Browserless Review: Pricing, Real-World Tests, and Best Browserless Alternatives

Browserless is one of the few cloud browsers that include auto CAPTCHA solving and residential proxies on the free plan. It is also older than most of its competitors.

But how does it perform?

Find out as I test it hands-on in this Browserless tech expert review.

I tested Browserless’s speed, antibot performance, CAPTCHA solving, login persistence, and concurrency using Playwright scripts. I also reviewed its pricing structure and units system.

You’ll also see how Browserless compares to other cloud browsers, especially Gologin, on the same tests.

Let’s start with an overview of Browserless before getting into the detailed review.

TL;DR

What I Tested/Reviewed	Result
Median startup latency	2,485 ms
Median page load time	508 ms
Antibot bypass rate	3 out of 5 sites on the free plan with default US datacenter IP
CAPTCHA solving	Available on the free plan. Solved reCAPTCHA v2 in 18.5 seconds. Failed on PerimeterX and DataDome when used alone. Solved DataDome with a residential proxy Failed against PerimeterX even with a residential proxy
Session persistence	Passed. Authenticated Profiles stored for 365 days. Persisted sessions capped at 1 day on free plan.
Concurrent sessions	2 sessions on free plan
Proxy targeting	Country-level targeting on all plans and city-level targeting from the Scale plan
Proxy cost	Residential 6 units/MB (≈ $12.29/GB), datacenter 2 units/MB (≈ $4.10/GB), available on the free plan
Billing unit	1 unit per 30 seconds of browser time
Cheapest paid plan	$35/month ($25/month billed annually)

All Browserless benchmarks in this review were run between 1st October and 3rd October 2026 on the free plan. The Browserless Authenticated Profile created on 2 October was re-checked on 9 October 2026. The Gologin startup figures come from the same run used in our Hyperbrowser review, 28 September to 1 October 2026. The Gologin antibot results on the default datacenter IP come from a re-test on 9 October 2026, and the results with a US residential proxy come from an earlier run. The Gologin long-session test was run on 15 October 2026. All Gologin tests were run on the Gologin Professional plan, in two configurations: the default datacenter IP, and with a US residential proxy attached. Playwright was used to create the scripts.

What is Browserless

Browserless is a headless browser automation platform that allows developers to run browser tasks on Chrome and other headless browsers through Puppeteer and Playwright scripts without needing to host and scale browser infrastructure themselves.

This type of platform usually falls within the Browser as a Service (BaaS) category, and Browserless has been one of the longer-established products in it.

The platform supports multiple browser engines, including Chromium, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Stealth, and WebKit.

You connect to and run these browser engines through five API interfaces offered by Browserless. Those five interfaces include the following:

• Browser Automation Protocol (BAP)
• BrowserQL
• BaaS v2
• REST APIs
• MCP

There’s a self-hosted option as well that allows you to run Browserless inside a VPC, on-prem, or in an air-gapped environment.

For anonymity and bot-detection handling, Browserless offers unblock APIs, stealth routes, residential proxies, and integrated CAPTCHA solving, among other features. The platform is one of the few in its class that offers auto CAPTCHA solving as part of its free plan.

The BrowserQL interface can also be made to mimic human-like mouse movement and delays.

The dashboard has features such as session replays and screen recording as well, but they aren’t enabled by default. You have to enable them through certain flags within your scripts.

How I Tested Browserless Features

The free plan was enough for me to test five major capabilities of the platform.

It gave me 1K units (same as credits) to use for the entire month, auto CAPTCHA solving, persisting sessions lasting a single day, and some other features.

I wrote Playwright scripts with the Browserless API plugged in for these tests and ran them from the terminal. These are the tests that I ran:

• Startup speed test: This test measures the median time it takes for Browserless sessions to start by starting and closing five sessions one after another. I used the example.com website as a placeholder in these sessions for its lightweight size. The session startup time and website load time were recorded separately.
• Antibot bypass test: This test involves running 5 sessions and loading 5 websites side by side in each one of them. The point is to observe Browserless’s bypass rate against antibot systems of randomly selected websites. Those 5 websites include Zillow, G2, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Hacker News.
• Auto CAPTCHA solving: In this test, I tested Browserless’s auto CAPTCHA solving feature against a Google reCAPTCHA demo site along with Zillow.com and G2.com. The time to solve a CAPTCHA was also recorded.
• Login persistence test: Browserless stores saved logins in Authenticated Profiles. I tested this by creating a throwaway Hacker News account in one session and then running another session to check whether the account was still logged in.
• Concurrency test: This test verifies Browserless’s claim that you can have 2 concurrent browsers running at a time on the free plan.

