7 Best Browser Use Alternatives in 2026
Browser Use is the default open-source framework for AI browser agents — 106,000+ GitHub stars, MIT licensed, Python and TypeScript SDKs, and a state-of-the-art 89.1% on the WebVoyager benchmark. The harness sits between a model and a real browser, handling the DOM, the action space, and the self-healing when a page shifts.
Browser Use Cloud wraps it in managed infrastructure: stealth browsers with CAPTCHA solving across 195+ countries, residential proxies, scheduled jobs, webhooks, and Browser Use Box, a 24/7 Claude agent reachable over Telegram, web, or SSH. Free is $0 with 3 concurrent sessions, Dev $29/month for 25, Business $299 for 200, Scaleup $999 for 500, with sessions at $0.02/hour, proxies at $5/GB, the V3 agent at $0.90–$6.00 per million input tokens, and Box at $1–$4 a day. Bring-your-own-key works on every paid tier.
People look elsewhere for three reasons: they want a Playwright-shaped API instead of an agent loop, they need reliability against sites that fight back, or they’re on infrastructure and don’t want a framework opinion attached.
The category splits three ways
Mixing these up is the most common mistake in this comparison:
- Agent frameworks — the harness that turns a model into a browser operator. Browser Use, Stagehand, Skyvern. This is the direct-substitute layer.
- Browser infrastructure — cloud Chrome, sessions, proxies, stealth, CAPTCHA. Browserbase, Steel, TinyFish. Frameworks run on these; they’re not either/or.
- No agent at all — Playwright or Puppeteer, when the flow is stable enough that a model adds cost and variance without adding reliability.
1. Stagehand
The closest direct competitor, and the one most teams actually evaluate against. Built by the Browserbase team, MIT licensed, 23,000+ stars, TypeScript-first, and designed as an augmentation of Playwright rather than a replacement for it — you write normal Playwright and drop in act, extract, and observe where you want the model to decide.
vs. Browser Use: the control model is the difference. Browser Use gives the agent the goal and lets it plan; Stagehand keeps you in deterministic code and reaches for the model only at the steps that need it, which makes runs far easier to debug and cheaper to operate. The v3 rewrite in February 2026 went AI-native and talks straight to the Chrome DevTools Protocol, dropping the traditional automation layer and running about 44% faster.
Best for: engineers who want deterministic code with AI escape hatches, especially on TypeScript.
2. Skyvern
The other major open-source framework, and architecturally the most distinct. Skyvern uses computer vision plus LLM reasoning instead of CSS selectors, so it reads the page the way a person does and workflows survive UI changes that would break a selector-based script.
vs. Browser Use: stronger on exactly the tasks that break other agents — form filling, portal logins, and document-heavy flows. It solves CAPTCHAs without third-party services, handles two-factor authentication, and is HIPAA and SOC 2 compliant, which matters for insurance, healthcare, and accounts-payable automation. It scores 85.85% on WebVoyager against Browser Use’s 89.1%, so it trades a little general capability for resilience. Y Combinator backed, $2.7 million raised in December 2025, 30,000+ users, 22,000+ stars, and 5,000 free credits a month with no card. Note the license: AGPL-3.0, not MIT, which has real implications if you’re embedding it in a commercial product.
Best for: authenticated portals, form-heavy workflows, and regulated industries.
3. Browserbase
The managed infrastructure most frameworks run on, and Stagehand’s parent company. You bring automation code; Browserbase runs the browsers.
vs. Browser Use: not a framework, so it’s a complement more often than a replacement — plenty of teams run the Browser Use harness on someone else’s browsers. Free covers 3 concurrent browsers and 1 browser hour; Developer is $20/month for 25 concurrent and 100 hours at $0.12/hour overage; Startup is $99/month for 100 concurrent and 500 hours; Scale is custom with HIPAA, DPA, and SSO. Auto-CAPTCHA solving is included from Developer, and a model gateway bundles LLM access.
Best for: teams who have the automation code and want someone else running Chrome.
4. Steel
Open-source browser infrastructure, Apache-2.0, 7,000+ stars — a batteries-included browser sandbox you can self-host with Docker or run in their cloud.
vs. Browser Use: the licensing and portability story is the strongest here. Apache-2.0 with a Docker path means no vendor lock-in at the infrastructure layer, and it speaks Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium rather than imposing its own API. Sessions start in under a second and run up to 24 hours, with CAPTCHA solving built in. Launch is $0/month plus usage with $30 in one-time credits; Scale is $250/month plus usage with $100 monthly credits, a dedicated Slack channel, and SSO; Enterprise supports 1,000+ concurrent sessions with reserved browser pools.
Best for: teams who want cloud browsers with a genuine self-host escape route.
