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BrowserForHire vs Browserless

Drop-in Browserless replacement. Per-request billing instead of 30-second units, public anti-bot success rate, and a free Apache-2.0 self-host image.

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Why teams switch from Browserless

Browserless pioneered Browser-as-a-Service in 2017 and still has the most mature OSS distribution in the category. We respect that. But three things bite teams in production: time-based unit billing inflates costs on slow pages, premium-domain surcharges show up after the fact, and anti-bot success rate degrades silently after vendor updates. We bill per successful request, publish a weekly success-rate dashboard, and ship a free Apache-2.0 self-host image. The connect URL change is one line.

Side-by-side

FeatureBrowserForHireBrowserless
Pricing unitPer successful requestPer 30-second time block
Failed-request billingFreeCharged
Premium-domain surchargesNoneCommon, undocumented
Free tier1,000 credits/mo, no CC1,000 units/mo, no CC
Production starter price$29/mo$200/mo+
Self-host licenseApache-2.0 (free)Paid commercial license
Anti-bot success ratePublic weekly /benchmarksNot published
Multi-vendor anti-bot rotation
MCP serverPartial
Stagehand-compatibility
Connect URL migrationOne-line change—
Puppeteer + Playwright
Firefox + WebKit
REST screenshot/PDF/scrape
Persistent sessions
SOC2Type II in auditType II

Sourced from Browserless's public pricing and documentation as of 2026-04-26 — see https://www.browserless.io for the latest.

Pricing TL;DR

Browserless starts around $200/month for production usage with 30-second unit billing. We start at $29/month for 20k credits — one credit per successful request — and our free tier is 1,000 credits with no credit card. Most teams paste a Browserless invoice into our calculator and see 40–60% savings.

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Migration is one line

Swap the Playwright connect URL. Everything else stays the same.

Migration diffPlaywright
- chromium.connectOverCDP('wss://chrome.browserless.io?token=' + BROWSERLESS_TOKEN)
+ chromium.connectOverCDP('wss://cloud.browserforhire.com?token=' + BFH_TOKEN)

FAQ

Is the API actually drop-in compatible?+
Yes. We speak Chrome DevTools Protocol over WebSocket using the same query-parameter shape as Browserless. The CLI ships an automated migration: npx @browserforhire/cli migrate-from-browserless ./src.
Why are you cheaper?+
Per-request credits vs 30-second time blocks. A page that takes 25s burns 1 credit on us, 1 unit on them. A page that takes 35s burns 2 credits on us, 2 units on them — same. The savings come from (a) failed requests being free, (b) no premium-domain surcharges, (c) auto HTTP fallback on simple pages.
What happens if I want to self-host?+
Pull our Apache-2.0 Docker image from Docker Hub or GHCR — no license fee. The Helm chart is in @browserforhire/helm.
How does your anti-bot compare?+
Multi-vendor rotation across native fingerprints, 2Captcha, CapSolver, AntiCaptcha. Public weekly success-rate dashboard at /benchmarks. Browserless ships a single stealth stack and does not publish success-rate numbers.
Will my Browserless billing still work during migration?+
Yes — run both in parallel. Our migrate-from-browserless CLI prints a diff so you can shadow-test before cutting over.

Ready to leave Browserless?

Free 1,000 credits. No credit card. Migrate in one line.

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