import { chromium } from "playwright-core";

// Browserless gives you a WebSocket endpoint, not a local browser.
// connectOverCDP attaches Playwright to a browser already running in their cloud.
const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(
  `wss://production-sfo.browserless.io?token=${process.env.BL_TOKEN}`
);

const ctx = browser.contexts()[0] || (await browser.newContext());
const page = ctx.pages()[0] || (await ctx.newPage());

await page.goto("https://example.com", { waitUntil: "domcontentloaded" });
console.log(await page.title());

await browser.close();

Browserless Testing Results

Startup Speed

I wrote my own script to test the startup speed of Browserless.

The script would start and close a session 5 times and fetch the time it took for the session to start and a webpage to load.

The point was to record the startup time, not the page load time, so I used a lightweight website like example.com instead of a heavy one that could potentially influence the session startup time.

// bl-benchmark.mjs
import { chromium } from "playwright-core";

const URL = `wss://production-sfo.browserless.io?token=${process.env.BL_TOKEN}`;
const RUNS = 5;

const startups = [];
const loads = [];

console.log(`=== BROWSERLESS-SFO STARTUP ${new Date().toISOString()} ===\n`);

for (let i = 1; i <= RUNS; i++) {
  // stage 1: provision + connect, measured together
  const t0 = Date.now();
  const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(URL);
  const t1 = Date.now();

  const ctx = browser.contexts()[0] || (await browser.newContext());
  const page = ctx.pages()[0] || (await ctx.newPage());

  // stage 2: page load, measured separately
  const t2 = Date.now();
  await page.goto("https://example.com", { waitUntil: "domcontentloaded" });
  const t3 = Date.now();

  startups.push(t1 - t0);
  loads.push(t3 - t2);

  console.log(`Run ${i}`);
  console.log(` STARTUP: ${t1 - t0} ms`);
  console.log(` example.com: ${t3 - t2} ms\n`);

  await browser.close();
}

const median = (a) => {
  const sorted = [...a].sort((x, y) => x - y);
  return sorted[Math.floor(sorted.length / 2)];
};

console.log("=== MEDIANS ===");
console.log(`STARTUP: ${median(startups)} ms`);
console.log(`page load: ${median(loads)} ms`);

Check the table below for the reported startup time and page load time when I ran the script:

Run	Startup time	Page load time
1	2772 ms	552 ms
2	2485 ms	615 ms
3	2359 ms	507 ms
4	2393 ms	507 ms
5	2526 ms	508 ms

The time is reported in milliseconds. Both time intervals are consistent across the 5 sessions.

Startup time ranged from 2359 ms to 2772 ms in the 5 sessions. This equals 2.4 to 2.7 seconds.

The page load time was even more consistent. It stayed between 507 ms and 615 ms across the sessions.

Here’s the median of the two time intervals:

• Startup: 2485 ms
• Page load: 508 ms

For all these sessions, Browserless had automatically assigned a US-based IP from a data center. So the distance between my actual location and the US might also have a part in the startup time.

The screenshot below shows the IP reported by a Browserless session:

Antibot Bypass Test

The antibot bypass test involved launching 5 sessions and loading the same 5 websites every time:

• Zillow
• G2
• LinkedIn
• Amazon
• Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com)

The HTTP status code returned by each website was also recorded. The script was also made to take screenshots of the webpages, some of which I have referenced in this article below.

// bl-antibot.mjs
import { chromium } from "playwright-core";

const URL = `wss://production-sfo.browserless.io?token=${process.env.BL_TOKEN}`;

const SITES = [
  "https://www.zillow.com/",
  "https://www.g2.com/",
  "https://www.linkedin.com/",
  "https://www.amazon.com/",
  "https://news.ycombinator.com/",
];

const SESSIONS = 5;

console.log(`=== ANTIBOT browserless ${new Date().toISOString()} ===\n`);

for (let s = 1; s <= SESSIONS; s++) {
  console.log(`===== SESSION ${s} =====`);
  const started = Date.now();

  // one fresh browser per session, all five sites loaded inside it
  const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(URL);
  const ctx = browser.contexts()[0] || (await browser.newContext());

  for (const site of SITES) {
    const label = new URL(site).hostname.replace(/\./g, "_");
    const page = await ctx.newPage();

    try {
      const res = await page.goto(site, {
        waitUntil: "domcontentloaded",
        timeout: 30000,
      });

      const status = res ? res.status() : "no response";
      const title = await page.title();

