Browserbase

What is Browserbase?

Browserbase is a cloud browser infrastructure company, founded in 2024 and based in San Francisco, that gives developers programmatic access to headless browsers for automation and AI agents. It ships REST APIs (Sessions, Contexts, Search, Fetch, Agents, and more), Node.js and Python SDKs, and Stagehand, an open-source browser automation framework with 22k GitHub stars.

The company has raised $67.5M across three rounds and reports over 100,000 developers and 10,000+ companies using its platform, serving teams that need reliable, scriptable browser access without running their own infrastructure.

What does Browserbase do?

Browserbase runs headless Chrome instances in the cloud that developers spin up through its Sessions API, then drive with Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, or its own Stagehand SDK.

A single API key unlocks the full stack: the Sessions API for creating and managing browser instances, the Contexts API for reusing logged-in environments across runs, the Search API for token-efficient web search, the Fetch API for pulling page content as clean markdown through a proxy network, and a Runtime API for scheduling agents to run on demand or on a cron.

The unified browse CLI (installed via npm install -g browse) wraps these same APIs for local development, and Browserbase publishes 30+ starter templates plus an open-source skill catalog (Browse.sh) with researched playbooks for automating hundreds of specific sites.

Every session is recorded automatically with synchronized video replay, DevTools access, network requests, and console logs, and sessions can run up to 6 hours on paid plans. Usage is metered by concurrent browsers, browser hours, agent runs, and Search/Fetch call volume, with proxy bandwidth and auto captcha solving available depending on plan tier.

By the vendor's own reporting, the platform recorded 36.9 million unique browser sessions in March 2026 across 100,000+ developers and 10,000+ companies, and its Stagehand SDK sees 700,000+ weekly downloads.

How Browserbase works

1. 1Get an API key and install the SDK or unified CLI (npm install -g browse).
2. 2Create a browser session through the Sessions API, then drive it with Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, or Stagehand.
3. 3Reuse logged-in state across runs with the Contexts API, or call the Search and Fetch APIs directly for lighter-weight data retrieval without a full session.
4. 4Deploy the agent to run on a schedule or on demand via the Runtime API, with every session auto-recorded for replay and debugging.

Who is Browserbase for?

• ✓Developers building AI agents that need to browse and act on real websites
• ✓Teams running web scraping or data extraction at scale without managing their own browser infrastructure
• ✓QA engineers running Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium test suites against cloud browsers instead of local ones

Not forTeams that need the fastest possible cold starts or free anti-detection out of the box: independent benchmarks show Browserbase's session start (5-10s) trailing Kernel and TinyFish, and its free tier ships with no stealth features at all, unlike Kernel's free tier which includes basic stealth and residential proxies.

Why use Browserbase?

1. Stagehand, its SDK, has 22k GitHub stars and 700k+ weekly downloads, real open-source traction rather than marketing claims.
2. The platform recorded 36.9 million unique browser sessions in March 2026 across 100,000+ developers and 10,000+ companies.
3. Browserbase has raised $67.5M across three funding rounds, including a Series B, suggesting runway to keep building out the API surface.
4. Every session is recorded automatically by default (video, DevTools, network, console logs), where competitor Kernel requires manual activation on paid tiers only.