browser-use vs firecrawl
The two are close in size: 112.3k stars for browser-use, 176.7k for firecrawl. Over the days we have tracked them browser-use moved +6.9% and firecrawl +16.3%, so firecrawl is growing faster right now.
They split the axes: browser-use leads on privacy and model freedom, firecrawl on context depth and noise control.
Stars and commit dates come from our own daily tracking. The six axes are read off each project's documentation by our review pipeline, so they describe what a project says about itself, not what we measured in its code.
Where they stand today
An open-source browser agent that runs locally and is extensible with custom tools and provider‑prefixed models, enabling reproducible, privacy-friendly web automation.
- Stars
- 112.3k
- Tracked growth
- +6.9%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 4h ago
- Language
- Python
- License
- MIT
- Cost to run
- Your LLM API key (or run free local models).
Provides an agent-ready web context API that scrapes JS-heavy pages into LLM-ready Markdown/JSON and supports actions (click/scroll/write) plus large-scale crawling — a combination many scrapers don’t offer.
- Stars
- 176.7k
- Tracked growth
- +16.3%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 4h ago
- Language
- TypeScript
- License
- AGPL-3.0
- Cost to run
- Hosted service — API key required
Six axes, head to head
Each axis runs 0 to 5. The label under a score is what that project's own docs claim, not a category average.
| Axis | browser-use | firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
Context depth How much of your codebase it sees before it answers: the open diff, the diff plus related files, or the whole repository. | ●●●●● Diff only | ●●●●● Whole-site crawling |
Noise control How it keeps output volume down — severity thresholds, deduplication, incremental runs over new commits only. | ●●●●● None mentioned | ●●●●● Structured output |
Customization How far it bends to your team: custom rules, prompts, style guides, per-path config. | ●●●●● Custom tools & prompts | ●●●●● Prompt & schema |
Privacy Whether your code stays on your own infrastructure: fully local, self-hostable, or cloud API only. | ●●●●● Fully local capable | ●●●●● Hosted API key |
Model freedom Whether you can point it at any provider, or it is wired to one. | ●●●●● Bring-your-own / local | ●●●●● Firecrawl models |
Setup ease What it takes to get a first useful run out of it. | ●●●●● API key + install | ●●●●● API key required |
Which one to pick
Pick browser-use if…
Open-source & flexible — pick any LLM (including local models), add custom tools, and run browser automation on your machine.
- Privacy: Fully local capable (5/5 against 3/5)
- Model freedom: Bring-your-own / local (5/5 against 1/5)
Pick firecrawl if…
Agent-ready — connect agents to live web data with a single API, get structured LLM-ready output, and interact with pages (click/scroll/write) at scale.
- Context depth: Whole-site crawling (5/5 against 1/5)
- Noise control: Structured output (3/5 against 1/5)
What people want from each one
browser-use/browser-use
Hacker News: Launch HN: Browser Use (YC W25) – open-source web agents drew 259 points and 100 comments.
firecrawl/firecrawl
Questions people ask
Is browser-use better than firecrawl?
They split the axes: browser-use leads on privacy and model freedom, firecrawl on context depth and noise control. browser-use is worth picking when open-source & flexible — pick any LLM (including local models), add custom tools, and run browser automation on your machine.
Which of browser-use and firecrawl keeps my code private?
browser-use: Fully local capable (5/5). firecrawl: Hosted API key (3/5).
What does each one cost to run?
browser-use: Your LLM API key (or run free local models).. firecrawl: Hosted service — API key required.
Full profiles: browser-use/browser-use and firecrawl/firecrawl. Everything else in Browser agents.