      // status alone is not enough, so log the title and keep the screenshot
      console.log(`${label} | HTTP ${status} | ${title}`);
      await page.screenshot({ path: `antibot-s${s}-${label}.png` });
    } catch (e) {
      console.log(`${label} | ERROR | ${e.message.split("\n")[0]}`);
    }

    await page.close();
  }

  await browser.close();
  console.log(`session duration: ${Math.round((Date.now() - started) / 1000)}s\n`);
}

It is important to check screenshots because even if a website returns an HTTP 200 status code, which normally implies a successful request, it could still be a failed or blocked request in reality.

The terminal screenshot below shows the result of the script:

Zillow and G2 denied access requests in all five runs by returning an HTTP 403 error.

The other three websites successfully loaded in all sessions. They returned either HTTP 200 or HTTP 202 status codes. The screenshots verified their success status.

Website	Session 1	Session 2	Session 3	Session 4	Session 5
Zillow.com	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
G2.com	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
Linkedin.com	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Amazon.com	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
news.ycombinator.com (Hacker News)	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅

Screenshots from two of the three sites that loaded, LinkedIn and Amazon, are pasted below as proof.

So 2 websites blocked Browserless fully, and three loaded fine in all sessions. This makes Browserless’s antibot bypass rate 3 out of 5.

The takeaway is that a simple Browserless session struggles to bypass strict antibot websites, at least on the free plan.

But auto CAPTCHA solving and residential proxies also come with the free plan, and I didn’t use them in the antibot bypass test.

This brings me to the next test, where I tried bypassing the antibot system of Zillow and G2 using these two features.

Automatic CAPTCHA Solving

As Browserless puts it, you can avoid CAPTCHAs either by preventing them from appearing in the first place or by solving them once they appear.

Browserless recommends using their stealth routes to prevent CAPTCHAs from appearing. But if a CAPTCHA still appears, it asks you to try solving it with their auto CAPTCHA solving feature, and if that fails, add a residential proxy to the equation.

That’s what I did.

Both these features, auto CAPTCHA solving and built-in residential proxies, are available in the free plan. But they aren’t enabled by default.

They also consume units. A successful CAPTCHA solve costs 10 units, and built-in residential proxy usage costs 6 units/MB.

To use auto CAPTCHA solving, you have to add solveCaptchas=true to your connection URL. Browserless then uses Chrome DevTools Protocol events and commands to watch and solve any challenge that appears.

I used Browserless’s stealth route for both runs. It is a separate connection endpoint that applies their anti-detection patches. In Option 1, the connection URL was wss://production-sfo.browserless.io/stealth?token=...&solveCaptchas=true, and in Option 2, I added &proxy=residential&proxyCountry=us.

Similarly, to use built-in residential proxies, you need to add the proxy=residential and proxyCountry="country code" parameters to the connection URL. If you want to target a specific city within a selected country, add the proxyCity="city name" parameter (city-level targeting comes with the Scale plan).

The platform clearly states that CAPTCHA solving can take from seconds to minutes, so you might have to extend the session timeout.

If the CAPTCHA gets solved, the solved token is injected into the page automatically.

Option 1: Auto CAPTCHA Solver

At first, I used only the auto CAPTCHA solving feature and targeted the Google reCAPTCHA demo website along with Zillow and G2.

The solver managed to solve the reCAPTCHA v2 on the Google demo site but failed on the other sites.

Site	Challenge	Detected	Solved	Detail
Google demo	reCAPTCHA v2	Yes	Yes	18,486 ms
Zillow	PerimeterX	Yes	No	Still attempting after 60s
G2	DataDome	Yes	No	“requires proxy to solve”

The reCAPTCHA on the Google demo site was solved in 18.5 seconds.

Zillow returned HTTP 200 this time but with the “Press & Hold” PerimeterX challenge.

The auto solver took 60 seconds trying to solve it before timing out without a successful solve.

G2, on the other hand, raised an HTTP 403 error and presented the DataDome challenge where you have to move a slider to complete the given puzzle.

Soon after attempting to solve the challenge, Browserless raised the error “DataDome captcha requires proxy to solve”.

That’s when I used the built-in residential proxies.

Option 2: Built-in Residential Proxies

After configuring the proxy, Browserless was able to solve the DataDome CAPTCHA on G2, but couldn’t solve the PerimeterX CAPTCHA on Zillow even after waiting for 90 seconds.

