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ego lite vs Browserbase

The Best Browserbase Alternative

Browserbase is a cloud browser platform: your code spins up remote sessions over REST, drives them over CDP, and pays by the browser minute.

ego lite is a Browserbase alternative for your own agent work: real Chromium on your Mac, already signed into your accounts, controlled by your coding agent via /ego-browser. No session to create, no meter, finishing whole tasks 3 to 4x faster than Browserbase.

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Why ego lite is better than Browserbase

A Browserbase session is a fresh remote browser on someone else's servers. ego lite starts from your imported Chrome profile on your machine. Run /ego-browser in Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor.

3 to 4x faster on real tasks

Before your agent touches a page, you wait for a cloud session to spin up, and the meter starts immediately. Browser time bills by the minute with a one-minute minimum, so a twenty-second check still costs a full minute.

Run /ego-browser and your coding agent controls ego lite on your machine. Every page arrives as a Snapshot: a compressed accessibility tree with stable @N refs it can act on instantly, finishing whole tasks 3 to 4x faster than Browserbase.

Time to finish a task, shorter is better
81.8 sego lite
282.9 sagent browser
Data source - Task: scrape the main posts from the X account from the last 7 days

Parallel multitasking, execute faster

How many Browserbase sessions you can run at once depends on your plan: 3 on the free tier, 25 on Developer, 100 on Startup. Go past that and work waits in a queue. To watch a run, you open Live View in a dashboard tab.

In ego lite there's no cap on how many Spaces you open inside the same browser: each one runs its own task at the same time, controlled by a coding agent via /ego-browser on its own imported Chrome profile. None of them ever steals the tab you're using, and you can watch or take over any Space anytime.

No more back and forth Cost fewer tokens

Drive Browserbase with Stagehand and a simple checkout flow turns into a chain of model calls, each one waiting on a page read over the network before the next click.

Run /ego-browser and your coding agent batches several actions in a few lines of JavaScript per turn to control ego lite. Stacked with Snapshot input, the same task completes on far fewer tokens overall.

Claude Code · ego lite
>/ego-browser Add the first product to the cart, then check checkout loads
●Bash(
ego-browser nodejs <<'EOF' await openOrReuseTab('localhost:3000') await click('.product-card') await click('.add-to-cart') await click('a[href="/checkout"]') cliLog('checkout loaded') EOF
)
⎿Output:
[t=4480ms] checkout loaded
Done. Both steps work.
─── 1 tool call · ↑ 1.1k tokens ───
Stagehand · env: "BROWSERBASE"
>$ npx tsx run_task.ts const stagehand = new Stagehand({ env: "BROWSERBASE" }) await stagehand.init()
await page.goto("http://localhost:3000")
// page = stagehand.context.pages()[0]
navigated: http://localhost:3000
live view: https://www.browserbase.com/sessions/4f1c…
↑ 1.6k tokens sent so far
await stagehand.act("click the first product card")
// LLM call #1 · model: gpt-5.6-sol · cacheStatus: "MISS"
→ { success: true, message: "Action completed successfully",
actions: [{ selector: "/html/body/div[2]/main/div[1]/a",
method: "click", arguments: [] }] }
↑ 3.8k tokens sent so far
await stagehand.act("click add to cart")
// LLM call #2 · model: gpt-5.6-sol · cacheStatus: "MISS"
→ { success: true, message: "Action completed successfully",
actions: [{ selector: "/html/body/div[2]/main/button[1]",
method: "click", arguments: [] }] }
↑ 5.9k tokens sent so far
await stagehand.observe("find the checkout link")
// LLM call #3 · model: gpt-5.6-sol
→ [{ selector: "/html/body/nav/a[href='/checkout']",
description: "Checkout link", method: "click", arguments: [] }]
↑ 8.0k tokens sent so far
await stagehand.act(action)
// no LLM: Action from observe()
→ { success: true, message: "Action completed successfully",
actions: [{ method: "click", arguments: [] }] }
navigated: /checkout
↑ 9.1k tokens sent so far
await stagehand.extract("is the payment form present?", z.object({ present: z.boolean() }))
// LLM call #4 · model: gpt-5.6-sol
→ { present: true }
↑ 11.4k tokens sent so far
await stagehand.extract("list the payment fields", z.object({ fields: z.array(z.string()) }))
// LLM call #5 · model: gpt-5.6-sol
→ { fields: ["card", "expiry", "cvc", "zip"] }
↑ 13.6k tokens sent so far
─── 7 model calls · ↑ 13.6k tokens ───
The same task, the same model. Left: one batched JavaScript call in ego lite, 1.1k tokens total. Right: Stagehand driving a remote Browserbase session, 7 calls, tokens climb to 13.6k.

