What it is
Browserbase is “browser infrastructure as a service” — instead of running Playwright/Puppeteer/Selenium on your own servers, you spin up real browser sessions in the cloud via an API.
Why it exists
Running browser automation reliably is painful at scale:
- browsers are heavy and expensive
- sessions crash, hang, or get blocked
- debugging is hard without recordings/logs
- scaling from 10 → 10,000 sessions requires real infrastructure
Browserbase abstracts all of that.
Core capabilities
- Cloud-based headless browser sessions (on demand)
- Session management (start/stop, concurrency, scaling)
- Debugging + observability (recordings, logs, replay)
- Designed for both:
- scripted automation (Playwright/Puppeteer)
- agentic workflows (LLM-driven browsing)
Typical use cases
- AI agents that need to actually use the web
- Web scraping from dynamic JS-heavy sites
- Automating multi-step UI workflows (logins, portals, forms)
- QA / testing that needs reliable browser execution
Key value
Browserbase turns browsers into a scalable backend service — so you focus on automation logic and outcomes, not browser ops.
Docs
https://docs.browserbase.com/introduction/getting-started#next-steps
Framework
Browserbase requires a framework: Stagehand, Playwright, Puppeteer or Selenium.
I have used Selenium in the past, but Stagehand is recommended as it’s built and maintained by the Browserbase team.
Stagehand
https://docs.browserbase.com/introduction/stagehand
- Recommended for AI-Native Workflows
- Javascript and Python support
- Self-healing page automations
- LLM-powered browser control
- AI-first architecture
Browserbase vs. Firecrawl
The two services you're comparing—Browserbase and Firecrawl—serve related but distinct purposes in web automation and data extraction, especially for AI agents or scraping workflows. Your quoted plans match the current entry-level paid tiers (as of early 2026):
- Browserbase Developer plan: $20/month — includes 25 concurrent browsers and 100 browser hours, with extra hours at $0.12 each.
- Firecrawl Hobby plan: ≈€16–$19/month (sources vary slightly on exact USD equivalent, often listed around $19; some older references show $16) — includes 3,000 credits/pages per month, with 5 concurrent requests.
Key Differences: What Each Tool Actually Does
- Browserbase provides serverless headless browsers (built on Playwright-like control). You get full browser sessions where you can run custom scripts to navigate, interact (click, type, scroll, fill forms), handle JavaScript-heavy sites, maintain sessions, bypass some anti-bot measures, and perform complex automations. It's infrastructure for running long-running or interactive browser tasks (e.g., AI agents that "use" the web like a human).
- Billing is time-based (browser hours = active session time).
-
Great for dynamic sites, logins, multi-step workflows, or when you need real browser control.
-
Firecrawl is a web scraping/crawling API focused on turning websites into clean, LLM-ready data (markdown, structured JSON, etc.). It handles crawling multiple pages, JavaScript rendering, and extraction — often with AI-powered features for structured output.
- Billing is credit-based (typically 1 credit ≈ 1 page scraped; more complex extractions like /extract might cost extra credits or require separate token plans in some cases).
- Great for bulk data collection, crawling entire sites or search results, and feeding data to LLMs — but it doesn't offer full interactive automation (e.g., no native support for filling forms across sessions or complex stateful interactions without extra work).
In short: Browserbase is more like "rent-a-browser infrastructure" for custom code/agents; Firecrawl is "scrape-and-clean API" optimized for data extraction.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Aspect | Browserbase ($20/mo Developer) | Firecrawl (~€16–$19/mo Hobby) |
|---|---|---|
| Core purpose | Headless browser sessions & automation | Web scraping, crawling & data extraction |
| Included usage | 100 browser hours + 25 concurrent browsers | 3,000 pages/credits + 5 concurrent requests |
| Extra usage cost | $0.12 per additional browser hour | Extra credits (often ~$9–$15 per additional 1k–several k pages; varies by plan tier) |
| Concurrency | High (25 browsers at once) — good for parallel heavy tasks | Lower (5 requests) — but sufficient for many scraping jobs |
| Best for | Interactive/dynamic tasks, AI agents needing control, JavaScript sites, logins/forms | Bulk page scraping, site crawling, clean markdown/JSON output for RAG/LLMs |
| Limitations | Costs add up if sessions are long/idle-heavy | Less flexible for stateful interactions; some AI extract features may have separate token costs |
| Ease of use | Requires coding (Playwright/Puppeteer-style) | Simpler API calls for crawl/scrape |
| Free tier | Yes (very limited: 1 hour, 1 concurrent) | Yes (500 pages one-time) |
Which One Should You Choose?
It depends on your actual use case.
- Choose Browserbase ($20/mo) if:
- You need full browser control (e.g., clicking buttons, handling logins, multi-page workflows, waiting for elements, screenshots, or running custom JS).
- You're building AI agents that "browse" autonomously.
- You expect parallel sessions or longer-running tasks.
-
100 included hours is plenty to start (≈3.3 hours/day if spread evenly; extra at $0.12/hour is reasonable for moderate overages).
-
Choose Firecrawl (€16/mo) if:
- Your main goal is scraping/crawling lots of pages quickly and getting clean, structured data (especially for feeding into LLMs).
- You don't need deep interactivity — just fetch and extract content.
- You want to scrape 3,000 pages/month (far more volume than Browserbase's 100 hours would typically cover for pure scraping, since a scrape job might only take seconds/minutes per page).
- You're okay with simpler API integration and potentially lower concurrency.