Site	Challenge	Detected	Solved	Detail
Zillow	PerimeterX	Yes	No	Showed “Still attempting after 90s”
G2	DataDome	Yes	Yes	–

The screenshots below show the script results and the fully rendered G2 homepage after the CAPTCHA was solved:

In the case of Zillow, the auto solver tried to solve the CAPTCHA for 90 seconds before the session timed out without a solution:

The screenshot taken by my script showed that the Press & Hold CAPTCHA was still there after the auto solver timed out.

Verdict: Browserless’s auto CAPTCHA solver struggles against real websites when used alone. Pairing it with a residential proxy improves things, but even that combination fails against tough sites like Zillow.

Login Persistence Test

Browserless’s free plan also includes session persistence, meaning a new session starts where you left off.

This test used Authenticated Profiles, the mechanism that stores a login snapshot. Browserless also has persisted sessions, which work differently and are covered further down.

I wanted to check whether Browserless would keep me logged in to a website across sessions.

So I created two scripts: one to launch a session and automatically create an account on Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com), and another to launch a new session and check whether the account was still logged in.

The following terminal screenshot shows the first script in action:

The script confirmed a successful login by looking for a logout link on the page. After confirmation, the session was closed.

When you save a session to an Authenticated Profile, Browserless stores that session’s cookies and login state in the profile.

You then pass that profile name in future sessions to resume the same state.

I ran the next session, and the Hacker News account was still logged in.

The screenshot below shows the second script and the login confirmation:

Verdict: Browserless’s Authenticated Profiles work fine.

Concurrency Test

Concurrency simply means the number of sessions Browserless can run at the same time.

Browserless mentions that the free plan allows a maximum of 2 concurrent sessions.

I wanted to see if it can actually run 2 sessions in parallel and what happens if I try to run more than 2 sessions.

The script I wrote tries to open up to 8 browser sessions one by one. The moment Browserless refuses to open a session, the script breaks out of the loop and prints the count of successful sessions and cleanly closes them all.

Here’s how the script performed:

The first two browser sessions opened fine. But in response to the 3rd session request, Browserless raised the HTTP 429 “Too Many Requests” error.

This confirmed that the free Browserless plan indeed allows 2 concurrent sessions only.

You’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to run more than 2 simultaneous sessions.

How Long Can One Session Stay Open and Persist?

Browserless caps how long a single session can run, and the cap moves with the plan. The free plan allows 2 minutes, Prototyping 15, Starter 30, and Scale 60.

I wanted to see whether that cap was a hard limit or just an idle timeout, so I wrote a script that opened a session, loaded example.com, and then kept the page busy every ten seconds by reading its title and measuring the document height. Nothing about the session was idle at any point.

It survived 120 seconds of that and died at 130.

The error was “Target page, context or browser has been closed”. Browserless had taken the browser away mid-script, which is what a hard cap looks like.

That is the ceiling for anything you want to do on a free Browserless account. Two minutes is enough to log in, but not to do much after that, and the next step up is $35 a month for 15 minutes.

Browserless has two separate ways to carry state across sessions, namely authenticated profiles and persisted sessions.

Authenticated Profiles store a login snapshot and replay it into a fresh browser. Those are kept for 365 days from last use on every plan, including free. My profile created on 2 October was still logged in when I re-checked it on 9 October.

But persisted sessions are different. They keep a whole browser’s state in its own user data directory, and you set a TTL to say how long that state should live. That is where the plan limit bites.

I asked for a two-day session on the free plan, and the API refused it outright with the error:

ttl cannot exceed the maximum retention time of 86400000 milliseconds for your plan.

86,400,000 milliseconds is twenty-four hours. On the free plan, you cannot ask for more, and when the TTL runs out, the data is deleted rather than archived. I set a three-minute TTL to watch it happen, and once it elapsed, reconnecting to the same session returned a 401.

The ceilings are 1 day on free, 7 on Prototyping, 30 on Starter, and 90 on Scale.

Gologin does not cap session length. There is no plan-level limit on how long a cloud browser session can run.

I ran the same script against Gologin, keeping the page busy every ten seconds exactly as I had with Browserless. It ran for 25.5 minutes and was still going when I closed it myself. The session ended because my script finished, not because Gologin stopped it. That is well past the 2-minute cap on Browserless Free and the 15-minute cap on Prototyping, and close to the 30 minutes Starter allows.

Profiles persist indefinitely as well. A profile sits in your account until you delete it, with its cookies and logins intact.

