The Apify alternative with no lock-in and no surprise bill
Browserless gives you direct browser infrastructure, so you control the browser automation, the scraping logic, the deployment, and the bill.
Browserless
Browser infrastructure for teams that want control. Browserless gives you direct access to real headless browsers via Puppeteer, Playwright, or REST API. No proprietary abstractions, no actor model, no platform dependency.
Apify
A web scraping platform built around a marketplace of pre-built actors. Apify suits teams that want ready-made solutions, but its actor model, compute unit pricing, and cloud-only deployment can create platform dependency as your scraping scales.
How Browserless and Apify compare
Both platforms handle web scraping at scale. Here are the key differences.
One platform, every browser workflow
When your scraping workflows need to grow, Browserless grows with them.
Connect Browserless with your AI agents
Browserless's MCP server gives AI agents a persistent, controllable browser, so your models can navigate portals, extract data, and complete multi-step workflows without human intervention.
Browser Agent
The browserless_agent MCP tool gives your AI assistant a persistent browser session to navigate step by step: logging in, filling forms, clicking through paginated results, and keeping state across turns, all without resetting between tool calls.
AI-powered extraction
Go beyond raw HTML. Browserless lets AI models reason about page content and extract structured data from complex, dynamic sites where CSS selectors and XPath patterns break.
Automate web workflows
Connect Browserless to any MCP-compatible framework, including Claude, LangChain, and custom agents, to build automated workflows that interact with the web the way a human would, but at scale.
Predictable costs. No billing surprises.
Apify: five line items on one invoice
Browserless: one predictable unit
Apify's compute unit model has billing layers most teams don't notice until the invoice arrives: the base CU rate, then proxy bandwidth ($7 to $8 per GB), dataset storage, data transfer, and per-result fees on paid Store actors on top. Proxy bandwidth and actor fees are the line items teams most often underestimate.
Browserless bills by units. One unit equals up to 30 seconds of browser time. There are no separate proxy line items on standard plans. Residential proxy traffic is billed through the same unit system, with no storage charges and no per-result surcharges. What you see on the pricing page is what you pay, making it easier to forecast costs.
Stay compliant and keep your options open
Scaling doesn't mean locking yourself in. Browserless gives you the flexibility to deploy, integrate, and grow on your terms.
Deploy anywhere
Run on Browserless cloud, managed cloud, or fully self-hosted in your own VPC, and the API stays identical across all three. No re-architecting is required if your deployment requirements change.
Scale without DevOps overhead
Auto-scaling, concurrency management, and session handling are built in. You don't need a dedicated infrastructure team to go from 10 sessions to 10,000.
No vendor lock-in
Browserless runs standard Puppeteer and Playwright APIs with no proprietary SDK. If you ever need to move, your scraping logic moves with you.
Start free, scale when you're ready
The free tier includes 1,000 units per month with no credit card required, enough to test your real workflows before committing to a paid plan.
Works with the code you've already written
If you're migrating from Apify, the browser automation logic inside your actors is largely portable. Browserless runs standard Puppeteer and Playwright, so it's a case of dropping the Apify SDK, replacing the connection endpoint, and pointing your code at a real browser directly.
The Apify SDK abstractions ( Actor.getInput(), Actor.pushData(), datasets, and request queues) don't have direct Browserless equivalents. You'll replace those with your own data handling, but the scraping logic itself transfers cleanly. Teams using Apify primarily as a managed browser runtime typically complete migrations in a day or two.
import requests
response = requests.post(
"https://production-sfo.browserless.io/content",
params={"token": "YOUR_API_TOKEN"},
headers={
"Cache-Control": "no-cache",
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
json={"url": "https://example.com"}
)
print(response.text)Scrape any site with a single API request
Browserless's Smart Scrape API figures out the right strategy itself, starting with a fast HTTP fetch and escalating through proxied requests, headless browsers, and CAPTCHA solving only when needed.
Mimics a real browser's network fingerprint. Handles most static and server-rendered pages in under two seconds.
Retries through a residential proxy when the first request is blocked by datacenter-IP detection.
Launches a full stealth browser when the page needs JavaScript to render.
Detects and solves reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile, and others when a challenge gates the page.
The pipeline stops as soon as a strategy succeeds, so you only pay for the work the page actually needs. The strategy field in the response tells you which one did.
- Starts with the fastest, cheapest method and only escalates if the page requires it.
- Returns HTML, Markdown, screenshots, PDFs, or extracted links in a single JSON response.
- Proxy rotation, JavaScript rendering, and CAPTCHA solving are handled automatically, with no per-site configuration required.
- The
strategyfield in every response shows which approach succeeded, so debugging is straightforward.
Security & compliance
Apify alternative FAQs
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