Comparison
BrowseFleet vs the alternatives
Honest comparison. Each alternative does at least one thing better than us; we are explicit about what. The longer-form discussion of when to pick each lives in the server repo's docs/comparison.md.
| BrowseFleet | Steel.dev | Browserbase | Raw Playwright / Puppeteer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| License | MIT | Apache 2.0 | Proprietary | MIT (the libs) |
| Self-host | Yes (default) | Yes (open core) | No | You build it |
| Hosted SaaS | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Stealth | Yes | Yes | Yes | Bring your own |
| Profile persistence | Yes | Yes | Yes | Bring your own |
| Human-in-the-loop control | Yes (operator mode) | Partial | No | Bring your own |
| AI agent layer | Yes (built in) | Yes (separate product) | Stagehand SDK | Bring your own |
| Official SDKs | Node, Python | Node, Python | Node, Python | Native |
| CDP passthrough | Yes | Yes | Yes | Direct |
| Price (hosted) | n/a | ~$99/mo + browser-hours | ~$99/mo + browser-hours | Infra only |
| Price (self-hosted) | Infra only | Infra only | n/a | Infra only |
Pick Steel.dev when
You want hosted and you do not want to be in the infrastructure business. You are willing to pay a per-browser-hour price.
Pick Browserbase when
You are funded, you do not want to operate infrastructure, you want SOC2 today, and you want a polished operator dashboard.
Pick raw Playwright / Puppeteer when
Small project, one process, one language, no operator-mode requirement, willing to write the lifecycle and stealth setup yourself.
Pick BrowseFleet when
Multiple consumers, multiple languages, want operator mode for free, want stealth tuned and randomized for free, budget-constrained, audit-required, or you simply prefer to own the artifact you depend on.
Read the longer version
The full comparison page in the server repo includes per-feature breakdowns and a list of what is NOT a fair comparison (Apify, Selenium Grid, raw headless Chrome).
docs/comparison.md