To show what that looks like in practice, I opened a profile in my account that had last been used ten months ago.

It launched without any trouble and was still carrying its cookies, including its Instagram session.

Criteria	Browserless free	Gologin
Max session length	2 minutes. Cut off at 130 seconds in my test	No limit
Saved session state	TTL capped at 24 hours, deleted on expiry	Persists indefinitely
Profile storage	365 days from last use	Persists indefinitely. 10-month-old profile opened with cookies intact

Browserless Pricing

The free Browserless plan gives you 1,000 units a month and lets you run a maximum of two browser sessions simultaneously.

Units are the same as credits that you see on other platforms.

Here’s how units are consumed by different activities on Browserless:

Activity	Unit cost
Browser session time	1 unit/30 seconds
Residential proxy traffic	6 units/MB
Datacenter proxy traffic	2 units/MB
Successful CAPTCHA solve	10 units/successful solve

If your Browserless usage is limited to only running sessions without touching other activities that cost units, one hour will cost you 120 units, and you’ll get about 8 hours (500 minutes) of browser time a month.

Among the listed activities, browser session time consumes units a little differently.

A session that lasts only 5 seconds will still cost 1 unit. Similarly, a 31-second session will consume 2 units.

So if you run lots of short sessions, you’ll use units faster without realizing it.

What doesn’t cost units is opening multiple tabs within a session. You will still be billed for one session even if you have multiple tabs running inside it.

That’s all about how units work in Browserless.

Another limitation of the free plan is that a session cannot be longer than 2 minutes. Once the two-minute mark is reached, running sessions are forced to shut down.

Also, once you have used all units on your free plan, you won’t be able to run sessions until your billing cycle resets.

In contrast, paid plan users can keep going and pay overages, which are charged when they hit their subscription limit, when they change plans, or at the end of the month.

The table below compares all Browserless plans:

Plan	Monthly billing	Annual billing	Units/month	Persisted sessions & replay storage	Concurrent browsers (monthly / annual)	Max session time	Overage rate
Free	$0	$0/month	1,000	1 day	2	2 min	No overages
Prototyping	$35/mo	$25/mo ($300/yr)	20,000	7 days	5 / 10 (incl. +5 annual bonus)	15 min	$0.0020/unit
Starter	$200/mo	$140/mo ($1,680/yr)	180,000	30 days	30 / 40 (incl. +10 annual bonus)	30 min	$0.0017/unit
Scale	$500/mo	$350/mo ($4,200/yr)	500,000	90 days	80 / 100 (incl. +20 annual bonus)	60 min	$0.0015/unit
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Millions	Custom	Hundreds to thousands	Not listed	Custom

What’s different includes units, concurrency, max session duration, and per-unit overage cost.

Also notice that the concurrency of the same plan is higher in annual billing compared to monthly billing. You also get 5, 10, or 20 extra concurrency on these plans in annual billing.

The overage also gets cheaper as you move up the plans.

What Browserless Actually Costs at Two Real Scales

The unit-based pricing structure seems easy to plan your workload around, but it’s quite the opposite when you really get down to business. To make it easier for you to plan and choose, I have listed two realistic Browserless setups and their costs.

To make sense of the examples I have shared below, you should keep in mind that one hour of browser time in Browserless is 120 units and one GB of residential proxy traffic is 6,144 units at 6 units per MB.

• Scenario 1: You have a small project on the Prototyping plan, 5 concurrent browsers, 100 browser hours, 2 GB of proxy traffic

Prototyping costs $35 a month and includes 20,000 units.

Which means that browser time is 12,000 units, and proxy traffic is 12,288 units. That is 24,288 units in total.

So you go 4,288 units over. At $0.0020 per unit, that is $8.58 in overages, which brings the bill to $43.58 a month.

If you notice the split, you will realize that just 2 GB of proxy traffic ate more units than 100 hours of browser time did.

• Scenario 2: You’re scaling your workload on the Starter plan, 30 concurrent browsers, 400 browser hours, 30 GB of proxy traffic

The Starter plan of Browserless costs $200 a month and includes 180,000 units.

Which means that browser time is 48,000 units and proxy traffic is 184,320 units. That is 232,320 units in total.

You go 52,320 units over. At $0.0017 per unit, that is $88.94, so the real bill is $288.94 a month.

Here, proxy traffic is 79% of everything you consume. Your browsers cost you 48,000 units, and your bandwidth costs you nearly four times that.

