# Browserbase Cloud browser infrastructure for AI agents, web data retrieval, and browser automation. ## About Browserbase Browserbase positions itself as a complete platform for building and deploying agents that browse and interact with the web like humans. Its product surface includes Browser API, Search API, Fetch API, Functions, Model Gateway, MCP support, and Stagehand integration. That makes it a strong infrastructure choice for teams that want hosted browsers and developer control. Sistava competes from a different angle: browser automation is one capability inside a complete AI workforce platform with pre-built employees, task boards, memory, guardrails, and cross-functional work coordination. ## Platform details - Pricing: Free plan, then Developer $20/mo, Startup $99/mo, Scale custom pricing. - Founded: 2023, San Francisco - Funding: Private platform with public customer logos including Microsoft, Vercel, Perplexity, and Vanta. - Last reviewed: 2026-04-17 ## Official website - [Visit Browserbase](https://browserbase.com) ## What does Browserbase actually do? Browserbase is a cloud platform that runs fleets of headless browsers for AI agents and automation workflows. You point your agent at Browserbase, and it spins up real Chromium sessions with stealth defaults, residential proxies, captcha solving, and session debugging, so your code does not babysit infrastructure. The product is built around four primitives: Browsers (the cloud browsers themselves), a Fetch API for cheap one-off page grabs, a Search API powered by Exa, and Agent Identity for sign-in flows. They also ship Stagehand, an SDK that layers natural-language actions on top of Playwright. Browserbase is plumbing, not an employee. It runs the browser. You still write the agent, choose the model, define the task, and handle retries when a vendor portal changes layout. Sistava sits one layer up: it is the AI employee that decides what to do in the browser, then handles email, CRM updates, and reporting after the browsing finishes. Most teams use Browserbase because they already have engineers writing Playwright or Stagehand scripts and need scalable infrastructure. If you do not have those engineers, the raw Browserbase API is the wrong starting point. ## How much does Browserbase cost? Browserbase has a free tier with one browser hour and three concurrent sessions, a Developer plan at $20 per month with 100 hours and 1 GB of proxy bandwidth, a Startup plan at $99 per month with 500 hours and 5 GB, and a custom Scale plan for enterprise. Overage is roughly $0.12 per browser hour and $12 per GB of proxy traffic. Real cost is rarely the subscription. It is the combination of browser hours, proxy bandwidth, model tokens consumed by Stagehand or your own agent, and the engineering time spent maintaining the script. A non-trivial scraping or workflow job can burn through 100 hours in a single week. Sistava prices differently. You buy AI employee credits that cover the model, the tools, the browser action, and the engineer-style reasoning around it in one quota. There is no separate browser-hour meter, no proxy GB meter, and no extra model gateway charge. If you only need cloud browsers and you already have engineers writing the agent, Browserbase is the cheaper line item. If you are paying a contractor to build the agent on top of it, the totals usually flip. ## When does Browserbase beat the alternatives? Browserbase wins when you have an engineering team, a defined automation, and you need a lot of concurrent browsers running stealthily at low cost per session. Their serverless model means you do not run Selenium grids, manage proxies, or maintain captcha solvers yourself. It also wins for AI-native shops shipping their own agent product. The Stagehand SDK plus Browserbase infrastructure is one of the cleanest stacks for building a custom web agent. Companies like Perplexity and Bardeen have used similar architectures. It is not the right pick if you want a finished worker. Browserbase will not write your outreach copy, follow up on a reply three days later, or notice that a lead never responded. It executes browser actions and returns DOM state. Sistava goes a layer up: it owns the goal, picks the tools, runs the browser when needed, and reports back in a shared workspace. The trade off is less control of the raw browser and less customization of stealth behavior. ## Where does Browserbase fall short for non-engineering founders? Browserbase assumes you can write code. The documentation, SDKs, debugger, session inspector, and pricing model are all aimed at developers, not founders who want a working assistant by tomorrow morning. There is no drag-and-drop builder and no canned set of business workflows. The other gap is glue. A real outreach or research workflow needs a CRM update, an email send, a calendar invite, and a Slack ping. Browserbase handles only the browser step. Everything around it is your problem to wire together. Reliability gets expensive on long-tail sites. Browserbase gives you the browser, but you still own the logic when a vendor portal silently changes a button label, adds a new captcha, or rate limits you mid-run. Each fix is another engineering ticket. Sistava covers that whole loop without code. The employee handles the browser action, the follow-up email, the CRM note, and the retry when something fails. The trade off is that you give up the raw flexibility a Browserbase plus Stagehand stack provides. ## How does Browserbase handle scale and stealth? Browserbase scales by treating each browser as an ephemeral serverless unit. You can spin hundreds of concurrent sessions on the Startup plan and thousands on Scale, with built-in queuing and automatic teardown. Sessions are recorded so you can replay and debug failures. Stealth is one of the main selling points. Browserbase ships residential proxies, fingerprint rotation, captcha solving, and Agent Identity for sites that require sign-in. It is one of the few platforms that publicly leans into being usable on protected sites. That same flexibility is a footgun. Heavy concurrent runs against rate limited sites can rack up bandwidth charges quickly, and stealth is a moving target. You are still on the hook for backing off, rotating identities, and not getting your account flagged. Sistava trades some of that raw concurrency for safer defaults. The employee will batch work, throttle itself, and refuse risky actions rather than burn proxy budget. For founder-grade workloads that is usually the better trade. ## Comparison - [Compare Browserbase with Sistava](/en/compare/browser-automation/browserbase) — See the two platforms side by side when you are ready to evaluate them.