Browserbase alternatives, sorted by why you are leaving
Browserbase rents you a browser by the hour. Most GTM jobs never needed a browser; they needed the page it would have loaded, which is where the Browserbase alternatives below start. 4 replacements below, each one matched to a specific reason.
If the agent drove the browser only to read pages, Firecrawl replaces the whole session with one call at 1 credit a page, and even its own browser feature, Interact, costs about $0.10 an hour on Standard against Browserbase's $0.12 overage. If the job is raw fetching at volume, ScrapingBee renders a page for about $0.0005 on Startup. If the browser was running a scripted scrape of a known site, an Apify Actor has probably been written already. Among these Browserbase competitors, Exa is the pick only when the agent opened the browser to search.
Prices and limits for every option below are read off the vendor's own page. These are the Browserbase competitors that each answer a named problem.
The 3 reasons people actually leave
If none of these is your situation, the honest answer is that you should probably stay. The 28 providers in the Sourcing APIs listing are where these replacements come from.
1 · Browser hours are the wrong unit for reading pages
Developer is $20 a month for 100 browser hours, then $0.12 an hour; Startup is $99 for 500, then $0.10. A session that loads ten pages and idles between them costs the same hour as one that loads a hundred, so the price of a page depends on how well the agent uses its time, which is hard to forecast.
2 · Throughput is concurrency and a session cap
The ceiling is concurrent browsers and new sessions a minute: 3 and 5 on Free, 25 and 25 on Developer, 100 and 50 on Startup, with a 429 over either. A fan-out of short tasks hits the session-creation cap long before it uses the hours it paid for.
3 · You still write the extraction
Browserbase hands you a browser, plus Search and Fetch APIs beside it. Turning a rendered page into a clean record or into model input is still your code, which is the part the per-page APIs below do for you.
4 Browserbase alternatives, and what each one fixes
Ordered by how closely each one answers the reasons above, not by price.
| Provider | Entry price | Unit cost | Free tier | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browserbase | $20/mo | $0.12 per browser hour | Free plan: 1 browser hour, 3 concurrent browsers, 1,000 Search and 1,000 Fetch calls, 15 minutes a session. | Baseline |
| Firecrawl | $16/mo annual | $0.0032 per credit | Free plan, 1,000 credits a month, no card. Keyless scrape and search too. | Best for turning sites into model input |
| ScrapingBee | $19/mo | $0.00025 per credit | 1,000 free API credits to try it, no card. | Best for cheap rendered pages at volume |
| Apify | $19/mo | $0.20 per compute unit | Free plan, $5 of platform usage a month, no card. Blocked rather than billed when it runs out. | Best for a scraper somebody already built |
| Exa | $4/1k searches | $0.007 per search, default auto type | $10 of credits every month | Best for agent research |
Read from each vendor's own pricing page on 24 October 2026.
The case for each one
Each one below is matched to a reason rather than scored, and each one names what you give up by taking it. A replacement with no downside is a replacement nobody has actually run.
Firecrawl
Pages as Markdown at 1 credit each, rendered, and a browser feature of its own at 2 credits a minute when the agent really has to click.
Most agents that run a headless browser in a GTM workflow are using it to read a page. Firecrawl does that in one call: give it a URL and it returns clean Markdown with the JavaScript, the navigation and the cookie banner already dealt with, at 1 credit a page on a basic scrape, crawl or map.
When the agent does need to interact with a page, Firecrawl's Interact feature bills 2 credits per browser minute, which is 120 credits an hour. At Standard's $0.00083 a credit that is about $0.10 an hour; on Hobby at $0.0032 it is about $0.38. Browserbase runs $0.12 an hour past Developer's 100.
The free plan is 1,000 credits a month with no card, and some endpoints work with no key at all. Concurrency is the binding limit here too: 2 on Free, 5 on Hobby, 25 on Standard, 50 on Growth.
What you give up
A raw browser under your control. Browserbase gives you sessions you script as you like, with proxies and, on Scale, captcha solving; Firecrawl gives you outcomes, and a workflow that depends on precise browser control will feel the difference.