If you’re on an annual plan, the costs will come down a little. The same two setups come to $33.58 and $228.94, since the base prices drop to $25 and $140, and you get 5 and 10 extra concurrent browsers on top.

What you should take away is that browser time is rarely what empties your unit balance. Proxy traffic does.

Pros & Cons of Browserless

Here are some of the pros and cons I identified during my testing and review of Browserless.

Pros	Cons
Generous free plan that includes auto CAPTCHA solving and built-in datacenter and residential proxies	3/5 bypass rate of simple sessions
Supports six browser engines, including Chromium, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Stealth, and WebKit	The auto CAPTCHA solver is slow and struggles to solve CAPTCHAs
Offers 5 APIs to connect to the platform	Sessions on the free plan cannot exceed 2 minutes
Self-hosting option	Unit time is billed in 30-second blocks that round up, so short sessions consume units quickly
Consistent startup times (2.5s median)	Overage units cost more than the units included in a plan
Authenticated Profiles kept the login state intact across sessions	Big price/month difference between monthly and annual billing to make users commit for the long term
Auto CAPTCHA solver and built-in residential proxies improve antibot bypass rate	No session recording or live view by default
Annual billing saves up to 30% and adds 5 to 20 extra concurrent browsers	The list of sessions in the dashboard is hard to read
Overage rates drop on higher plans
Good quality help docs covering how to use features

Browserless Alternatives Compared

Most cloud browsers in the table below charge for proxy traffic by bandwidth, at roughly $4 to $12 per GB.

The two exceptions are Gologin, which includes residential proxies in its plan rate, and Scrapfly, which charges per request.

Gologin also has the cheapest paid subscription in the table.

Cloud Browser	Entry price	Concurrent at entry	Included hours	Proxy model	Proxy per GB
Browserless	$35/mo ($25/mo billed annually)	5 (10 on annual billing)	20,000 units ≈ 167 hrs, shared with proxy and CAPTCHA	Metered in the same unit pool	Residential 6 units/MB ≈ $12.29/GB; datacenter 2 units/MB ≈ $4.10/GB (at overage rate of the Prototyping plan)
Hyperbrowser	$30	25	300 hrs if every credit goes to browser time (100 credits per hr)	Proxy usage billed from credits	$10 (10,000 credits)
Browserbase	$20	25	100	Billed separately	$12
Gologin	$4.50	1 on the entry paid plan, 3 on free	50	Residential and mobile proxies included in rate	Included ($1/GB extra)
Steel	$0 + usage (Launch), $30 one-time credit	10	None. Credit model, $0.10/browser hour	Metered separately	$10/GB Launch, $6/GB Scale
Scrapfly	$30/mo (Discovery)	5	None. 200,000 credits, priced per request	Credits per request, not bandwidth	Not billed by GB. Residential = 25 credits/request vs 1 for datacenter

The Best Browserless Alternative: Gologin Cloud Browser (Tested Side by Side)

Test	Browserless	Gologin Cloud Browser
Plan tested	Free	Professional
Date tested	From 1st October till 3rd October 2026	Startup 28 Sep – 1 Oct 2026, datacenter antibot re-test 9 Oct 2026, long session 15 Oct 2026
Median startup latency	2485 ms	3,177 ms (without proxy) and 1,760 ms (with proxy). See the breakdown below.
example.com load	508 ms	483 ms (without proxy), 360 ms (with proxy)
Antibot bypass test with a datacenter IP	3 of 5 sites (15 of 25 attempts)	4 of 5 sites (20 of 25 attempts)
Antibot bypass test with a residential IP	4 of 5, but only with a residential proxy (~$12.29/GB) and the auto CAPTCHA solver. Zillow is still blocked. Only Zillow and G2 were re-tested in this configuration, not all five sites across five sessions.	4 of 5 sites (20 of 25 attempts)
Cost per successful page load	$0.036 with the proxy and solver needed to reach 4 of 5	$0.0004 on a bare datacenter IP
Login persistence	Passed	Passed
Concurrent sessions	2 on Free, 5 on Prototyping ($35/month)	1 on Professional ($4.50/month), +$2/month per extra session; 3 on Free, but with only 15 minutes of total runtime
Entry paid price	$35/month	$4.50/month
Browser hour overage	$0.24 to $0.18 per hour (120 units/hr at $0.0020 to $0.0015 per unit)	$0.09 per hour
Proxy usage	Billed from unit balance at a rate of 2 to 6 units per MB	Residential IPs included in hourly rate
Live view with takeover	Yes, but not enabled by default	Yes

Why Consider a Browserless Alternative?