5. TinyFish
Enterprise infrastructure aimed at the hardest version of the problem: sites that actively resist automation. Search, Fetch, Agent, and Browser behind one API key and credit pool.
vs. Browser Use: built for pass rate at volume. TinyFish compiles C++ patches into the Chromium binary and reports an 85% anti-bot pass rate, scores 89.9% on Mind2Web, and ships Vault so agents authenticate into portals without credentials reaching the model. Search and Fetch are free; Agent and Browser cost one credit per agent step or four minutes of browsing, with 500 credits to start. It raised $47 million in an ICONIQ-led round. TinyFish alternatives covers it in depth.
Best for: production workloads against hostile sites, where pass rate is the metric.
6. Playwright or Puppeteer, self-hosted
The floor, and the honest answer more often than the category admits. Open source, free, deterministic, no model in the loop.
vs. Browser Use: nothing adapts, so a changed selector is a failed run until you fix it. In exchange, runs are identical every time and cost only compute. Teams frequently arrive here after discovering their “agent” task was six stable steps that never needed reasoning — and Stagehand exists precisely to let you start here and add intelligence at the two steps that need it.
Best for: stable flows where reliability beats flexibility.
7. Carly, when the target has an API
Not a framework and not a replacement for one — a reason the project may not need to exist. Carly is a finished agent that reaches systems through their APIs rather than their interfaces.
Around 260 apps connect natively — Salesforce, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, Shopify, Notion, Airtable, Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Jira, Linear — and anything else with a public API connects with your own key, pasted on the integrations page. The test is that simple: if the thing you were going to automate exposes an API, Carly integrates with it, and there’s no session, selector, proxy bill, or CAPTCHA anywhere in the path.
You describe the job in plain English, scope which tools it may touch, and it runs on a schedule or when mail arrives — with its own email address, so people can email it, CC it on a thread, or forward it something to handle. It updates the CRM record, files the invoice, books the calendar slot, and replies.
Where it doesn’t apply: a login-walled portal with no API is genuinely agent-framework territory, and Skyvern or Browser Use is the right tool.
Driving it from your own code — provisioning agents per tenant, embedding it in your product, running high volume — is available. Book a call with the team and we’ll scope it to your setup.
Pricing: free for unlimited Zapier-style workflows, AI agents from $35/month.
Best for: the share of “browser automation” projects that were really integration projects.
Choosing between them
You want deterministic code with AI where it helps. Stagehand, especially on TypeScript.
Your targets are authenticated portals and forms. Skyvern, for the vision-based approach and the 2FA and compliance story — but read the AGPL terms first.
You need infrastructure, not opinions. Browserbase for developer experience, Steel for Apache-2.0 and a self-host path, TinyFish when anti-bot pass rate is the number that matters.
The flow never changes. Playwright, and skip the model entirely.
The system has an API. Write against it directly, or let Carly do it. Everything above this line is a workaround for the case where you can’t.
Benchmarks are worth reading but not worth trusting alone — WebVoyager scores cluster within a few points while real-world reliability on your targets varies enormously. Test all three frameworks on the two hardest pages you actually need. AI browser automation tools maps the wider landscape, and the best AI browser agents covers consumer-side agents.
FAQ
What is Browser Use?
Browser Use is an open-source framework that lets AI agents control a real web browser — navigating, clicking, filling forms, and extracting data through a self-healing harness between the model and the page. It has 106,000+ GitHub stars, is MIT licensed with Python and TypeScript SDKs, and scores 89.1% on the WebVoyager benchmark. Browser Use Cloud adds managed stealth browsers, CAPTCHA solving, proxies, scheduled jobs, and webhooks.
What is the best Browser Use alternative?
Stagehand, if you want to stay in deterministic Playwright code and call the model only where judgment is needed. Skyvern, if your targets are authenticated portals and forms, since it uses computer vision rather than CSS selectors and survives UI changes. For infrastructure rather than a framework, Browserbase, Steel, or TinyFish.
Stagehand or Browser Use — which should I use?
They optimize for opposite things. Browser Use gives an agent a goal and lets it plan the steps, which is faster to prototype and harder to debug. Stagehand keeps you writing Playwright and adds act, extract, and observe at the steps that need reasoning, which is more code and far more predictable in production. Stagehand is TypeScript-first; Browser Use is strongest in Python.
Is Skyvern really better at forms than Browser Use?
That’s its explicit design goal. Skyvern reads pages with computer vision plus LLM reasoning instead of CSS selectors, so a layout change doesn’t break the run, and it handles CAPTCHAs without third-party services and works through two-factor authentication. Its 85.85% WebVoyager score trails Browser Use’s 89.1% on general web tasks, so the trade is a little breadth for a lot of resilience on portals and form flows.
How much does browser automation cost?
Frameworks are free — Browser Use and Stagehand are MIT, Skyvern is AGPL-3.0, Steel is Apache-2.0. The cost is infrastructure and tokens. Browser Use Cloud runs $0 to $999/month by concurrency plus $0.02/hour sessions and $5/GB proxies. Browserbase is $20 to $99/month with hourly overages. Steel is $0 or $250/month plus usage. Self-hosting any of them costs only compute.
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