Compare / other services
cdpfleet vs Browserless
The longest-running headless-browser service against a browser fleet: 30-second "units" with 2–60-minute session caps and proxies by the megabyte, or threads metered per second with your own proxies and 24-hour sessions. Prices, limits and features side by side.
Browserless has sold hosted headless Chrome since 2017 and is the service most people mean by "browser as a service": a Puppeteer or Playwright endpoint with a token, plus BrowserQL (its own GraphQL automation language with stealth and captcha solving), REST endpoints for screenshots and PDFs, and a self-hostable image. cdpfleet is a fleet of thirteen real desktop browsers — Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Whale, Yandex, Chromium, Patchright, Rebrowser, CloakBrowser, Camoufox, Firefox and WebKit — launched with one HTTPS call and driven over the Playwright protocol from five languages, through proxies you bring. Both can hand you a Chromium over a WebSocket; the accounting, the session limits and what else is in the box differ a lot.
| cdpfleet | Browserless | |
|---|---|---|
| Browsers | 13 — Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Naver Whale, Yandex Browser, Chromium, Patchright, Rebrowser, CloakBrowser, Camoufox, Firefox, WebKit. Chrome with stable, beta and dev channels and pinned previous majors; Camoufox with pinned versions. | Chromium, Chrome, Firefox, WebKit and Edge; a "Stealth" Chromium endpoint. No version pinning or channels documented. |
| How you connect | Playwright protocol only: chromium/firefox/webkit.connect(wsUrl) with the matching Playwright client (1.60; 1.52 for Rebrowser) — Node.js, Python, Java, C# and Go. | Puppeteer over CDP, Playwright over CDP, Playwright's native protocol per browser (/chromium/playwright, /firefox/playwright…), plus BrowserQL (GraphQL over HTTPS) and REST APIs (/screenshot, /pdf, /content, /function). |
| Session length | Up to 24 h per session (shared threads: also capped by your remaining daily minutes). Idle timeout 60 s by default, up to 24 h on dedicated threads. | Hard caps per plan: 2 min (Free), 15 min (Prototyping), 30 min (Starter), 60 min (Scale). |
| Metering | Per second, as thread-seconds: headless browser = 1 thread, headful = 2. | "Units": a block of up to 30 seconds per browser connection — a 31-second session costs two units. Proxy traffic is also billed in units per MB. |
| Plans | From $10.00/month (10 shared threads). Shared threads: 60–480 browser-minutes a day per thread; dedicated threads for 24/7 use at $5.00/thread/month. Pricing. | Free: 1,000 units, 2 concurrent. Prototyping $25/month: 20,000 units, 10 concurrent, $0.0020/unit over. Starter $140/month: 180,000 units, 40 concurrent, $0.0017/unit. Scale $350/month: 500,000 units, 100 concurrent, $0.0015/unit. Enterprise custom. (Annual billing prices.) |
| One browser-hour | Shared: $0.02–$0.03 at full use; dedicated $0.0069. A browser running 24/7 is one dedicated thread, $5.00/month. | 120 units: $0.18–$0.24 at the overage rates, about $0.21 at the Starter plan's included rate ($140 ÷ 1,500 h). A browser running 24/7 would need a new session every 15–60 minutes and ≈ 86,400 units/month ≈ $130–$173. |
| Concurrency | The threads you buy: 10 to 10,000 (more on request); each session takes 1–4 threads by type. | 2 (Free), 10 (Prototyping), 40 (Starter), 100 (Scale), with small burst allowances; more on Enterprise. |
| Proxies | Bring your own HTTP, HTTPS or SOCKS5 proxies — single, pool, or per-host rules (proxy_rules) — swap a running session's proxy live, see traffic per destination host and rule. No per-GB fee. A proxy is required for every session. | Built-in residential (6 units per MB ≈ $0.009–0.012/MB, i.e. $9–12/GB) and datacenter (2 units per MB) proxies; your own proxies via Puppeteer/Playwright launch arguments. |
| Stealth | Real browsers by default (genuine Chrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox…), headful by default, and four stealth builds — Patchright, Rebrowser, CloakBrowser, Camoufox — on every plan. See headless tells. | A Stealth Chromium endpoint for Puppeteer/Playwright and stealth-enabled BrowserQL sessions with human-like interactions; included on all plans. |
| Captcha solving | Not built in. Use any solver through Playwright. | Built in (BrowserQL verify/solve mutations), all plans. |
| Watching a session | Playwright tracing and video recording over the connection — session replay without a vendor. Session list, usage and per-host traffic in the dashboard and Account API. | Session storage and logs with plan-based retention (1 day Free … 90 days Scale), screen recording from Prototyping, video support from Starter; a live debugger / hybrid "hand over to a human" mode. |
| Persistence | Playwright storageState between sessions (case). No persistent profiles. | Session reconnection (browserQLEndpoint / reconnect) within the session cap; user-data-dir persistence on some endpoints. |
| Mobile | Playwright device emulation on Chromium-family and WebKit; real Android and iPhone browsers in early access. | Emulation through Puppeteer/Playwright. |
| Self-hosting | No — a managed fleet. | Yes: the open-source Docker image, with paid licences for commercial use. |
| Where the browser runs | Servers in the EU (Germany and Finland); your proxy decides where traffic exits. | Shared fleet in US West (SFO), London and Amsterdam; private fleets by region. |
| Examples | 21 cases run on production in five languages, all on GitHub with their output. | Docs with Puppeteer/Playwright/BrowserQL snippets; REST API recipes. |
Browserless facts from its public pricing page and documentation, checked on 5 October 2026; list prices in USD. Tell us if something is out of date.
Which one, when
Pick Browserless if…
- You want Puppeteer, raw CDP, or an HTTP API that returns a screenshot, PDF or page content without writing browser code.
- You want captcha solving, stealth and residential proxies from one vendor, or BrowserQL's declarative scripts.
- You need to self-host the same stack on your own servers.
Pick cdpfleet if…
- Your sessions run longer than an hour — logins kept warm, monitoring, queues — or around the clock on dedicated threads.
- You need a specific real browser or version: Chrome beta/dev or a pinned major, Edge, Brave, Opera, Camoufox, a stealth build on every plan.
- You already pay for proxies and want per-host routing, live swaps and traffic accounting instead of units per MB.
- You want per-second metering and Playwright clients in Java, C# or Go as well as Node.js and Python.
Try it
The quickstart is one HTTPS call and five lines of Playwright; the code builder writes the launch for any browser and option set in your language.