Browserless Alternative: Hosted Browser Automation Without the Ops Burden

Browserless solves a real problem: running Chromium in production is a pain. Memory spikes, zombie processes, Chromium version drift between dev and prod, Lambda cold starts that time out before the browser is ready. Browserless packages Chromium as a hosted service so you can point your Puppeteer or Playwright script at a remote endpoint instead of a local install.

It's a solid solution to the ops problem. But it's still Puppeteer and Playwright — you're still writing a browser automation script, managing selectors, handling waits, and debugging rendering differences. You've eliminated the infrastructure headache but not the script complexity.

PageBolt takes a different cut: instead of hosting the browser so your code can drive it, it exposes the outputs you actually want — screenshots, PDFs, videos, page maps — as direct API calls. No browser driver, no automation script, no selector debugging.

Side-by-side

Capability	Browserless	PageBolt
Hosted Chromium	✅	✅
Screenshot via API	✅ (via Puppeteer)	✅ (direct endpoint)
PDF generation	✅ (via Puppeteer)	✅ (direct endpoint)
Narrated video recording	❌	✅
AI voice narration	❌	✅
Page inspection (element map)	❌	✅ (/inspect)
MCP server (Claude/Cursor)	❌	✅
No automation script required	❌	✅

The script complexity difference

With Browserless, taking a screenshot looks like this:

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-core');

const browser = await puppeteer.connect({
  browserWSEndpoint: `wss://chrome.browserless.io?token=${process.env.BROWSERLESS_TOKEN}`
});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com', { waitUntil: 'networkidle2' });
const screenshot = await page.screenshot({ fullPage: true });
await browser.close();

With PageBolt:

const res = await fetch('https://pagebolt.dev/api/v1/screenshot', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'x-api-key': process.env.PAGEBOLT_API_KEY, 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({ url: 'https://example.com', fullPage: true, blockBanners: true })
});
const screenshot = Buffer.from(await res.arrayBuffer());

No browser connection, no page object, no waitUntil tuning, no browser.close(). One fetch call, one result.

The narrated video gap

Browserless has no video recording feature. If you need to record a browser session — for docs, onboarding, changelogs, or bug reproduction — you'd need a separate tool.

PageBolt records narrated sessions in a single API call:

const res = await fetch('https://pagebolt.dev/api/v1/video', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'x-api-key': process.env.PAGEBOLT_API_KEY, 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    steps: [
      { action: 'navigate', url: 'https://yourapp.com', note: 'Open the app' },
      { action: 'click', selector: '#get-started', note: 'Get started' },
      { action: 'fill', selector: '#email', value: 'demo@example.com', note: 'Enter email' }
    ],
    audioGuide: {
      enabled: true,
      voice: 'nova',
      script: "Welcome. {{1}} {{2}} Click to begin. {{3}} Enter your email and you're in."
    },
    pace: 'slow',
    frame: { enabled: true, style: 'macos' }
  })
});
// Returns binary MP4

When Browserless is the right tool

If you have existing Puppeteer or Playwright scripts and want to move them off local infrastructure without rewriting them, Browserless is the natural fit. It's a drop-in replacement for a local Chromium — point your browserWSEndpoint at Browserless and your existing code runs unchanged.

PageBolt is the right call when:

• You're building from scratch and want the simplest possible integration
• You need video recording or narration
• You're building AI agents that need structured page understanding
• You want MCP integration for Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Windsurf
• You want one API for all browser output types