Browserless has solid features. But it also has its fair share of weaknesses that may make you look for alternatives. Some of those reasons are:

• Plain sessions have a low antibot bypass rate of 3 out of 5 on the free plan.
• The auto CAPTCHA solver is slow and struggles to solve CAPTCHAs on sites like Zillow, even with proxies enabled
• Browserless residential traffic costs 6 units per MB, which is about $12.29 per GB at the overage rate of the cheapest plan.
• The free plan allows 2-minute-long sessions at max, which is very short to do any meaningful task.

Here’s why Gologin can be a better option for you:

Gologin Clears Zillow Without a Proxy While Browserless Could Not Clear It With One

I performed the same startup and antibot bypass tests on two configurations of Gologin:

• Gologin Professional plan with no proxy attached, so the profile runs on Gologin’s default datacenter IP
• Gologin Professional plan, where I used a US residential proxy.

Here’s how Gologin performed:

Startup Latency

When a residential proxy was used, Gologin started about 725 ms faster than Browserless.

But without a proxy, Browserless is about 690 ms faster than Gologin.

Setup	Median startup	Range	Median page load (example.com)
Browserless free (default US datacenter IP)	2,485 ms	2,359 to 2,772 ms	508 ms
Gologin Professional plan, no proxy (Hetzner datacenter)	3,177 ms	1,988 to 9,351 ms	483 ms
Gologin with a US residential proxy	1,760 ms	1,651 to 2,226 ms	360 ms

Antibot Bypass Test

Both Gologin configurations cleared four of the five sites against Browserless’s three. Gologin reached that score on a bare datacenter IP, without a proxy and without solving a single CAPTCHA. And then it loaded the same 4 out of 5 sites using a proxy as well.

Site	Browserless (Default US datacenter IP)	Gologin (default Hetzner datacenter IP, no proxy)	Gologin (US residential proxy)
Zillow	403 in all 5 sessions	Loaded 5 of 5	Loaded 5 of 5
G2	403 in all 5 sessions	403 in all 5 sessions	403 in all 5 sessions
LinkedIn	Loaded 5 of 5	Loaded 5 of 5	Loaded 5 of 5
Amazon	Loaded 5 of 5	Loaded 5 of 5	Loaded 5 of 5
Hacker News	Loaded 5 of 5	Loaded 5 of 5	Loaded 5 of 5
Score	3 of 5	4 of 5	4 of 5

Zillow was the biggest difference between Browserless and Gologin.

Gologin loaded it easily in all five sessions on a bare datacenter IP, while Browserless could not pass it using one.

Browserless never got in. A plain session was blocked with an HTTP 403 every time. Turning on the stealth route, the auto CAPTCHA solver, and a US residential proxy together got it as far as a PerimeterX “Press & Hold” box, which the solver then failed to clear after 90 seconds.

Gologin loaded Zillow in all five sessions in both configurations: on the bare datacenter IP and with the US residential proxy.

No CAPTCHA appeared in any Gologin session, with or without the proxy.

What Each One Spends to Get There

Both products can reach four out of five sites. The difference is what each one has to spend to get there.

Gologin reached it on a bare datacenter IP without any proxy, CAPTCHA solver, or anything enabled.

Browserless starts at three out of five. To add the fourth site, it needs a stealth route, the auto CAPTCHA solver, and residential bandwidth billed at roughly $12.29 per gigabyte. And it still cannot get past Zillow.

Browser	Score	Cost per 1,000 successful page loads
Browserless, plain	3 of 5	$1.33
Browserless, stealth + solver + residential proxy	4 of 5	$36.00
Gologin, bare datacenter IP	4 of 5	$0.44
Gologin, US residential proxy	4 of 5	$2.88

Even when Gologin uses a residential proxy it does not need, it is still around twelve times cheaper per successful page load.

The bandwidth is what moves the number. Browser time barely registers on either platform.

One more way to see it is that Browserless gives you 1,000 units a month on the free plan.

A page loaded through the residential proxy costs about 14 units once you count bandwidth and the solver. That is roughly 70 page attempts a month. At a four-in-five success rate, about 55 successful page loads before the balance is gone.

How these were calculated

Each page is assumed to carry two megabytes of traffic.

Session timings come from the antibot tests above: Browserless averaged 53 seconds for five pages, about 10.6 seconds per page, while Gologin averaged 70 seconds for five pages, about 14 seconds per page.

