An Oxylabs alternative where you buy the browser, not the results
Browserless bills browser time, not rows returned, so logins, form flows, agent runs, and tests all have a sensible price. Run it in our cloud or in your own network.
Browserless
Browser infrastructure you connect to and program. Real headless browsers over Puppeteer, Playwright, CDP, or REST, with stealth, CAPTCHA solving, and optional proxies, in our cloud or self-hosted as a Docker image.
Oxylabs
A web data platform built on a 177M+ IP proxy network, with a Web Scraper API, maintained parsers for large targets, ready-to-use datasets, and an AI Studio. Cloud-only, priced per result or per GB depending on the product.
How Browserless and Oxylabs compare
Both solutions can handle JavaScript rendering. What differs is whether you get a browser or a result, and what happens when the workflow gets complicated.
Oxylabs details reflect its published pricing and documentation as of September 2026. Check the current Oxylabs pages before deciding.
Browserless vs. Oxylabs
Oxylabs is a web data company built for data collection at scale. Proxies across residential, datacenter, mobile, ISP and SOCKS5, a Web Scraper API billed per result, and a cloud Chromium you reach over CDP, billed per GB.
Browserless is browser infrastructure. Chromium, Chrome, Firefox, WebKit or Edge, driven with Puppeteer, Playwright or CDP, billed on browser time, in our cloud or in your network.
Both are genuinely self-serve, so the choice is not about sales cycles or getting past a sales team. Pick Oxylabs when the job is bulk extraction from large, well-known targets, or when you need mobile or ISP proxies. Pick Browserless when the meter should count browser time rather than bandwidth, when you need an engine other than Chromium, or when the deployment has to run inside your own network.
A per-result meter has no price for an interaction
Competitive pricing depends on the work, not the headline rate. For automation, the Oxylabs limitations start with the meter: a pricing structure built around results returned.
Priced per result
The Oxylabs Web Scraper API charges per result, at a rate set by the target and whether the page is rendered. $0.50 per 1,000 is Amazon, unrendered. JavaScript-rendered pages, which is what browser automation is, run $1.35 per 1,000 on the $49 Micro plan and $0.95 on custom tiers.
Logging into a portal to confirm a status, submitting a form, driving an end-to-end test, or letting an agent explore are all real work that returns nothing a result meter can count.
Priced per browser second
Browserless charges 1 unit per 30 seconds of browser time, whatever the session does. Proxy traffic adds 6 units per MB on residential IPs or 2 on datacenter, and a successful CAPTCHA solve is 10 units, all from the same balance.
Bring your own proxy and no proxy units are charged. The result is predictable pricing: the bill tracks how long you held a browser, which is the thing automation actually consumes.
Both publish transparent pricing, so for bulk extraction, run your own numbers against both meters. Current pricing information and unit allowances are on the pricing pages.
What you get with Browserless
One platform for web scraping, testing, PDF and screenshot generation, and AI agent workloads, with the same API in the cloud and on your own hardware.
puppeteer.connect or Playwright's connectOverCDP to a live browser and drive it yourself. No request schema, no response envelope, and your retry logic stays visible in your code. Change one path and Playwright drives Firefox, WebKit, or Edge instead, or point the same script at a container in your own network.externalProxyServer at your own proxy provider, Oxylabs, Bright Data, or other proxy providers, and pay no proxy units at all.solveCaptchas=true to the connection URL and reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile, DataDome, Akamai and PerimeterX challenges are solved in the session, billedWhen to consider Oxylabs
Oxylabs has specialized tools for data acquisition. If one of these is a requirement, it might serve you better.
Proxy scale and proxy types
A 177M+ IP pool of premium proxies, one of the largest proxy pools available, plus mobile, ISP, and SOCKS5 options. If the requirement is mobile-carrier egress or a specific proxy type or protocol, opt for Oxylabs.
Maintained parsers for big targets
Structured data endpoints for Google Search, Google Shopping, Amazon, and more e-commerce scraping targets, kept working as target sites change. Building and maintaining that yourself is real work.
Private equity backing
Backed by a $130M investment from Warburg Pincus in July 2026, with dedicated account managers, a support team available 24/7, enterprise features, and the procurement readiness that large buyers expect. Oxylabs also owns ScrapingBee.
No request schema to learn
Moving off web scraping APIs usually means unpicking a request format and a response envelope. Moving onto Browserless means writing the browser code you would have written locally, then pointing it at a different endpoint. Setup is quick: an API key on the connection URL is the whole integration.
Proxy routing, stealth, ad blocking, viewport, and timeouts are query parameters on the connection URL rather than fields in a payload, so the same script runs locally and in production with one string changed.
- Standard Puppeteer, Playwright, and CDP clients. No proprietary SDK.
- Three regional endpoints: US West, London, and Amsterdam.
- The same APIs if you later move to a self-hosted deployment.
import puppeteer from "puppeteer-core";
const browser = await puppeteer.connect({
browserWSEndpoint:
"wss://production-sfo.browserless.io" +
"?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" +
"&proxy=residential" +
"&proxyCountry=us" +
"&proxySticky=true"
});
const page = await browser.newPage();
// One authenticated session, many steps.
await page.goto("https://portal.example.com/login");
await page.type("#user", "you@example.com");
await page.click("#submit");
await page.waitForSelector("#orders");
const status = await page.$eval(
"#orders .latest .status",
(el) => el.textContent
);
console.log(status);
await browser.close();What a cloud-only vendor can't offer
Oxylabs runs as a cloud service. Browserless publishes a Docker image, so the same web automation runs inside your own network when data residency or a security review requires it.
Self-hosted containers run entirely inside your network: metrics stay local, traffic goes through your own proxies, and nothing calls back to us. The open-source image ships Puppeteer, Playwright, and the core REST APIs, while stealth, CAPTCHA solving, and session recording require the licensed Enterprise image at an additional cost, and some cloud APIs, including Smart Scrape, are cloud-only.
See what self-hosting includesSecurity & compliance
Oxylabs alternative FAQs
Oxylabs alternative FAQs
Try it on a workflow, not a URL list
Start free with 1,000 units and no credit card, and start scraping the flow that a per-result API cannot express as a single browser session.