How Benny builds AI agents that automate government benefits with Kernel

Benny helps people save on groceries and everyday essentials by offering brand-funded rebates through its app. It aims to help the 1 in 8 (42 million) Americans on SNAP benefits, the largest government subsidy program in the United States, and currently serves nearly half a million customers.To deliver this experience at scale, Benny has to continuously discover and track transaction history from many merchants, like Walmart, Kroger, and Instacart, using AI-powered browser automations.

Problem: headless browsers are a red flag—literally

Benny started with Browserbase’s headless browsers, and for a while that worked fine. But as Steve and the team expanded their coverage to more merchants' sites, they ran into two hard limits that kept getting worse.

First, headless browsers became an instant red flag—literally. Bot detection systems would block Benny's agents immediately, forcing the team to add more retries, fallbacks, and manual workarounds just to keep workflows running. The more sites they added, the more brittle it became.

Second, with their previous provider, the team had to use hacky cookie restoration tricks to reuse login state that would trigger bot detection and invalidate sessions. To fix this, they knew they would have to really own this and eventually take on more security exposure by vaulting credentials themselves. They also would have had to manually map login flows for every new merchant, since each site’s inputs and branching logic differ and they didn’t have a robust AI-driven discovery flow to handle that automatically.To fix all of this, Steve and the team would have to dedicate a bunch of engineering resources they just didn’t have. Steve knew they needed a provider that could solve both problems: a browser that didn't look like a bot, and an auth system that actually worked without pushing all the security burden back onto Benny's engineering team.

“Managing a fleet of headful browsers, a credential vault, and an AI-powered discovery login flow were all things we needed, but it was a full-time engineering challenge we couldn't afford to take on alone.”

Steve Austin, Co-founder & CTO, Benny

Solution: Selecting Kernel for better bot anti-detection and authentication

Once Steve and the team realized they needed to buy, not build, a new solution, Steve started looking specifically for headful browser providers that could stand up to modern bot detection systems and handle their login requirements. He tried a few options, but most either wrapped the same headless primitives under the hood and pushed all the messy auth and credential handling back onto his team.

Kernel stood out because it defaulted to a headful browsers, and it paired that with pause‑and‑resume primitives so his agents could reuse the same browser session instead of constantly restoring cookies and tripping bot defenses. With our Managed Auth, we also could handle credentials and an AI-powered discovery login flow out-of-the-box, which would let Benny shrink its security surface area instead of owning yet another sensitive system.

After validating Kernel in a small set of the “hardest” merchants, Steve saw sessions stop getting flagged and error rates drop. That evaluation made the choice straightforward: Benny decided to migrate to Kernel.

“After an easy 3-day migration, all those sites that used to immediately flag us for using headless browsers stopped doing so once we switched to Kernel’s headful browsers. Suddenly, it was all reliable.”

Steve Austin, Co-founder & CTO, Benny

Results: 880,000+ browsers/mo., 4.3x fewer errors, and $72K+ in savings

Today, Benny runs its AI‑powered discovery flow for new merchants on Kernel, delivering a fast, modern experience for customers. They now repeat this flow reliably hundreds of thousands of times per month (around 880,000+ browser sessions) on Kernel.

Sites that were previously flagged immediately by bot detection now run smoothly on Kernel’s headful browser automation, reducing the error rate by 4.3x. And by switching to Kernel, Benny also was able to simplify their infrastructure, eliminating a separate Kubernetes service and saving $36,000 per year in infrastructure costs. They were also able to save another $36,000 per year in managed proxies fees since we don’t charge for them. And because many of their workflows complete in under 1 minute, our billing by the second helps them save even more compared to their previous provider which rounds up to the minute.

“Kernel makes it too easy to build AI-powered browser automations that work once and keep working.”

Steve Austin, Co-founder & CTO, Benny

If you’re looking for a modern browser infrastructure experience, Kernel is the perfect fit. Reach out to us.