Browserbase Reviews & Alternatives in 2025
Browserbase, like other browser automation platforms, is a popular infrastructure solution for running headless browsers at scale. This blog walks through what Browserbase is, its strengths and limitations, and alternatives that might better fit your automation needs.
TLDR:
- Browserbase is a managed infrastructure platform for running traditional automation frameworks like Selenium and Playwright in the cloud
- While it handles infrastructure well, it lacks AI features and struggles with authentication flows and bot detection
- Skyvern provides the most complete enterprise Browserbase alternative with LLM intelligence that handles complex workflows without custom development
- Open-source tools like Playwright and Puppeteer offer direct alternatives but require managing your own infrastructure
- The right choice depends on whether you need just infrastructure or a complete automation solution with built-in intelligence
What is Browserbase and How It Works
Browserbase is a platform for running headless browsers. If you're building automations that need to interact with websites, fill out forms, or replicate user actions, Browserbase manages that infrastructure so you don't have to maintain your own fleet of headless browsers. It provides a simple API for controlling browsers, useful features for managing browser sessions, and a scalable infrastructure for running them in production.
The platform offers managed captcha solving, residential proxies, and fingerprint generation to keep your automations running smoothly. Their proxy super network intelligently picks the best proxy for your target. You can configure anything, from browser fingerprint to proxy geolocation.
Browserbase provides a programmable browser platform that allows developers to automate complex online tasks using code. It offers features like advanced debugging, session recording, a proxy supernetwork, and bot detection avoidance to simplify web automation for compatibility with popular tools like Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium.
The service targets developers and engineering teams who need browser automation for AI agents, web scraping, and testing workflows. The platform can automate both public websites and internal authenticated enterprise applications. By combining the power of headless browser automation with the security of on-premise deployment, Browserbase allows enterprise developers to simplify complex internal workflows while adhering to strict data governance policies.
The platform operates through a serverless architecture that removes the need to manage underlying hardware or servers. This makes it appealing for teams that want browser automation features without the overhead of maintaining their own infrastructure.
Browserbase Features
Browserbase provides API support for file uploads, downloads, and custom browser extensions. You can use the Contexts API to persist cookies or other browser state across multiple sessions. First class SDKs are available for Node.js and Python. Getting started takes minutes with their Browser Playground and AI Codegen feature to easily generate your first script.
The platform includes managed infrastructure features for running headless browsers at scale. Browserbase makes it easy to use fleets of headless browsers with native compatibility with Playwright, Puppeteer, and Selenium while supporting proxies, long-lived sessions, and managing downloaded files. This removes the complexity of managing browser infrastructure while maintaining compatibility with existing automation frameworks.
Feature Category | Features |
|---|---|
Infrastructure | Managed headless browsers, serverless architecture, scalable sessions |
Developer Tools | Node.js/Python SDKs, Browser Playground, AI Codegen |
Session Management | Contexts API, cookie persistence, long-lived sessions |
Network Features | Proxy supernetwork, geographic targeting, fingerprint generation |
Browserbase also offers Stagehand, their browser automation framework, and Director, which lets anyone automate the web using a natural language prompt. You can now generate repeatable web automation code in one single step. Director represents their expansion from pure infrastructure into user-facing automation tools.
Key technical features include session recording for debugging, detailed logging, and network interception. The platform supports extensibility through file uploads, downloads, custom browser extensions, and the Contexts API to persist browser state across sessions.
Developer-friendly features include quick start guides, detailed documentation, SDKs for Node.js and Python, and tools like the Browser Playground and AI Codegen for script generation. Compliance includes SOC-2 Type 1 and HIPAA standards, protecting data security and privacy.
Learn more about form automation features and invoice processing workflows that require more intelligent handling than basic infrastructure provides.
Key Limitations and Gaps
Browserbase enforces strict concurrency and rate limits that can disrupt workflows. If either limit is reached, your request will receive a 429 (too many requests) error. Each browser session requires dedicated resources and has a minimum runtime of one minute, even if closed before. This billing model can become expensive for short-duration tasks that require frequent session creation.
Browserbase's one-minute minimum billing can greatly increase costs for workflows that need frequent, short browser sessions.
Browserbase automation processes encounter major obstacles with authentication flows and one-time password verifications, leading to failures in executing tasks. Out of ten attempts in testing scenarios, six typically result in errors, primarily due to bot detection mechanisms. These reliability issues can severely impact production workflows that depend on consistent automation execution.
The platform provides infrastructure but limited AI features. This positions Browserbase as primarily an infrastructure layer rather than a complete automation solution, requiring additional tools for intelligent decision-making in complex workflows. You'll need to build the logic for handling changing content, form completion, and error recovery on top of their infrastructure.
Session management costs create additional challenges. For example, if you have a Hobby plan with a limit of 3 concurrent sessions, you can create up to 3 sessions in a 60-second window. If you try to create a 4th session within that window, it will be rate limited and return an HTTP 429 error. These restrictions can greatly limit scalability for teams with variable workloads.
The platform also struggles with complex reasoning tasks that modern automation requires. Simple selector-based interactions break when websites update their layouts, requiring constant maintenance of automation scripts.