When it is the wrong answer
Agents that need long, stateful sessions: logging in, filling multi-step forms, or keeping a browser open across many tasks.
ScrapingBee
One fetch endpoint with rendering and proxies handled. About $0.0005 a rendered page on Startup, with no browser hours to manage.
If the browser was there to get past JavaScript and blocking, ScrapingBee does that per request instead of per hour. It renders the page, rotates proxies and returns the HTML, and the bill is credits: 5 for a default rendered call, 1 for a plain fetch, 10 or 25 for premium proxies and 75 for stealth.
Startup is $99 a month for 1,000,000 credits, so a default rendered page is about $0.0005 and the cost of a crawl is pages times credits rather than an estimate of how long a browser stayed open. Hobby is $19 for 75,000 credits.
Concurrency runs from 25 on Hobby to 200 on Business and up to 900 on Enterprise, and a 429 from going over it is not billed. There is no per-minute cap published for scraping.
What you give up
Interaction. ScrapingBee fetches and renders; it does not hand you a session to click through, and stateful work such as logged-in flows is not what it is for.
When it is the wrong answer
Agents doing anything more than reading: form fills, multi-step navigation, or anything that needs a session to persist.
Apify
If the browser ran a scripted scrape of a known site, somebody has usually built and priced that Actor already.
A Browserbase session scripted to pull listings from one site is often a scraper that already exists in Apify Store. Thousands of Actors are started, polled and read through one REST API, and most are priced per result by their developer, for example Google Maps Scraper from $1.50 per 1,000 places.
Where an Actor bills compute instead, the unit is a compute unit at $0.20 on Starter, $0.16 on Scale and $0.13 on Business. The Website Content Crawler estimates $0.50 to $5 per 1,000 pages with a headless browser, and $0.20 per 1,000 with a raw HTTP crawler.
Plans are prepaid usage in dollars: $5 free, $19, $199 or $999 a month, with 5, 32, 128 or 256 concurrent runs. The hosted MCP server at mcp.apify.com takes OAuth or a token.
What you give up
A browser for your own agent to drive, and one price. Each Actor sets its own rate, and unused prepaid usage expires at the end of every month.
When it is the wrong answer
An agent that decides what to do on the page as it goes. Actors run a fixed job; Browserbase gives a model a browser.
Read the review · Browserbase vs Apify
Exa
If the agent opened a browser to search, a search API built for models at $7 per 1,000 searches on the default type and $4 on lite, with 50 concurrent agent requests.
Some agents spin up a browser to run a search and read the results. Exa replaces both steps: it returns results from its own index with page content rather than links, built to be read by a model. It answers the first reason in a different way: if the browser was only ever there to search, there is no browser hour to pay for.
Search is $7 per 1,000 requests on the default auto type and $4 on lite, with up to 10 results each, and there is $10 of credits free every month. The research endpoint tiers from $0.012 to $1.00 a request for questions one search cannot answer.
Throughput fits an agent fan-out: 10 searches a second free, up to 25 on pay as you go, and 50 concurrent agent requests. The MCP server is at mcp.exa.ai/mcp.
What you give up
Any page Exa has not indexed, and any interaction with a page at all. A search API reads the web as it saw it; Browserbase loads the page as it is right now.
When it is the wrong answer
Workflows that need a specific page, a logged-in view, or anything done on a site rather than read from it.
What you would actually pay, on each one
Every provider on this page publishes a rate card, so the real numbers can sit next to each other rather than behind a summary. The plan you want is the one whose included volume covers a normal month for you, not the cheapest one on the page.
Browserbase
Browserbase publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $20 to $99, with a quoted tier above it.
