onionwright · vs Browserbase
onionwright vs Browserbase
They sit at different layers of the same stack. Browserbase answers where the browser runs — it provisions and scales headless browsers in the cloud, with a stealth mode on top. onionwright answers whether the session looks human. If your automation runs fine but keeps getting flagged, the gap is the second one, and infrastructure does not close it.
Side by side
| Browserbase | onionwright | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Cloud browser infrastructure — it runs headless browsers for you, manages sessions, and scales concurrency | A patched browser plus a humanized-input layer you run yourself |
| The problem it solves | Where the browser runs — provisioning, session lifecycle, scale, without you managing servers | Whether the session looks human — automation tells at the engine level, and machine-like input |
| Anti-detection approach | A stealth mode over their managed browsers — the static layer (flags, driver tells) | Engine-level signals plus the behaviour layer — motor timing, trusted events |
| Behaviour / input | Whatever your automation sends — instant jumps unless you build the timing yourself | Human motor timing — minimum-jerk paths, keystroke intervals from a biometrics dataset, events trusted over CDP |
| Where it runs | Their cloud. Convenient, but a datacentre fingerprint and IP unless you add residential proxies | Your own machine — a real host gives a coherent fingerprint and you bring the IP you want |
| Pricing | Per session-minute plus proxy traffic (~$8/GB residential), on plans from about $20 to $99+/month | Per browser-hour — $0.10, one meter, billed from usage |
When Browserbase is the right choice
If your problem is operational — you do not want to run and scale browser servers, and you need session management as a service — Browserbase is built for exactly that and does it well. Managed infrastructure is the correct tool when the hard part is running the browser, not looking human.
It stops being enough when the flagging is behavioural. A session in a managed cloud browser still sends instant, evenly-timed input and events marked untrusted the moment they are synthesised — and a datacentre fingerprint unless you pay for residential proxies on top. That is the layer onionwright is built for, and running on your own host is what makes the fingerprint coherent for free.
What onionwright doesCommon questions
Is Browserbase cheaper than onionwright?
They meter differently. Browserbase charges per session-minute plus proxy traffic (around $8/GB for residential) on plans from about $20 to $99+/month; onionwright is $0.10 per browser-hour on your own machine with the IP you bring. You are paying for managed cloud infrastructure in one case and a self-run browser in the other.
Doesn't Browserbase's stealth mode make sessions undetectable?
Stealth mode is the static layer over their managed browsers — it addresses flags and driver tells. It does not supply human input timing or events the page sees as trusted, which is the behaviour layer most automation is caught on. Different layer of the same problem.
Can I run Browserbase and onionwright together?
They sit at different layers — infrastructure versus behaviour — so at fleet scale a team often needs both: somewhere to run the browsers and a session that looks human. That combination is an enterprise conversation.
Running agents at scale?
Fleet automation is where infrastructure and behaviour are both real at once — you need the browser to run somewhere and the session to look human. That is an enterprise conversation: concurrency, private deployment, and a coherent identity per account, sized with you.