Compare / other services
cdpfleet vs Kernel
A sandboxed cloud Chromium for agents, billed per second with free standby, against a fleet of twelve real browsers on flat threads: $0.06/hour headless but $0.48/hour headful there, your own proxies only from the $200/month plan, versus free traffic through any proxy here. Prices, limits and features side by side.
Kernel runs sandboxed Chromium browsers in the cloud for AI agents and automation: you create a browser through its API or SDK (TypeScript, Python, Go), get a CDP WebSocket URL, and drive it with Playwright, Puppeteer or WebDriver. Headful is the default (live view, replays, better stealth), headless is the light option, and a stealth mode adds an ISP proxy and a CAPTCHA solver. Billing is per second, and a browser idle for 5 seconds goes into standby and stops costing money. cdpfleet is a fleet of twelve real desktop browsers — Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Naver Whale, Yandex Browser, Chromium, Patchright, Rebrowser, Camoufox, Firefox and WebKit — launched with one HTTPS call and driven over the Playwright protocol or CDP from five languages, on threads you buy. Kernel bundles more agent features; cdpfleet gives you more browsers, lets you use any proxy on every plan and counts a headful browser as two threads instead of charging eight times the headless price.
| cdpfleet | Kernel | |
|---|---|---|
| Browsers | 12 — Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Naver Whale, Yandex Browser, Chromium, Patchright, Rebrowser, Camoufox, Firefox, WebKit. Chrome with stable, beta and dev channels and pinned previous majors; Camoufox with pinned versions. | One sandboxed Chromium (version not published), headful by default or headless; GPU-accelerated headful from the Start-Up plan. |
| How you connect | Playwright protocol (connect(wsUrl), client 1.60) from Node.js, Python, Java, C# and Go — or "cdp": true for a cdpUrl (Puppeteer, connectOverCDP). SDKs in all five languages. | CDP WebSocket (connectOverCDP, Puppeteer) or WebDriver; SDKs in TypeScript, Python and Go, plus a CLI. |
| Browser time | Free Community plan (invite-only for now): 2 threads, 60 browser-minutes per thread a day, 15-minute sessions, proxies included. Per second, as thread-seconds. Shared: $0.02–$0.03 per browser-hour at full use; dedicated $0.0069/hour ($5.00/month for a browser around the clock). A headful session takes 2 threads. | Per second: headless ~$0.06/hour, headful ~$0.48/hour (8×), headful with GPU ~$2.88/hour. No charge while a browser is in standby (5 s after the last CDP or live-view activity). Plans: Developer free ($5 credits/month), Hobbyist $30/month ($10 credits), Start-Up $200/month ($50 credits), Enterprise. |
| Ending a session | Closing the connection ends the session and the billing; an unused session ends after 60 seconds. | Disconnecting doesn't end it: with no client attached the browser goes into standby (not billed) and is deleted after timeout_seconds (60 s by default, up to 72 h), or by a delete call. |
| Session length | Up to 24 h (shared threads: also capped by your remaining daily minutes). Idle timeout 120 s by default, up to 10 min on shared threads and 24 h on dedicated. | No maximum duration published; timeout_seconds is an inactivity timeout (default 60 s, up to 72 h) that starts when no client is attached. |
| Concurrency | The threads you buy: 5 to 10,000 (more on request). | Developer 5, Hobbyist 10, Start-Up 150, Enterprise custom; browser creation is rate limited separately. |
| Your own proxies | Free on every plan — HTTP, HTTPS or SOCKS5, single, pools or per-host rules, with live swap. Or the cdpfleet residential proxy, 4 tiers from $0.50 to $5/GB. | Bring-your-own proxies from the Start-Up plan ($200/month) only; proxies can be hot-swapped on a running browser. |
| Their proxies | cdpfleet residential: 4 tiers from $0.50/GB ($5/GB at Tier 1), $5 free credit, by country, device OS and sticky session. | ISP (US, SG, GB, FR, DE), residential and mobile, from the Hobbyist plan; the pricing page says no charge for proxies. None on the free plan. |
| Resources per browser | A real desktop browser on a dedicated node slot; headful renders on a virtual display. | Headless 1 GB of memory, headful 8 GB (up to 16 GB). |
| Stealth | Real browsers by default (genuine Chrome, Edge, Brave…), headful by default, and three stealth builds — Patchright, Rebrowser, Camoufox (compare them). | Stealth mode adds a default ISP proxy and an automatic CAPTCHA solver (both opt-out); GPU browsers render canvas and WebGL on real hardware. |
| Captcha solving | Not built in. Use any solver through Playwright, or hand over to a person with live view. | Automatic, in stealth mode. |
| Watching a session | Live view with human takeover — Watch / Take control in the dashboard, or a link from the API — and Launch interactive: open any browser on a start page straight into live view from the dashboard's code generator (start_url over the API). Session recordings as MP4 (480p free, 720p or 1080p on a plan), and JPEG frames to your code with page.screencast. | Live view; session replays kept 1 day (free), 7 days (Hobbyist) or 30 days (Start-Up). |
| Persistence and logins | Persistent profiles keep cookies, local storage and IndexedDB between sessions (paid plans); Playwright storageState; keep_alive to reconnect to the same browser on dedicated threads. No extensions. | Profiles (cookies, storage, open tabs, Chromium preferences), managed auth connections and vaults, custom extensions. |
| Where the browser runs | Servers in the EU (Germany and Finland); your proxy decides where traffic exits. | US by default; regional browsers from the Start-Up plan at the same rates. |
| Examples | 58 cases run on production in five languages, all on GitHub with their output. | Docs guides and SDK references in TypeScript, Python and Go. |
Kernel facts from its public pricing page and documentation, checked on 12 October 2026; list prices in USD. Tell us if something is out of date.
Which one, when
Pick Kernel if…
- Your agents spend most of their time waiting — on an LLM, a person, a queue — so free standby beats paying for an open browser.
- You run short headless jobs where ~$0.06/hour is hard to beat.
- You want managed logins, extensions and a built-in CAPTCHA solver from one vendor.
Pick cdpfleet if…
- You need headful browsers: here a headful session costs two threads, there it costs eight times the headless price.
- Your traffic goes through your own proxies — free here on every plan, $200/month and up there.
- The site must see a specific real browser or version — Chrome channels, Edge, Brave, Firefox, WebKit, Camoufox — not one Chromium.
- You want the Playwright protocol from Java, C# or Go, or a flat price for a browser that runs around the clock.
- You want to start free — the Community plan includes proxies — and try a browser in live view before writing any code.
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.