Free
- 1 browser hour, 3 concurrent browsers
- 1,000 Search and 1,000 Fetch calls
- 15 minutes a session, 7 days of data retention
Developer
- 100 browser hours, then $0.12 an hour
- 25 concurrent browsers, 25 new sessions a minute
- Fetch at $1 per 1,000 calls after 1,000, proxies $12 a GB
- Metered in browser hours, so no per-request volume is modeled
Startup
- 500 browser hours, then $0.10 an hour
- 100 concurrent browsers, 50 new sessions a minute
- Fetch at $0.50 per 1,000 calls after 10,000, proxies $10 a GB
- Metered in browser hours, so no per-request volume is modeled
Scale
- 250+ concurrent browsers, usage-based hours
- Verified Agents and captcha solving
- HIPAA BAA, DPA and SSO
Firecrawl
Firecrawl publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $16 to $333.
Free
- No cost, no card
- 1,000 pages or 500 searches
- 2 concurrent browsers
- Plus the keyless endpoints, which need no account
Hobby
- $19 a month paying month to month
- 2,500 searches or 5,000 pages scraped
- 5 concurrent requests
- $0.0032 a credit
- 1,000 extra credits per $5
Standard
- $99 a month paying month to month
- 50,000 searches or 100,000 pages scraped
- 25 concurrent requests
- $0.00083 a credit, four times better than Hobby
- 2,000 extra credits per $5
Growth
- 50 concurrent requests
- Scale is $599 a month for 1,000,000 credits
- Enterprise above that
ScrapingBee
ScrapingBee publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $19 to $249.
Hobby
- 25 concurrent requests
- 15,000 default rendered calls
- $0.000253 a credit
Freelance
- 50 concurrent requests
- 50,000 default rendered calls
- $0.000196 a credit
Startup
- 100 concurrent requests
- 200,000 default rendered calls
- $0.000099 a credit
Business
- 200 concurrent requests
- 600,000 default rendered calls
- Business + is $599 for 8,000,000
Apify
Apify publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $19 to $999.
Free
- No credit card
- Compute at $0.20 a CU, 16 GB of RAM
- 5 concurrent runs
- Blocked, not billed, when the $5 runs out
Starter
- $19 of prepaid usage a month
- Compute at $0.20 a CU, 64 GB of RAM
- 32 concurrent runs
- Bronze discount on Store Actors
Scale
- $199 of prepaid usage a month
- Compute at $0.16 a CU, 256 GB of RAM
- 128 concurrent runs
- Silver discount on Store Actors
Business
- $999 of prepaid usage a month
- Compute at $0.13 a CU, 512 GB of RAM
- 256 concurrent runs
- Gold discount and an account manager
Exa
Exa publishes 3 tiers, one of them free, and pay as you go with no minimum above the free allowance.
Starter
- $10 of credits every month, plus a $10 onboarding bonus
- Access to every endpoint
- 10 search queries per second, 50 agent concurrency
- MCP server, Claude connector and ChatGPT plugin
Developer
- The per-1,000 rates in the table above
- Up to 25 search queries per second
- 50 agent concurrency
- SOC 2 Type II, card or bank payment
Enterprise
- Custom search QPS and agent concurrency
- For large-scale requirements
Read the included volume before the headline price. A plan that costs twice as much and carries five times the credits is the cheaper plan, and on this page that is the usual case rather than the exception.
What each one costs at your volume
Browserbase first, then every replacement. The model picks the cheapest published plan that covers your volume on each one, which is the comparison a row of entry prices cannot make.
Browserbase
Its plans are not metered in records, so the figure below is the entry plan rather than a forecast.
Firecrawl
Priced on the volume you use, so the plan that covers a normal month is the one that decides the bill.
ScrapingBee
Priced on the volume you use, so the plan that covers a normal month is the one that decides the bill.
Apify
Its plans are not metered in records, so the figure below is the entry plan rather than a forecast.
Exa
Priced on the volume you use, so the plan that covers a normal month is the one that decides the bill.
Plans are read from each vendor's own pricing page and the model picks the cheapest one that covers you, so these are list prices on the billing term each vendor publishes, annual where that is how it prices, before any discount you negotiate. Browserbase and Apify publish plans that are not metered in records, so the figure shown is the entry plan rather than your bill.