Same Chrome, agent-native

Browserbase sessions start with a fresh profile unless you turn on persistence, and Browserbase's own docs say two-step verification and magic links usually need a human in the loop.

Built on Chromium, ego lite imports your entire Chrome setup in one click. When your coding agent runs /ego-browser, it controls ego lite with your real sessions already in place, so it doesn't stall on SSO, 2FA, or captchas on accounts you already have.

ego lite Chrome profile import: one-click setup with all your logins

ego lite vs Browserbase

Feature comparison between ego lite and Browserbase.
Featureego liteBrowserbase
Where the browser runsLocally on your Mac, as your daily browserBrowserbase cloud only; no self-hosted option
Logged-in sites (SSO, 2FA)One-click Chrome profile import; coding agent controls ego lite with real sessions via /ego-browserFresh user data by default; docs say 2FA and magic links need a human in the loop
How the agent connectsRun /ego-browser in Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor. No SDK, no API keyCreate a session over REST, then attach over CDP with Stagehand, Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium
Token cost per taskLower: Snapshot input plus batched JavaScript, measured per taskStagehand: a model call per act/observe/extract; plain Playwright/Puppeteer/Selenium scripts: none
PriceFree, no subscription, no accountFree tier, then $20/mo Developer / $99/mo Startup / custom Scale, plus overage
What gets meteredNothing. The browser is already on your machineBrowser minutes and proxy MB, with one-minute and one-MB minima per session
Parallel tasksUnlimited Spaces in one browser, bounded by your machinePlan caps: 3 free, 25 Developer, 100 Startup, 250+ Scale
Whose reputation the traffic carriesYour network and your logged-in browserShared cloud IP ranges
Where your data goesStays on your machinePages transit Browserbase; recording is on by default unless you opt out
Reusable skills (coming soon)Distills successful runs into reusable skills; up to 5x faster on complex tasks as the agent repeats them (limited beta)No built-in equivalent
Production browser fleets and complianceNo. One developer's machine and accountsYes: SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA BAA, DPA, SAML SSO, four data regions
Last updated Jul 30, 2026

Make it a seamless transition

Keep Browserbase for your product's cloud fleet. Move your own logged-in browser work to ego lite in a few minutes.

  1. Download ego (lite)

    Download ego lite and import your Chrome profile in one click. Logins, cookies, and extensions come with it.

  2. Run your first task with /ego-browser

    Paste into your agent

    /ego-browser Open ego.app and join the waitlist

    Paste one sentence into Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor and hit enter. No session to create, no API key, no SDK.

  3. Watch it work
    ego lite Spaces overview with four browser tasks running side by side: Claude Code tracking Apple stock on Yahoo Finance, Codex filtering cars by year on cars.com, Hermes finishing a SaaS back-office task, a user scraping X, and a hand tapping + to open another Space

    The task runs in its own Space, so your tabs stay untouched. Watch live or take over anytime. Results land back in your agent's CLI.

Keep Browserbase for high concurrency, unattended runs, and anonymous targets that need proxies and captcha solving.

