How to Migrate from Selenium Grid to BrowserQL

Introduction

Browser automation doesn’t need to be complicated. If you’ve been working with Selenium Grid, you’ve probably dealt with its usual setup challenges: drivers, nodes, ports, and the constant need to keep everything in sync. It gets the job done but can be a lot to maintain.

BrowserQL takes a different path. It’s an API-first way to automate the browser, with no servers to manage, no drivers to install, and built-in features like stealth mode, proxy support, and CAPTCHA handling right out of the box. This guide is here to help you move from Grid to BQL in a way that’s clear, practical, and easy to start. Let’s make browser automation simpler.

Your Current Grid Stack

Using Selenium Grid, you’ve probably worked with one of its common setup modes: Standalone, Hub & Node, or the Fully Distributed setup. Standalone is the easiest to spin up; it runs everything in a single process and works well for local testing.

The Hub & Node model is what most teams use in CI pipelines: one hub acts as the traffic controller, and nodes handle the browser sessions. Then there’s the fully distributed setup, where each component (Router, Distributor, Event Bus, and so on) runs independently. It gives you more flexibility, but there’s more to manage.

Your tests probably connect to the Grid using RemoteWebDriver, targeting something like http://localhost:4444. You pass in capabilities to request a specific browser or platform, and the Grid determines where to run it.

Depending on your setup, drivers might be auto-configured using Selenium Manager, or you may install and manage them yourself. Either way, test success depends on the Grid being properly configured and everything lining up—drivers on the PATH, ports open, components running, and registered.

If that sounds a little fragile, you’re not alone. It’s pretty common to hit limits when trying to scale. Maybe nodes drop off randomly, or you get mysterious test failures that vanish when run locally. And when browser vendors release updates, keeping drivers and environments in sync can be a chore.

On top of that, modern websites are getting better at detecting automation, and default Selenium behaviors often raise flags. If your infrastructure includes hand-tuned configs, networked nodes, or custom driver setups, all of that becomes part of what you’ll eventually need to rethink as you migrate.

Introducing BrowserQL: What You’re Migrating To

BrowserQL (BQL for short) is what Browserless has built to simplify browser automation. Instead of setting up servers, installing drivers, or worrying about Grid components talking to each other, BQL gives you a clean GraphQL API that works.

You send a mutation like goto to visit a page or click to interact with something, and the browser runs it in the cloud. There is no setup, no containers, and no sessions to manage. It’s lightweight, fast, and designed to stay out of your way.

What stands out is how different it feels from using Selenium Grid. Instead of creating a session and controlling it step by step, you describe what the browser should do, and BrowserQL handles everything behind the scenes.

It’s stateless and declarative, which means less code and fewer points of failure. Plus, it comes packed with features that would normally take a lot of effort to set up yourself: built-in stealth mode, CAPTCHA solving, proxy support, and even human-like behavior baked right in. It's designed to meet modern test automation needs.

Translating Concepts from Grid to BQL

If you're used to how things work in Selenium Grid, this quick side-by-side will help you map those concepts to how BQL works. It’s not a 1:1 replacement; it’s simpler.

Here's how some of the common pieces line up.

For example, let’s say you’re testing a standard login flow: open a login page, input credentials, click the login button, and verify a welcome message. With Selenium Grid, this typically requires:

• Initializing a RemoteWebDriver instance with the right DesiredCapabilities
• Ensure Grid runs with the correct node configurations (browser version, OS, etc.)
• Ensuring that the corresponding browser driver (e.g., chromedriver) is installed and accessible on the system PATH
• Managing the state of the session across multiple method calls (get(), findElement(), sendKeys(), click(), etc.)
• Adding retry logic and waits to handle flaky timing issues
• Writing cleanup logic to close the session properly
• Debugging across Grid components when something breaks nodes, event bus, browser logs, driver logs

That flow can easily stretch to 150+ lines of Java or Python code, especially once you include error handling, logging, and custom waits. And it’s tightly coupled to your environment, browser versions, network configuration, system resources, etc.

With BQL, you can collapse all of that into a single declarative mutation. No session to manage, no driver versioning, no infrastructure to babysit. You just describe the actions, and the Browserless cloud handles everything else, including stealth mode, retries, browser provisioning, and even anti-bot behavior like humanized typing.