What a year costs at three volumes
The same plan-fit arithmetic as the model above, run out to a year, because an annual number is what a budget actually asks for.
Browserbase, ScrapingBee and Apify publish only an entry price, so those columns are the floor for a year, not a forecast.
| A year at | Browserbase | Firecrawl | ScrapingBee | Apify | Exa |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 a month | $240 | $0 Free | $228 Hobby | $228 | $0 Developer |
| 10,000 a month | $240 | $996 Standard | $228 Hobby | $228 | $720 Developer |
| 50,000 a month | $240 | $996 Standard | $228 Hobby | $228 | $4,080 Developer |
These are list prices on the published plan that covers each volume, on the billing term each vendor publishes, so they are the number before you negotiate.
Where the data comes from, and what you may do with it
The question that arrives late and expensively is who is allowed to hold the data. A migration is the moment to check it, because you are signing a new contract anyway.
| Provider | Fields returned | Coverage | Compliance | Redistribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browserbase | Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news, Web pages | Global | SOC 2 Type II HIPAA | Not stated |
| Firecrawl | Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news, Web pages | Global | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II | Not stated |
| ScrapingBee | Firmographics, Intent and news, Web pages, Search results | Global | GDPR DPA | Not stated |
| Apify | Firmographics, Web pages | Global | SOC 2 GDPR | Not stated |
| Exa | Firmographics, Intent and news, Work email, Mobile phone, Web pages | Global | SOC 2 Type II | Not stated |
None of these states a redistribution position on its pricing or docs pages. Internally that never matters. Put the rows in something your customers can see and it becomes the question your legal team asks first.
Two practical notes that apply to every provider on this page. A compliance badge describes the vendor rather than your use of it, so a GDPR DPA does not give you a lawful basis for the outreach you send. And every one of these vendors runs its own opt-out, which means a person who asks you to delete their record has to be removed from your copy as well as from theirs.
Moving off Browserbase
Written against Firecrawl, the first pick above, because the steps are the same whichever one you take and the specifics are what make them useful. Swap the name and the order still holds.
Measure the thing you are about to lose
Replay 100 of the queries, URLs or lookups you really send through Browserbase and record the usable results, the failures and what each one cost. Without that baseline every provider looks cheaper per call than the one you are paying for today.
Check which fields change
Firecrawl returns every field Browserbase does, so nothing downstream has to change shape. Confirm the values rather than the keys: the same field can be named, typed or formatted differently on the other side.
Rewrite the auth and the limits, in that order
Browserbase authenticates with an API key in the x-bb-api-key header. Firecrawl uses a bearer token, and some endpoints work with no key at all.
The limits are the part that bites later. Browserbase's limits: concurrent browsers and a session creation cap: 3 and 5 a minute on Free, 25 and 25 on Developer, 100 and 50 on Startup. Search 2 and Fetch 5 requests a second per project. Over either limit is a 429.
Firecrawl's limits: per team, per endpoint: 10/min scrape on Free to 10,000 on Scale. Concurrency binds first. A loop tuned to the first will either crawl or get throttled on the second.
Run both for one billing cycle
Keep the old key live and route a slice of real traffic to the new one. A month is the shortest honest test, because credit expiry, rollover and the overage rate only show up at renewal and those are where the surprises live.
Cancel on the renewal date
Annual seats and prepaid usage rarely refund mid-term. Check what the contract says about the time you have already paid for, and time the switch to the renewal date.
The step people skip is the first one, and it is the only one that cannot be done after the fact. Once the old key is off you have nothing to compare the new one against, so a provider that is quietly worse on your workload looks like a provider that is fine.
What practitioners say about Firecrawl
Transcribed as written and linked to the thread. A Reddit claim is a signal rather than a fact, so nothing here is the only source for any figure on this page.