Compare with job automation solutions that handle authentication challenges more effectively through AI-powered approaches.
Who Should Use Browserbase
Browserbase works well for companies that already have developer resources and need scalable browser infrastructure. At least 1,000 companies currently use Browserbase, including AI standouts like Commure, 11x, Perplexity, and Vercel. More than 20,000 developer signups have already run 50 million browser sessions on Browserbase this year, already twice the 25 million reached in 2024.
The platform fits engineering teams comfortable with building automation on top of infrastructure services. Browserbase is a managed cloud infrastructure platform for running traditional automation frameworks at scale. If you're not a developer, other platforms will be more valuable because Browserbase requires you to build your own automations on top of their infrastructure.
Pricing tiers offer flexible capacity options, from the free plan with limited functionality to custom enterprise plans supporting thousands of concurrent browsers. The free tier offers basic functionality, including one browser session with 60 minutes of running time per month and 15-minute session limits.
However, Browserbase may not be ideal for teams seeking ready-to-use automation solutions or those without major development resources. The platform requires technical expertise to implement and maintain, making it less suitable for business users who need immediate automation features without custom development work.
You should consider Browserbase if you:
- Have experienced developers who can build custom automation solutions
- Need infrastructure for running existing Selenium, Playwright, or Puppeteer scripts at scale
- Want to manage browser sessions programmatically with full control
- Have predictable workloads that fit within their pricing structure
- Don't need advanced AI features for handling changing content
Check out purchasing automation use cases and government workflows that need different approaches than pure infrastructure solutions.
Skyvern as the Best Overall Alternative
For teams seeking a complete browser automation solution that combines infrastructure reliability with AI-powered features, Skyvern is the best alternative to Browserbase. Unlike Browserbase's infrastructure-only approach, Skyvern provides intelligent automation that can handle complex workflows without requiring custom development for each use case.
Skyvern fills the key gaps in Browserbase's offering by providing native support for authentication challenges, including two-factor authentication and CAPTCHA solving, within a single platform. Our LLM-powered approach gets rid of the brittle selector-based automation that breaks when websites change, offering the reliability that Browserbase infrastructure provides while adding the intelligence that it lacks.
The platform handles complex reasoning tasks that would require additional tooling on top of Browserbase, such as form completion, data extraction with structured schemas, and multi-step workflow execution. This integrated approach reduces the technical complexity and development overhead that Browserbase users typically face.
Where Browserbase requires you to build automation logic on top of their infrastructure, Skyvern provides that intelligence out of the box. You can automate workflows across websites you've never seen before, without writing custom selectors or handling edge cases manually.
Learn about integration features and check out our automation archive for more examples of what's possible with AI-powered automation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Browserbase better than Selenium for web automation?
Browserbase provides managed infrastructure for running Selenium and other frameworks, but it's not a direct replacement. Browserbase handles the server management while you still need to write Selenium code. For teams wanting to avoid both infrastructure management and complex coding, AI-powered solutions offer better alternatives.
How much does Browserbase cost compared to alternatives?
Browserbase pricing starts free but includes a one-minute minimum billing per session, which can add up quickly. Enterprise plans can cost thousands monthly. Open-source alternatives like Selenium are free but require infrastructure management. AI-powered platforms often provide better value by reducing development time and maintenance costs.
Can Browserbase handle complex authentication and CAPTCHAs?
Browserbase offers some CAPTCHA solving and proxy features, but authentication flows remain challenging. The platform frequently struggles with two-factor authentication and bot detection, leading to high failure rates. Solutions with built-in AI features typically handle these challenges more reliably.
What's the difference between Browserbase and Playwright?
Playwright is an open-source automation framework you run yourself, while Browserbase provides managed infrastructure to run Playwright (and other frameworks) in the cloud. Browserbase doesn't replace Playwright but hosts it. You still need to write Playwright code to use Browserbase's infrastructure.
Decision Guidance
When looking at Browserbase against alternatives, consider your team's technical skills and automation requirements. Choose Browserbase if you have experienced developers who can build custom automation solutions and need scalable infrastructure for running traditional browser automation frameworks like Selenium or Playwright.
However, if your team needs intelligent automation that can adapt to website changes and handle complex workflows without extensive custom development, you can use AI browser automation platforms that combine infrastructure reliability with intelligent decision-making features.
You don't have to choose between building everything from scratch or settling for brittle automation that breaks with every website update. Modern browser automation should adapt to changes automatically, handle complex reasoning, and work across multiple sites without custom code for each one.
By combining LLMs with computer vision, Skyvern fundamentally changes how browser automation works. Instead of writing fragile scripts that break when websites change, you simply define what you want to accomplish and let AI handle the complex reasoning: from understanding form fields to handling multi-step workflows across sites it's never seen before.
That's just the start of what you can automate: procurement workflows across vendor portals, invoice downloads from multiple systems, form filling with complex eligibility logic, and data extraction that adapts to different site layouts. Learn more about AI-powered browser automation, or see how Skyvern can change your manual workflows into reliable, intelligent automation.