Browserless bills browser time in 30-second blocks that round up, so a 53-second session costs 2 units, which works out to 0.4 units per page across five pages. Gologin bills by the hour with no block rounding.

• Browserless, plain: One page attempt costs only browser time, 0.4 units, or $0.0008 at $0.0020 per unit. Three of five attempts succeed, so a successful load costs $0.00133, and 1,000 of them cost $1.33.
• Browserless, stealth + solver + residential proxy: One page attempt costs 12 units of bandwidth (2 MB at 6 units/MB), 0.4 units of browser time, and 2 units of CAPTCHA solving (10 units per solve, one solve per five pages). That is 14.4 units, or $0.0288. Four of five attempts succeed, so a successful load costs $0.036, and 1,000 cost $36.00.
• Gologin, bare datacenter IP: One page attempt costs 14 seconds of browser time at $0.09 an hour, which is $0.00035, and no bandwidth. Four of five attempts succeed, so a successful load costs $0.00044, and 1,000 cost $0.44.
• Gologin, US residential proxy: One page attempt costs $0.00035 of browser time plus 2 MB of proxy traffic at $1/GB (Gologin’s rate for traffic beyond the included allowance, used here as the worst case), which is $0.00195. That is $0.0023 per attempt. Four of five succeed, so a successful load costs $0.00288, and 1,000 cost $2.88.

Subscription fees are excluded throughout, so these are marginal costs per page.

Pricing

Gologin is the clear winner when it comes to pricing, especially the entry plan cost. The entry plan costs $4.50 in Gologin and includes residential and mobile proxies in its rate. Extra traffic costs $1 per GB.

That makes Gologin’s extra residential traffic roughly twelve times cheaper than Browserless’s ~$12.29 per GB.

Gologin allows 3 concurrent browsers on the free plan. Concurrency scales from there, with extra parallel sessions at $2 per session per month, up to roughly 5,000.

The free plan technically allows three parallel sessions against Professional’s one, but it only includes 15 minutes of total runtime, so three browsers at once exhausts it in five minutes. Professional includes 50 hours.

Which One Should You Choose: Browserless vs Gologin

You should pick Browserless for the number of features you get on the free plan. For instance, residential proxies, auto CAPTCHA solving, live view, screen recording, etc., are all available for free.

Browserless also suits teams that want options in the APIs they use and the browser engine they want.

But there are a lot of areas where Browserless lags behind, and you need a tool like Gologin instead.

Gologin has strong fingerprinting, which helps it bypass Zillow’s strong antibot system even with a data center IP.

There’s also no cap on session length, and every Gologin session is persistent by default with no extra setup.

You can drive sessions by hand in the browser or through automated scripts.

Try Gologin Cloud Browser for free today.

FAQs

Is Browserless free?

Yes, Browserless has a free plan that gives you 1,000 units a month and allows 2 concurrent browser sessions. A session on the free plan cannot be longer than 2 minutes. Plus, persistent sessions are stored for 1 day. Paid plans start at $35 a month.

Does Browserless auto CAPTCHA solver work?

In my testing, Browserless’s CAPTCHA solver handled standard CAPTCHAs but struggled on real websites like Zillow. Pairing the auto CAPTCHA solver with a residential proxy improves CAPTCHA solving success rate by a little.

What are units in Browserless?

Units are what Browserless uses to meter usage, much like credits on other platforms. One unit covers up to 30 seconds of browser time per browser connection, so an hour costs 120 units.

The same units also pay for proxy traffic and CAPTCHA solving:

• Residential proxy traffic: 6 units per MB
• Datacenter proxy traffic: 2 units per MB
• A successful CAPTCHA solve: 10 units

Browserless Gives You a Lot Up Front, Then Charges for Scale

It’s true that Browserless offers a more generous free plan than almost anyone else in this category. The free plan has auto CAPTCHA solving, residential and datacenter proxies, six browser engines, and five APIs, without paying anything.

So if you’re testing ideas or running short jobs on public pages, that free plan is no doubt useful.

But when you need to scale, the jump in price is significant. Running 30 concurrent browsers puts you on the $200 Starter plan. As Scenario 2 in the “What Browserless Actually Costs” section shows, a workload at that scale can run well past the units it includes once proxy traffic is in the mix.

And if your work sits behind a login, the 2-minute session cap and 1-day storage on the free plan won’t carry you very far.

That’s the gap Gologin Cloud Browser fills.

Try Gologin Cloud Browser for free today.