A Bright Data alternative built around the browser, not the proxy
Browserless runs Chromium, Chrome, Firefox, WebKit, and Edge for you, or as a Docker image inside your own network. Use our proxies, bring your own, or use none.
Browserless
Browser infrastructure for teams that want control. Real headless browsers over Puppeteer, Playwright, CDP, REST, or BrowserQL, in our cloud or self-hosted in your own VPC, with proxy access as an option rather than a requirement.
Bright Data
A proxy-first web data platform, with datasets, a SERP API, Unlocker API, and a cloud Browser API sold alongside its 400M+ IP network. Good when you want finished data or mobile-IP scale; cloud-only, and each product carries its own meter.
How Browserless and Bright Data compare
Both can drive a headless browser in the cloud and handle JavaScript rendering. The differences are where it runs, what you can point it at, and how the meter works.
Bright Data details reflect their published Browser API pricing and documentation as of September 2026. Competitor pricing moves quickly, so check their current pages before making a decision.
Browserless vs. Bright Data
Bright Data is a web data company built on proxy-first infrastructure: its proxy network is the center of gravity, at 400M+ IPs, with datasets, a SERP API, Scraper APIs, and the Browser API (also marketed as Scraping Browser) sold around it. Browserless is browser infrastructure: a real Chromium, Chrome, Firefox, or WebKit session you drive with Puppeteer, Playwright, or BrowserQL, either in our cloud or as a Docker image in your own network.
Choose Browserless when the job is controlling a browser, when you want to self-host, or when you would rather use your own proxy (or none). Choose Bright Data when you need mobile IPs, raw IP-pool scale, or finished datasets rather than the infrastructure for data collection. Neither is automatically cheaper: their Browser API bills bandwidth at $8 per GB, ours bills browser time and proxy traffic from one unit balance, so the answer depends on your traffic profile.
What you get with Browserless
One platform for web scraping, testing, PDF and screenshot generation, and AI agent workloads, with a single API in the cloud and on your own hardware.
How the pricing structures compare
The decision to make is which pricing model fits your workload, not which is cheaper – the wrong meter is wasted spend, whatever the headline rate.
Bright Data Browser API
Bandwidth-based billing: $8 per GB pay-as-you-go with no monthly commitment, or $499 a month with 71 GB included on their Scale pricing plan. Browser time itself is not a separate line. It suits long sessions that move very little data, and it gets expensive quickly on media-heavy pages. Their other products, including datasets and the SERP API, carry separate pricing.
Browserless units
One balance covers all platform usage: 1 unit per 30 seconds of browser time, 6 units per MB on the built-in residential proxy pool, 2 units per MB on datacenter, and 10 units per successful CAPTCHA solve. Route through your own proxy, and no proxy units are charged at all. You get flexible pricing with nothing added later as a separate product line.
Work out your own numbers rather than trusting a headline. Current pricing plans and unit allowances are on the pricing page.
When to choose Bright Data
Bright Data offers some advantages. If any of the below is your actual requirement, it may be the choice for you.
Raw IP scale and mobile IPs
Bright Data publishes a 400M+ IP pool of premium proxies across residential, ISP, and datacenter, plus 7M+ mobile IPs for mobile-carrier egress and raw throughput. Browserless ships residential and datacenter pools and no mobile proxies.
Product breadth beyond the browser
Datasets, SERP API, Unlocker API, Scraper Studio, and Bright Insights are separate products under one account, if you want finished data with no selector maintenance rather than running a custom scraper.
Enterprise procurement motion
Bright Data has the compliance posture and account management built primarily for large organizations. Browserless is self-serve first, built for developers and mid-market teams, with Enterprise available when you need it.
It's easy to migrate from Bright Data to Browserless
Both platforms speak the Chrome DevTools Protocol, so the automation logic you have already written moves across intact. Swap the WebSocket endpoint for a Browserless one with your token, and your existing Puppeteer or Playwright script runs unchanged.
Options you set at launch time locally – including viewport, user agent, timezone, and ad blocking – carry over as query parameters on the connection URL. Proxy selection is one more parameter: proxy=residential with an optional country, or externalProxyServer to keep the proxy provider you already pay for.
- No proprietary SDK to wrap your code in.
- Three regional endpoints: US West, London, and Amsterdam.
- The same APIs if you later move to a self-hosted deployment.
import puppeteer from "puppeteer-core";
// Same script, different endpoint.
const browser = await puppeteer.connect({
browserWSEndpoint:
"wss://production-sfo.browserless.io" +
"?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" +
"&proxy=residential" +
"&proxyCountry=us"
});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto("https://example.com");
await page.type("#email", "you@example.com");
await page.click("#submit");
await page.waitForSelector(".dashboard");
console.log(await page.content());
await browser.close();The deployment flexibility Bright Data doesn't offer
Bright Data's Browser API is a cloud service. Browserless publishes a Docker image, so the same automation can run inside your own network when a security review or a data-residency rule says it has to.
Self-hosted deployments run entirely inside your network: metrics stay local through OpenTelemetry, traffic goes through your own proxies, and nothing calls back to us.
The open-source image covers Puppeteer, Playwright, and the core REST APIs, while BrowserQL, stealth, and session recording ship with the licensed Enterprise image. Some cloud APIs are cloud-only, including the unblocker and Smart Scrape, which returns pages as raw HTML, markdown output, or extracted fields.
See what self-hosting includesSecurity & compliance
Bright Data alternative FAQs
Bright Data alternative FAQs
Try it against your hardest target
Start free with 1,000 units and no credit card. Point an existing Puppeteer or Playwright script at Browserless and see how it does on the target site you actually care about.