Here’s what the same login test looks like using BQL:

mutation LoginFlow {
  goto(url: "https://example.com/login", waitUntil: load) {
    status
  }

  type(selector: "#username", text: "user") {
    time
  }

  type(selector: "#password", text: "pass") {
    time
  }

  click(selector: "#submit") {
    time
  }

  text(selector: "#welcome-message") {
    text
  }
}

Why this works better:

• Each action is stateless and atomic no need to maintain session context
• BQL auto-handles delays, typing speed, and click fidelity to mimic real users
  The response is structured JSON, making assertions clean and reliable
• No drivers, no ports, no grid orchestration just an API call

For teams dealing with scale, flakiness, or anti-bot protections, this approach reduces maintenance, simplifies test logic, and dramatically simplifies debugging.

Migrating Your Tests: From Java/Test Frameworks to BQL

Using Selenium with Java, or any other language that connects to a Grid setup, moving to BrowserQL doesn't mean throwing everything out. You can start small and layer it in where it makes sense. The main idea is to shift from procedural test scripts to declaring what you want the browser to do using BQL’s mutation-based model.

Step-by-step on migrating:

• Identify the right candidates
  Look for test flows that are slow, flaky, or frequently flagged by bot detection. BQL is especially effective for scraping, login flows, form submissions, or anything against heavily guarded sites.
• Extract core actions
  Break your Selenium tests down into the actions being performed, such as get(), click(), and sendKeys(). These map directly to BQL mutations like goto, click, and type.
  Translate to BQL mutations
  Use the BQL editor to recreate those actions visually, or write them directly in GraphQL syntax. You can also use the “export to code” feature if you prefer to work in JavaScript or Python.
• Hook it into your framework
  If you’re already using a test runner, you can call the BQL API via HTTP or WebSocket as part of your existing flow. This lets you keep your assertions and reporting while swapping out the browser execution layer.

It’s common to start with a hybrid setup, keeping some tests in Selenium while shifting the ones that benefit most from BQL. Over time, you’ll likely reach for BQL more often as it simplifies your browser interactions and reduces test failures.

Adapting to a New Mental Model

Moving from Selenium Grid to BrowserQL means rethinking how you interact with the browser. Instead of managing long-lived sessions and holding on to WebDriver instances, each interaction in BQL is stateless. You describe what needs to happen in a single mutation or a series of mutations, and that’s it. There's no concept of session persistence; it's just isolated, intentional commands that run and return data.

You’ll also notice a shift in how logic is structured. Rather than writing method calls to control the browser step-by-step, you write GraphQL mutations that declare the intent of each action.

This simplifies test logic and reduces the surface area for bugs caused by stateful interactions. The mutations are clean, declarative, and easy to reason, especially when reviewing or debugging automation behavior.

Assertions can still live in your test framework of choice, but what you assert will likely change. BQL returns structured JSON responses for every mutation, so instead of relying on DOM state from a session object, you validate outputs directly from the API response.

And because BQL is built with modern automation needs in mind, you also get built-in tools that were hard to maintain manually, like deep DOM selectors, stealth mode to evade fingerprinting, proxy support, and CAPTCHA handling with a single mutation.

Conclusion

Moving to BrowserQL means you no longer have to wire up infrastructure just to run browser tests. Instead, you can focus on writing clear, declarative commands that do exactly what you need, without worrying about sessions, drivers, or flaky environments. It’s a smoother, faster way to build and run automation. You get built-in stealth, better handling for modern websites, and a much simpler test execution flow. No more debugging node configurations or chasing down port conflicts—just reliable browser control through a clean API. If you're curious to see the difference, give it a try. Sign up for a free trial, pick one of your existing tests, and run it in the BQL editor. You'll be up and running in minutes.

FAQs

What are the main differences between Selenium Grid and BrowserQL?

Selenium Grid is infrastructure-heavy and relies on a network of hubs and nodes to distribute tests. BrowserQL, on the other hand, uses a GraphQL API to run browser actions in the cloud with no setup, drivers, or servers required. It’s stateless, faster to use, and includes built-in features like stealth mode and CAPTCHA solving.

Can I use BrowserQL with my existing test framework?

Yes, BrowserQL can be integrated into any test framework that supports HTTP or WebSocket calls. You can trigger BQL mutations from tools like JUnit, pytest, or Mocha while keeping your assertions and test structure in place.

Is BrowserQL good for scraping or bot-detection-heavy sites?

Absolutely. BrowserQL was built with modern automation challenges in mind. It includes stealth mode by default, supports residential proxies, and can even handle CAPTCHAs—all of which make it a strong choice for scraping or working with sites that actively detect bots.

How hard is it to migrate from Selenium Grid to BrowserQL?

The migration process is straightforward. You can start by identifying one test or flow, breaking it into browser actions, and converting those to BQL mutations using the BQL editor. Many teams start with a hybrid setup, using both tools side by side before transitioning fully.