Obsession vs Browserbase: cloud browsers beside what companies show only to customers
Browserbase is the browser your code drives, for as long as it runs. Obsession is the record of what each company sent and showed its customers, kept for months.
Example: Northwind is an invented company
- Browserbase’s column follows its own pages, read 11 November 2026. Not described means its pages don’t say.
In Obsession vs Browserbase, Browserbase runs cloud browsers your agent drives and Obsession keeps what companies show only to signed-up customers. Browserbase browsers log in, navigate and keep login state between sessions while your code runs; Obsession has already collected the emails after a sign-up, member prices, trial limits and cancel offers, each dated with a screenshot. Teams use Browserbase to run their own flows and Obsession for what companies send and show their customers, kept over time.
ComparedBrowserbase and Obsession at a glanceGo straight to the comparisonOn this page
What Browserbase and Obsession are
Browserbase: cloud browsers for your agents
As of 11 November 2026, Browserbase’s home page reads “Give your agents access to the whole web” and “Browserbase makes the web as reliable and programmable as APIs”. Its products include cloud browsers, Stagehand (its SDK for browser agents), Search and Fetch APIs, Functions, Sandboxes and Agent Identity. It says an agent “logs in, navigates, and pulls data from any website, login walls included”, and that Agent Identity gets agents “past anti-bot systems, CAPTCHAs, and authentication walls”.
Contexts keep a browser’s cookies, localStorage and IndexedDB between sessions to “maintain login states across multiple sessions without needing to log in repeatedly”, and they “live indefinitely”, though a site may still expire its own cookies or log a session out. Its pages don’t describe keeping the emails a company sends after a sign-up or a dated history of what a company showed.
Obsession: what the browsing found, already kept
Obsession collects what companies show only to customers, step by step: their screens, emails and texts, member prices, trial limits, quotes and cancel offers, each dated with a screenshot. Teams and AI agents look up any company through the API or MCP, and a company not yet covered is added on request. You don’t write the sign-up steps, run an inbox per account or store the captures: you name a company and look up what it sends and shows its customers, from the first day it was covered.
Browserbase and Obsession at a glance
| Option | What it holds | How it’s read | Freshness and history | Price as listed | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BrowserbaseBrowsers, Stagehand, Fetch, Search, Agent Identity | Browser sessions your code runs, with replays | API, Stagehand SDK and an MCP server | Live, while a session runsContexts keep login state | Free: 1 browser hourDeveloper $20 a monthStartup $99 a month | Agents that must act in a browser |
| ObsessionOursSearch, Insights, Watch, API and MCP | Emails, member prices, trial limits, quotes, cancel offers | 5 verbs over MCP, the API and SDKs, or a table | Kept from the first sign-upEach fact dated with its screenshot | Early access, onboarding teams nowPriced per call or per company watched | What a company shows only to customers |
When to use Browserbase, and when to use Obsession
- Use Browserbase when your agent has to act: fill a form, book something, test your own sign-up flow, or work inside a site for a user. You write the steps, and its browsers run them at scale with replays to debug.
- Use Obsession when you need what companies send and show their customers over time: the emails in a competitor’s first week, the member price a signed-in customer pays, the limits on a free plan and the offer in a cancel flow. Those arrive over days and weeks, long after a browser session ends.
- Build or look up. A headless browser can collect the same facts if you write and maintain the steps for every company, keep an inbox for each account and store every capture with its date. Obsession does that for any company you name.
Using Browserbase and Obsession together
Browserbase hosts an MCP server; Obsession’s install line is on the developer page. An agent can look up a competitor’s onboarding emails and trial limits with Obsession, then use a Browserbase session to act on your own product, for example to check your sign-up against what the competitor showed.
The two take different lines on bot defences. An Obsession agent says it’s an AI when it talks to a person and never gets round a CAPTCHA or a bot block; where a site puts one in front of a step, the record names the step it couldn’t reach. The lines are on the page for companies an agent visits, and one company’s whole record is in the sample data.
Not for running browsers: use Browserbase when your agent has to act in a site. Obsession is the data a browser would collect from companies’ customer side, kept and dated, so you look it up instead of building the collection.
Yes. Its contexts save cookies, localStorage and IndexedDB between sessions, so an agent can skip a login, and contexts live until you delete them. A site can still expire its cookies or log a session out.
Its pages don’t describe it. Obsession keeps every email a company sends a new subscriber, dated as it arrived, with its sender checked.
Browserbase lists a free plan with 1 browser hour and 15 minute sessions, Developer at $20 a month, Startup at $99 a month and custom Scale plans, read on 11 November 2026. Obsession is in early access and is priced per call or per company watched, never per token.
Sources
In the order the page cites them. Every page was read on 11 Nov 2026.