Browserbase vs Skyvern

Browserbase

Agents

Skyvern

Agents

Tagline

Browserbase

Headless browser infrastructure for AI agents

Skyvern

AI browser agent that automates web workflows from natural-language instructions, with CAPTCHA and 2FA handling built in.

Pricing

Browserbase

Freemium· Free tier · from $20/mo

Skyvern

Freemium· Free tier · from $29/mo

Lowest paid tier

Browserbase

$20/mo · Developer Plan

captured 2026-10-26

Skyvern

$29 /month · Hobby

captured 2026-10-12

Free trial

Browserbase

Yes

Skyvern

Yes

API

Browserbase

Yes

Skyvern

Yes

Platforms

Browserbase

—

Skyvern

webapi

Open source

Browserbase

Not listed

Skyvern

Yes · AGPL-3.0

GitHub stars

Browserbase

—

Skyvern

23,295

checked 2026-10-29

Last GitHub push

Browserbase

—

Skyvern

2026-10-29

First commit

Browserbase

—

Skyvern

2024-02

Package downloads (30 d)

Browserbase

—

Skyvern

5,856 · pypi skyvern

checked 2026-10-21

Hacker News stories

Browserbase

21

checked 2026-10-08

Skyvern

3

checked 2026-10-21

Earliest Wayback capture

Browserbase

2003-07-26

earliest archived capture of the site, not a launch date

Skyvern

2024-02-23

earliest archived capture of the site, not a launch date

Model used

Browserbase

Model-agnostic via Model Gateway (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, others)

Skyvern

Multi-model (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama)

Best for

Browserbase

AI product teams building agents that must click through real websites, QA teams running LLM-authored end-to-end tests, and data teams extracting content from JS-heavy or authenticated pages.

Skyvern

Pick Skyvern if you need to automate complex multi-step workflows on sites that lack APIs and you want an LLM-driven agent rather than brittle selector-based RPA.

Not for

Browserbase

Simple static-HTML scraping (a plain HTTP client is cheaper), consumer users who want a no-code scraper UI, or hobby projects unwilling to move past the 15-minute free-tier session cap.

Skyvern

Skip it if the target service already exposes a clean API, or if your compliance posture forbids AGPL source and you can't use the hosted plan.

Editorial score

Browserbase

—

Skyvern

8.3 / 10

Use cases

Browserbase

AI web-browsing agentsLLM-driven end-to-end testingAuthenticated data extractionForm-filling automationPrice and inventory monitoringJob application automationSaaS onboarding automationBusiness-listing verificationCompetitive intelligence scrapingCustomer-support copilot actions

Skyvern

browser-automationdata-extractionform-fillingaccounts-payablelead-generationbrowser-testing

Pros

Browserbase

• Purpose-built for agent workloads: stealth Chromium, residential proxies, captcha solving, and session persistence are handled for you
• Stagehand SDK (open source) lets LLMs drive pages via act/observe/extract instead of brittle CSS selectors
• Best-in-class observability: session replays, network logs, and live viewer make agent debugging tractable
• Managed Agents, Search API, and Fetch API give teams three altitudes of abstraction from raw browsers to prompt-only
• Trusted at scale by well-known AI companies (Lovable, Clay, Ramp, DeepMind, Amplitude)
• Model Gateway lets you swap OpenAI/Anthropic/Google without changing agent code
• Free tier is real (3 concurrent browsers, 1,000 search + fetch calls) so you can prototype without a card

Skyvern

• Handles CAPTCHA and 2FA natively, unlike most RPA tools
• Open source (AGPL-3.0) and self-hostable via Docker
• LLM-agnostic: works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or Ollama
• SOC2 Type II + HIPAA with enterprise integrations (Salesforce, Workday)
• Free tier with 5,000 credits and no credit card required

Cons

Browserbase

• Costs scale quickly for high-concurrency workloads once you exceed included browser hours, agent runs, and proxy bandwidth
• Free tier caps sessions at 15 minutes and disables captcha solving, so realistic testing needs a paid plan
• Vendor lock-in on the higher-level Agents/Fetch products; portable Playwright code lives at the lower layer
• Cold-start latency of a fresh browser instance is meaningful for user-facing, sub-second interactions
• Some anti-bot systems still catch managed cloud browsers despite fingerprint evasion, requiring custom proxy tuning
• Compliance features like HIPAA BAA, SSO, and DPA are gated to the custom-priced Scale tier

Skyvern

• AGPL-3.0 license is restrictive for closed-source commercial embedding
• Credit-based pricing can get expensive at high volume
• Browser-agent runs are slower and less deterministic than real APIs
• Effectiveness still varies on heavily JS-driven or anti-bot-hardened sites

Website

Browserbase

www.browserbase.com

Skyvern

www.skyvern.com

Editorial score: rule-based, 0–10, from AI-assisted profile inputs (see /methodology) — not a user rating; “—” means unscored. “Not listed” means we have no record of it, not that it is absent. GitHub figures and prices carry the date they were checked or captured; prices are shown as published, unconverted.