Alternatives / Browserless
A Browserless alternative without the 30-second unit math
Per-minute billing. No reconnect surcharges. No $25/mo floor before usage starts counting.
Browserless is the original. If you need self-hosting, BrowserQL, or REST shortcuts for screenshots and PDFs, it's the right tool. This page is for the other case: you wanted a CDP URL and a bill you can predict.
Free tier · $0.15/hour after · No credit card
Side by side
| Bug0 Browsers | Browserless | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly minimum | $0 | $0 free / $25+ paid |
| Effective hourly rate | $0.15 | ~$0.23 equiv. (Prototyping) |
| Billing unit | Per minute | 30-second units |
| Free tier, no credit card | Yes | Yes (1 min session cap) |
| Standard CDP URL | Yes | Yes |
| Live preview | noVNC on every session | Session replay |
| Self-host option | No | Yes (commercial license) |
| Stealth / captcha built in | No | Yes |
| Proxies built in | No | Yes (residential) |
Pricing accurate as of April 2026. We update as Browserless changes theirs.
Migrate in two lines
Browserless and Bug0 both expose CDP. The diff is the URL.
Browserless + Puppeteer
import puppeteer from "puppeteer";
const browser = await puppeteer.connect({
browserWSEndpoint:
"wss://production-sfo.browserless.io?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN",
});
const page = await browser.newPage();Bug0 + Puppeteer
import puppeteer from "puppeteer";
import { Bug0 } from "@bug0/sdk";
const bug0 = new Bug0({ apiKey: process.env.BUG0_API_KEY });
const { cdpUrl } = await bug0.createBrowser();
const browser = await puppeteer.connect({ browserWSEndpoint: cdpUrl });
const page = (await browser.pages())[0];Same puppeteer.connect call. Same browserWSEndpoint shape. The token-in-querystring step goes away.
Where Browserless wins
- Battle-tested. Teams have run production scrapers and screenshot pipelines on it for years.
- Self-hosting option via commercial license. Useful for air-gapped or compliance-bound deployments.
- Wide endpoint surface: Playwright, Puppeteer, BrowserQL, REST APIs for PDFs, screenshots, and Lighthouse.
Where Bug0 wins
- Flat per-minute billing. No 30-second unit math. No reconnect surcharges.
- No 1-minute session cap on the free tier.
- No monthly minimum. You stop paying when you stop using.
Pricing math
Browserless Prototyping is $25/mo for 20,000 units, where each unit is 30 seconds of connection time. That's ~167 browser-hours of continuous, single-connection use, less in practice because every reconnect burns a fresh unit. Bug0 is $0.15/hr from the start with no monthly minimum. Below the plan cap, Bug0 is the lower bill. Past it, Browserless overage at $0.0020/unit (~$0.24/hr) is more expensive than Bug0's flat $0.15/hr.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between Browserless and Bug0?
Both expose Chrome over CDP. Browserless bills in 30-second units and starts at $25/mo. Bug0 bills per minute with no monthly minimum. Browserless ships BrowserQL and a self-host license; Bug0 doesn't.
Does Bug0 have an equivalent of /screenshot, /pdf, /content?
No. You take the screenshot or PDF yourself with page.screenshot() and page.pdf() and store them where you want. One fewer abstraction to remember.
Can I self-host Bug0?
No. If self-hosting is a hard requirement (compliance, air-gapped network), Browserless's commercial license or Steel.dev's open-source build are the right answers.
Will my Browserless Puppeteer code work?
Yes. Both servers accept puppeteer.connect({ browserWSEndpoint }). Swap the URL.
What about BrowserQL?
Bug0 doesn't ship BrowserQL. If you've already written a workflow in it, that's a real migration cost. If you haven't, vanilla Playwright/Puppeteer covers most of the same ground.
Free tier?
10 browser-minutes free, no credit card, no 1-minute session cap. Browserless free is 1,000 units (~8 hours) but with a 1-minute session limit.