Agent browser infrastructure
BrowserOS neovs Browserbase
One runs hundreds of browsers on their servers. One runs a single browser on your desk, holding your accounts.
Browserbase is cloud browser infrastructure. Your code asks for a browser, they start a headless Chromium in their fleet, and your Playwright, Puppeteer or Stagehand script drives it. They add what large-scale browsing needs: proxies, bot-detection and CAPTCHA handling, persisted auth contexts, live view and session recordings.
BrowserOS neo is one browser, on your machine, signed in as you, that your agent drives over MCP while you watch. If you need to run a thousand browsers, you need Browserbase, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
The short version
Choose BrowserOS neo when
- The work happens inside your own accounts — email, CRM, an internal tool.
- You do not want your browsing or session data on someone else’s servers.
- It is one browser at a time, at a desk, with a person nearby.
- You want it free, and you want to read the source.
Choose Browserbase when
- You need many browsers at once — dozens, hundreds, or more.
- The job runs on a server or a schedule with nobody watching.
- You are hitting bot detection, CAPTCHAs or geographic blocks.
- It is production infrastructure and you want a vendor, an SLA and support.
Side by side
| Dimension | BrowserOS neo | Browserbase |
|---|---|---|
| Where the browser runs | BrowserOS neoOn your own machine, macOS or Windows. | BrowserbaseOn their infrastructure, in the cloud. |
| How many at once | BrowserOS neoA handful. Several agents share one browser you can watch. | BrowserbaseA few concurrent browsers on the free tier, hundreds on paid plans. Scale is the product. |
| Whose logins | BrowserOS neoYours, imported from Chrome in one click, already signed in. | BrowserbaseWhatever your code supplies. Contexts persist authentication between sessions once set up. |
| How work is described | BrowserOS neoYou tell your agent what you want; it drives the browser over MCP. | BrowserbaseMostly code — Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, REST, or their Stagehand SDK. They also ship an MCP server, so an agent can drive it directly. |
| Unattended work | BrowserOS neoNo. Your machine has to be on, and you have to be there. | BrowserbaseYes. That is what it is for. |
| Proxies, stealth, CAPTCHAs | BrowserOS neoNone of this, in any form. | BrowserbaseBuilt in, including proxy bandwidth, bot-detection handling and CAPTCHA solving. |
| Watching and reviewing | BrowserOS neoLive tabs on your screen, plus replay of any session as video. | BrowserbaseLive view and session recordings, with logs across every step. |
| Where your data ends up | BrowserOS neoOn your disk. Session history, screenshots, replays and settings are local files. | BrowserbaseOn their platform, because that is where the browsing happens. Their controls govern it. |
| Price and support | BrowserOS neoFree, AGPL-3.0, community support on GitHub and Discord. | BrowserbaseA free tier, then metered plans across browser hours, concurrency, proxy bandwidth and API calls, with paid support and enterprise controls. |
A fresh browser in a data centre is logged out of everything. To work inside your accounts it needs credentials put somewhere — a secrets store, a persisted context, a login script. Browserbase handles that well, but the sign-in still lives outside your machine.
BrowserOS neo starts from the other end: it imports your Chrome profile once, and the agent is signed into the same things you are, because it is your browser. One tool gives you a thousand browsers that know nothing about you; the other gives you one that already does.
Where Browserbase is better.
At scale, comprehensively. Hundreds of concurrent browsers on demand, with no machine of yours involved, is something BrowserOS neo cannot do at all. Proxies, bot-detection handling, CAPTCHA solving and geographic routing are a large ongoing engineering effort they run as a service and we do not offer in any form.
They run unattended. A Browserbase job runs at 3am on a server; neo needs your computer awake and, realistically, you nearby. Session replay is not ours alone either — they have live view and recordings with per-step logs, so the honest difference is where the session runs and whose accounts it holds.
And for a regulated team the compliance argument may run the other way: they document SOC 2 Type II, regional data controls, HIPAA BAA availability, DPA and SSO. An audited vendor can be easier to approve than a browser on a laptop, so “local” is not automatically the safer answer.
If your work is crawling, scraping, monitoring or bulk form-filling, use Browserbase. We would rather say that than lose your afternoon.
Common questions
What is Browserbase?
A cloud platform that runs headless browsers for you. Your code connects to a browser in their fleet using Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, their Stagehand SDK or their MCP server, and they provide proxies, bot-detection and CAPTCHA handling, persisted auth contexts, live views and session recordings.
Which is better for large-scale scraping?
Browserbase, without qualification. Large-scale scraping needs concurrency, proxies and anti-bot handling, which is exactly what they sell. BrowserOS neo runs one browser on your desk.
Can I run BrowserOS neo in the cloud?
No. It is a desktop browser for macOS and Windows, designed to run on the machine holding your logins. For browsers on servers at scale, Browserbase is the right tool.
Does my data stay private with BrowserOS neo?
The browsing runs on your machine. Session history, screenshots, replays and settings are files on your disk, and your logins stay in your own browser profile, so your pages are not sitting in a dashboard we own. The source is open, so you can verify that rather than trust it.
Check it yourself
Every claim about Browserbase here was read off these pages on 4 August 2026. If something has gone stale, tell us.
What we could not confirm
- Browserbase pricing and tier limits change. This page describes the billing model rather than quoting rates.
- We have not tested their bot-detection or CAPTCHA success rates and make no claim about them.
- Their compliance certifications are as documented by Browserbase; we did not independently verify them.
Give your agent a browser it can sign into.
Free, open source, and it sits beside the browser you already use.