A credit is a page until you turn on the features you came for
The credit inflation thing is crazy. From "1 credit = 1 page" to burning 5-9 per page the second you enable anything actually useful is not an accident, that's a deliberate design choice if you ask me. [...] Product is good, no question. Just know what you're getting into before you start building on it
r/ProxyEngineering · May 2026 · 3 points
The mechanism is confirmed by Firecrawl's own documentation, which states that operations cost different amounts of credits and names JSON extraction and Interact as the dear ones, so heavier usage reaches the credit cap sooner. That is the thing to model before sizing a plan: the rate card above quotes 1 credit a page, and the page you actually want is usually not a basic scrape.
The 5 to 9 multiplier is this commenter's own and nothing here verifies it, and the rest of their comment is about GitHub stars and the self-hosting license rather than about the API. Take the shape of the warning, read the operations table against your own pipeline, and treat the baseline rate as the cheap case rather than the typical one.
14 threads read on 13 October 2026, searched by vendor name. Scores and dates are the comment's own. Nothing here is the only source for a price or a limit on this site: every figure in the tables above comes from a vendor's own page.
What practitioners say about Exa
Transcribed as written and linked to the thread. A Reddit claim is a signal rather than a fact, so nothing here is the only source for any figure on this page.
Developers who evaluate it call it infrastructure, not a search box
I've evaluated both for safety-related AI work, and Exa was much more obviously built to be infrastructure: programmatic retrieval, extraction, structured results, semantic search, throughput controls, enterprise privacy, all that boring backend stuff. Kagi was much more consumer-facing, and its API offering is newer.
r/firefox · August 2026 · 14 points
Somebody who evaluated Exa against a consumer search product for real work, and the list they reach for is the list this page is built on: retrieval you call programmatically, extraction, structured results and throughput you can control. It is the clearest outside statement of what Exa is for, which is a retrieval layer underneath something else rather than a search engine a person looks at.
The thread is about why Mozilla picked Exa and the commenter calls their own answer speculation, so the part worth keeping is the evaluation rather than the conclusion about who won it.
14 threads read on 13 October 2026, searched by vendor name. Scores and dates are the comment's own. Nothing here is the only source for a price or a limit on this site: every figure in the tables above comes from a vendor's own page.
Should you actually switch?
The short answer is at the top of this page. Before you act on it, run the test below, because it is the cheapest way to find out whether that answer holds for you.
Scrapers differ on the pages that fight back. Take fifty URLs you actually fetch, the hardest ones included, and run them through their free tiers. Count the pages that came back usable and what each cost in credits. The easy pages look the same everywhere; the hard ones decide the bill.
Head to head, and in a stack
Apify vs Browserbase
CompareFinished scrapers that return rows against cloud browsers sold by the hour. One gives you data, the other gives your agent a browser.
Compare them →All alternatives
57Every provider in the directory that teams regularly try to replace, with the reasons and the replacements for each.
Browse the hub →Before you switch, try the waterfall in Clay.
Clay runs a waterfall across 150+ data providers from one table, without a separate contract with each. A lookup that finds nothing costs no data credit, and the free plan includes 500 actions a month.
Frontal is a Clay Elite Studio Partner.
Switching from Browserbase, answered
What is the best Browserbase alternative?
It depends on why you are leaving, which is how this page is organized rather than ranked. The first pick here is Firecrawl, which this directory lists as the best for turning sites into model input, at $16/mo annual. The case for it, and what you give up, is in the section above.
Is there a free alternative to Browserbase?
Yes, 4 of the replacements here do. Firecrawl: Free plan, 1,000 credits a month, no card. Keyless scrape and search too. ScrapingBee: 1,000 free API credits to try it, no card. Apify: Free plan, $5 of platform usage a month, no card. Blocked rather than billed when it runs out. Exa: $10 of credits every month.
What is the cheapest Browserbase alternative?
On the entry plan, ScrapingBee: $19/mo, against Browserbase at $20/mo. Entry price is not the same as cost per result, so check the unit figure on each review before deciding.
How were these alternatives chosen?
By the reason teams leave, not by a score. The page opens with the reasons teams leave and matches a replacement to each one.