When to use each tool

Choose ego (lite) when

  • Your tasks touch logged-in sites: dashboards, admin panels, anything behind SSO or 2FA.
  • You want a free local loop with no session create step and no browser minutes to bill.
  • Pages and credentials should stay on your machine, not transit a cloud provider.
  • You want parallel Spaces you can watch or take over from Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor.

Choose Browserbase when

  • You need real cloud concurrency (100+ browsers). ego lite is one machine.
  • Work must keep running when your laptop is closed.
  • You're hitting anonymous targets at volume and want managed proxies, stealth, and captcha solving.
  • You need SOC 2, HIPAA, SAML, and session recording because your product runs browsers for customers.

Give your agent a real browser

Free, runs on your Mac, imports your Chrome profile in one click. Works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and any CLI agent that writes code.

Try ego (lite)

Keep reading

Still weighing your options? See how Browserbase compares with the other tools in the same space.

ego (lite) vs Puppeteerego (lite) vs Playwright MCPego (lite) vs Browser Useego (lite) vs Stagehandego (lite) vs agent-browserego (lite) vs Playwrightego (lite) vs Seleniumego (lite) vs Codex browserAll comparisonsBrowser automation solutions

FAQ

Browserbase is a cloud browser platform with docs and SDKs on GitHub. You create sessions over REST, drive them over CDP with Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, or Stagehand, and pay for browser time plus proxy bandwidth. It handles the ops layer most teams would rather not build: proxies, stealth, captcha solving, session recording, and compliance. For products that need browsers at volume for their own users, it is the reference choice among browserbase competitors. It is cloud-only; there is no self-hosted option.

For your own logged-in browser work, yes: free, local, already signed in, driven via /ego-browser. For production cloud fleets that need 100+ concurrent browsers, managed proxies, captcha solving, and compliance paperwork, Browserbase is still the right category.

Browserbase bills browser minutes and proxy bandwidth: a free tier, then Developer at $20/mo, Startup at $99/mo, and custom Scale plans, plus overage. ego lite is free. The browser is already on your machine, so there is nothing to meter.

Not by default. Sessions start with fresh user data unless you persist a context and sign in by hand through Live View. Browserbase's docs say two-step verification and magic links usually need a human in the loop. ego lite imports your Chrome profile once locally, and every task starts signed in.

Browserbase publishes product docs and open SDKs on GitHub, including Stagehand. That repo is the usual landing point for browserbase github searches. ego lite is separate: a Chromium browser on your Mac, controlled through the MIT ego-browser shell, not a cloud session API.

They sit at different layers. Browser Use is a Python agent framework that decides what to do. Browserbase is the cloud browser infrastructure those agents often run on. ego lite is neither: run /ego-browser and your coding agent controls ego lite locally, with no session API and no per-minute billing.

operator.browserbase is Browserbase's operator-style surface for driving cloud browser sessions from an agent. ego lite is not a hosted operator. It is local Chromium your coding agent controls with /ego-browser, already signed into your accounts.

Among browserbase competitors, the usual names are cloud browser platforms like Browserless, Steel, and hosted Playwright or Puppeteer fleets, plus agent stacks that bundle their own remote browsers. ego lite is a different category: a Chromium browser on your Mac for your own agent work, not a fleet you operate for customers.

Yes, but not directly from /ego-browser. You create a Browserbase session over REST, attach over CDP, and drive it with Stagehand, Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium from a script your agent runs. That path fits cloud automation. For logged-in work inside your own accounts, ego lite is simpler: run /ego-browser in Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor with no session create step.

Shared cloud IP ranges carry shared reputation, so some sites treat traffic as automated even when you mean well. Proxies and stealth help on anonymous targets. With ego lite, traffic comes from your own network and logged-in browser.

No. Browserbase's FAQ says there is no self-hosted option. ego lite runs entirely on your Mac. Free on macOS 12+, no account required.