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Apify vs Browserbase

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Cheaper paid plan
Apify — $19/mo vs $20/mo for Browserbase
Free plan
Both have one
Public API
Both have one
Best fit
Apify: Teams that would rather rent a maintained scraper than babysit their own · Browserbase: Developers building browser-using AI agents
Trust score
About even — Apify 94, Browserbase 96

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

ApifyMarketplace and cloud platform of ready-made scrapers ('Actors') plus infrastructure to run your ownBrowserbaseHosted headless-browser infrastructure so AI agents can browse, log in, and fill forms on real websites at scale.

Side by side

FactApifyBrowserbase
CategoryWeb Scraping & Data ExtractionBrowser Automation Agents
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$19/mo$20/mo
Public APIYesYes
Trust score94 / 10096 / 100
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, API
CompanyApify Technologies s.r.o.Browserbase Inc.
Launched20152024
Last verifiedOct 16, 2026Oct 22, 2026

What our research says

Apify

The Actor marketplace is the draw: for most popular sites someone has already built and maintains the scraper, and agent-facing interfaces (API, MCP) are first-class. Costs need watching, since compute units plus per-Actor fees stack on top of the subscription and are hard to predict before you run at volume.

Pros

  • Huge catalog of maintained scrapers for common targets
  • Real free tier with $5 of usage and no card required
  • SDKs, CLI, proxies and scheduling in one platform
  • Published discounts for startups, universities and nonprofits

Cons

  • Two-layer pricing (subscription plus usage plus Actor fees) complicates forecasting
  • Marketplace Actor quality varies by author
  • Large-scale scraping raises site-terms and legal questions the platform leaves to you

Browserbase

Browserbase removes the operational work of running headless Chrome at scale - proxies, fingerprinting, CAPTCHA, session storage - which is exactly the layer most agent-building teams don't want to own themselves. It's infrastructure, not a finished agent, so there's still integration work to do on top of it.

Pros

  • Automatic CAPTCHA solving and proxy/fingerprint handling out of the box
  • Free tier available to test before paying
  • Session replay and observability for debugging agent runs
  • Open-source Stagehand framework for the automation layer

Cons

  • Free tier is capped at just 1 browser hour, not enough for real workloads
  • Requires developer effort to wire into an actual agent - it's infrastructure, not an end-user tool
  • Overage billing on browser-hours can add up for high-volume use

Which one fits

Choose Apify if you need

  • Teams that would rather rent a maintained scraper than babysit their own
  • AI builders feeding agents live web data through the API or MCP server
  • Developers monetizing crawlers without running infrastructure

Choose Browserbase if you need

  • Developers building browser-using AI agents
  • Teams scraping sites that block plain HTTP requests
  • Products that need agents to log in and act on behalf of users

Apify vs Browserbase: the questions people ask

Is Apify cheaper than Browserbase?

On published entry prices, Apify starts lower — $19/mo against $20/mo for Browserbase. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it; what each plan includes differs.

Does Apify or Browserbase have a free tier?

Both: Apify has a free tier, and Browserbase has a free tier.

Which has a public API, Apify or Browserbase?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.

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