KERNEL: browser infrastructure for web agents and automations

why developers choose kernel over browserbase

browserbase makes browser agents slower and more expensive than they need to be. kernel helps you build faster agents and unlock more advanced use cases—and you only pay when browsers are doing work.

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5.8xfaster cold starts

3.7xfaster end-to-end

50+%lower costs

benchmark results

provider

avg (ms)

median (ms)

p95 (ms)

p99 (ms)

kernel

793.84

776.00

1006.00

1105.00

browserbase

2966.87

2888.00

3886.00

4309.12

provider

avg (ms)

793.84

median (ms)

776.00

p95 (ms)

1006.00

p99 (ms)

1105.00

benchmarked against browserbase using an
open source, third-party tool

3 more reasons

open source

Browserbase's core browser infrastructure and Chromium fork are a black box. We took the opposite approach and open sourced our browser image and SDKs. Developers from regulated industries who need to know how our code works can go read it themselves.

human-in-the-loop

Browserbase charges for idle time, and its 6-hour session limit makes human-in-the-loop workflows difficult. we offer 72-hour session limits, so you can pause a browser at night and resume the next day—or even three days later—with a live view from the exact same point, without paying for idle time.

identity

a customer who cares deeply about bot anti-detection (including CAPTCHA handling) benchmarked us against Browserbase. They saw Kernel perform 10–20% better, which was the primary reason they chose us.

felicity

felicity doubled its performance and eliminated 12 hours of monthly debugging with kernel

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