots |
| Stealth and CAPTCHAs | Stealth mode and CAPTCHA solving on paid plans; ultra stealth on Enterprise | CAPTCHA solving from Starter; full stealth Chromium on Growth; unique fingerprints on Enterprise | Chromium on datacenter IPs; no CAPTCHA solving |
| Proxies | Residential proxies on paid plans at $10 per GB; bring your own proxy on Enterprise | Residential proxies at $8 per GB with country and city targeting, sticky IPs, or your own proxy | None managed; you can run your own proxy client inside the VM |
| Logging in to sites | Saved browser profiles | Managed identities with MFA keep logins across sessions, from Starter | Your agent logs in itself; AI credentials switch to another account when credits run out |
| Agents | Hosted HyperAgent, Browser Use and computer-use models; sandbox images with the Claude Code or Codex CLI | Hosted browser agents (browser-use, OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic computer use) with human-in-the-loop and webhooks | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping secrets from the agent | Keys are passed in as environment variables to the process | Secret values are hidden from the model and typed into the page | Credentials proxy: real keys never enter the sandbox, for any HTTPS API |
| Reaching the machine | HTTPS URL per exposed sandbox port through a shared proxy; no raw TCP | No ports of your own; only the CDP socket and the live view URL | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP |
| Regions | us-central, us-east, us-west and europe-west; asia-south on Enterprise and Select | US by default; Frankfurt, Asia and Australia on Growth; your own cloud or on-premise on Enterprise | EU only (Germany, Finland, France) |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Hyperbrowser | Anchor Browser | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | No | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | No | Yes |
| Systemd | No | No | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | No | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | No | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | Yes | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | No | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | No | 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 | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | Not published | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | No | Yes | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | No | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | No | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Not published | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either. Neither Hyperbrowser nor Anchor Browser publishes the CPU behind a browser session, and neither is in StarSling's CPU benchmark, where boat scored 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Hyperbrowser publishes start times of under 50 ms for sandboxes and under 500 ms for a ready browser.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Hyperbrowser and Anchor Browser 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 | Hyperbrowser, a month | Anchor Browser, 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 | $16 · Free · with limits | $7 · Free · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $73 · Free · with limits | $42 · Free · 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 | $792 · Scale · with limits | $500 · Team · 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 | $450 · Scale · with limits | $2,000 · Growth · 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 | $994 · Scale · with limits | $2,510 · Growth · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Hyperbrowser: Everything spends one credit balance: browsers cost $0.10 a browser-hour plus $10 per GB of proxy data, and sandboxes $0.045 per vCPU-hour plus $0.015 per GiB-hour. Startup ($30) and Scale ($100) turn their fee into credits that reset each month.
Anchor Browser: Anchor bills $0.05 per browser-hour, counted to the nearest minute, plus $0.01 for each browser created. Plan fees (Starter $50, Team $500, Growth $2,000) become credits worth $1 each, and proxy traffic ($8 per GB) and AI task steps are extra.
Anchor Browser: 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
None of the five scenarios fits either one as written, because each asks for a general 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine and both price a browser session whose size is not published. Hyperbrowser's browsers keep no disk and neither offers Docker inside. Concurrency bites next: 100 browsers at once on Hyperbrowser's Scale and 200 on Anchor's Growth, so 300 sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once need Enterprise on both. boat fits four scenarios; at 1,000 short jobs at once its $2,000 plan queues the starts.
| Scenario | Hyperbrowser | Anchor Browser | 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 Hyperbrowser when
your agents mostly browse but also need short code sandboxes, warm starts from memory snapshots, or per-page fetch and search APIs, all on one credit balance.
- Sandboxes for code in the same account. For agents that browse and run some code: Firecracker sandboxes up to 32 vCPU sit next to the browsers on one credit balance.
- Warm starts from memory snapshots. For many short code runs: snapshot a running sandbox with its memory, then start new sandboxes from it as often as you like.
- Web data without a browser. For teams that just need page content: Fetch, Scrape and Search APIs are billed per page or query, so no browser has to run.
Use Anchor Browser when
your agents only need a browser and the hard part is the website: logins with MFA, city-level residential proxies, stealth, and sessions that run as long as you set.
- Logins handled for you. For agents working inside web apps with no API: managed identities with MFA stay logged in across sessions.
- Fine control over proxies. For scraping by place: residential proxies target country and city, with sticky IPs or your own proxy.
- Long sessions and your own cloud. For long browser jobs or strict hosting needs: sessions have no upper limit, and Enterprise runs in your own cloud or on-premise.
Where boat fits
Hyperbrowser and Anchor Browser are browser companies, and both are good at getting a browser past bot checks. If what you are really running is agents that browse and also install, build, run Docker and keep their work, look at boat: one full Linux VM per agent with Chromium and a desktop inside. You can also use both, with stealth pages on a cloud browser and everything else on boat.
A real machine with Docker and root
Anchor has no shell and its docs send agent code to a separate sandbox, so you pay for and wire two services. Hyperbrowser's sandboxes do not document Docker inside, so docker compose and emulators have nowhere to run.
Work that survives the stop
A Hyperbrowser sandbox lives at most 24 hours and loses its disk on stop, and each Anchor session VM is erased. Volumes, profiles and snapshots keep some files, but installed tools start over. boat saves the whole disk every minute.
Coding agents driven from outside, keys kept out
Hyperbrowser passes model keys in as environment variables and Anchor types secrets into the page, where a prompt-injected agent can reach them. boat's credentials proxy keeps real keys outside, and you prompt and steer Claude Code or Codex through one API.
Use boat when your agent does more than browse: it needs a shell, Docker, a desktop or a server next to Chromium, and it has to keep its work between runs. Compare it one to one: boat vs Hyperbrowser and boat vs Anchor Browser.
Questions people ask
Is Hyperbrowser cheaper than Anchor Browser?
Anchor's browser-hour is cheaper ($0.05 plus $0.01 per browser, against $0.10), so it costs less in most scenarios: 50 agents in parallel come to $792 on Hyperbrowser against $500 on Anchor. Sandboxes for your users flip it, $450 against $2,000, because Anchor needs Growth for that many browsers at once.
Which is faster, Hyperbrowser or Anchor Browser?
There is no comparable measurement. Neither publishes the CPU behind a browser session, and neither is in the CPU benchmark where boat scored 26.69 runs per second. Hyperbrowser publishes under 500 ms for a ready browser.
Can Hyperbrowser or Anchor Browser run Docker?
Not in a documented way. Hyperbrowser uses Docker on your own machine to build a sandbox image, and its docs do not describe Docker inside a sandbox. Anchor has no shell at all; every boat sandbox runs Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
How long can a session run?
Hyperbrowser browsers run up to 12 hours and its sandboxes up to 24 hours from VM start. Anchor sessions end after 180 minutes by default, but you can raise that with no upper limit. boat has no session cap on paid plans and keeps the disk when you stop.
Which is better at getting past bot checks?
Both solve CAPTCHAs and offer stealth and residential proxies on paid plans. Anchor adds country and city targeting, sticky IPs and unique fingerprints on Enterprise, and Hyperbrowser adds ultra stealth on Enterprise. boat runs Chromium on datacenter IPs and solves no CAPTCHAs.
Can I use Hyperbrowser or Anchor Browser from boat?
Yes. An agent on a boat sandbox can open either browser over CDP, and Anchor's docs describe exactly this setup. The code, files and tools stay on the boat VM, and only the pages that need stealth go to the cloud browser.
Try boat
Install the CLI, then run boat new.
7-day free trial