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AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Smooth – Faster, cheaper browser agent API

Hey there HN! We're Antonio and Luca, and we're excited to introduce Smooth, a state-of-the-art browser agent that is 5x faster and 7x cheaper than Browser Use (https://docs.circlemind.co/performance). We built Smooth because existing browser agents were slow, expensive, and unreliable. Even simple tasks could take minutes and cost dollars in API credits. We started as users of Browser Use, but the pain was obvious. So we built something better. Smooth is 5x faster, 7x cheaper, and more reliable. And along the way, we discovered two principles that make agents actually work.…

Smooth is a browser agent API designed to automate web tasks programmatically. It targets developers and businesses that need reliable browser automation for web scraping, testing, and task automation. The product… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    Hi HN! Smooth CLI (https://www.smooth.sh) is a browser that agents like Claude Code can use to navigate the web reliably, quickly, and affordably. It lets agents specify tasks using natural language, hiding UI complexity, and allowing them to focus on higher-level intents to carry out complex web tasks. It can also use your IP address while running browsers in the cloud, which helps a lot with roadblocks like captchas (https://docs.smooth.sh/features/use-my-ip). Here’s a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jthcU705k Docs start at…

    Feb 2026 · docs.smooth.sh · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Browser-based AI agents - unlimited runs, fixed cost

    2025 · browser-use.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    I've built a browser agent harness that outperforms Browser Code on their own benchmark (BU Bench v1), on success rate, speed and cost. Browser Agent: 88% success rate, $5.37, 32,694 seconds Browser Code: 78% success rate, $8.34, 47,970 seconds For browser agents to become ubiquitous, they need to be faster, cheaper, and more reliable. The harness was built with token efficiency in mind (and uses 91% fewer tokens than Browser Code) to reduce the compute and VRAM budget necessary to fine tune a small, specialised model. Because browser agent inference is intermittent, a small specialised…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Web browser automation for AI agents

    Jun 2026 · browseract.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    Web Speed▲118

    Hey everyone, I've been working on a tool called Web Speed. It takes web pages full of HTML and parses them into an easily readable sitemap for an AI agent. By ensuring the AI doesn't have to analyze the full HTML from the page or screenshots of the page, it makes the agent a lot cheaper and faster. It's MCP-native, so any AI that supports MCP can run it and take control of your browser for you. There are both “normal” and post-auth versions live on GitHub. What I think is the coolest thing about the project is the global cache of sitemaps. When a user visits a site, it takes the sitemap and…

    May 2026 · getwebspeed.io · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Hey HN, We’ve been building browser agents for a while. In production, we kept converging on the same pattern: deterministic scripts for the happy path, agents only for edge cases. So we built Demonstrate Mode. The idea is simple: You perform your workflow once in a remote browser. Notte records the interactions and generates deterministic automation code. How it works: - Record clicks, inputs, navigations in a cloud browser - Compile them into deterministic code (no LLM at runtime) - Run and deploy on managed browser infrastructure Closest analog is Playwright codegen but: - Infrastructure…

    2025 · notte.cc · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    Agent 37▲401

    Hey HN, I noticed there are 1,000+ MCP skills on GitHub with zero way for creators to charge for them. So I built Agent37. Selling Claude skills today means asking customers to download your skill, set up Claude Code on their laptops, configure MCP servers, and pray it works. No trial, no updates, often you're just handing over the source. Agent37 lets creators upload a skill, share a link, and anyone can try it instantly (no Claude account needed). Built-in Stripe, creators keep 80%. Looking for feedback on the approach. Would you use something like this?

    Mar 2026 · agent37.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    AgentQL▲715

    Painless data extraction and web automation

    2024 · agentql.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    Asteroid▲673

    AI browser agents for your back office, built in seconds

    2025 · asteroid.ai · its alternatives →

  10. 10
    Bullet▲240

    Hi HN, excited to be sharing this with you guys today. TL;DR: Bullet is a fast coding agent. At our company, we were burning hours waiting on agent runs. The models weren’t the problem. The agent loops around them were slow (unnecessary planning, oversized context, repeated searches, and serial tool calls). So we built Bullet as a passion project, the goal being to help you iterate faster, without giving up quality: - It automatically selects the model and reasoning level for each prompt. - It runs independent searches, reads, and commands in parallel. - It uses targeted code search instead…

    Aug 2026 · codewithbullet.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11
    Pluno▲174

    Browser agent that’s 10x faster than Claude

    Jun 2026 · pluno.ai · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    The stealthiest browser automation platform for web scraping

    Nov 2025 · browser.cash · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Build AI browser agents in plain english

    2025 · skyvern.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14
    Agenty▲263

    Point and click screen scraping tool using CSS selectors

    2016 · agenty.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15TB

    Hi HN, My team and I are building Tabstack to handle the "web layer" for AI agents. Launch Post: https://tabstack.ai/blog/intro-browsing-infrastructure-ai-ag... Maintaining a complex infrastructure stack for web browsing is one of the biggest bottlenecks in building reliable agents. You start with a simple fetch, but quickly end up managing a complex stack of proxies, handling client-side hydration, and debugging brittle selectors. and writing custom parsing logic for every site. Tabstack is an API that abstracts that infrastructure. You send a URL and an intent; we…

    Jan 2026 · its alternatives →

  16. 16OH

    Related: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/27/one-human-one-agent-on...

    Jan 2026 · emsh.cat · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Hi HN, I forked chromium and built agent-browser-protocol (ABP) after noticing that most browser-agent failures aren’t really about the model misunderstanding the page. Instead, the problem is that the model is reasoning from a stale state. ABP is designed to keep the acting agent synchronized with the browser at every step. After each action (click, type, etc), it freezes JavaScript execution and rendering, then captures the resulting state. It also compiles the notable events that occurred during that action loop, such as navigation, file pickers, permission prompts, alerts, and downloads,…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Hey Hackers! I've had this idea stuck in my head for a while: what if an AI could actually use my browser for me? I mean, not on some virtual machine in the cloud like ChatGPT agent, but right on my own browser. I finally decided to just build it and see what would happen. I wrote a quick MVP, and honestly, I didn't expect much. But then... it started doing things. On its own. It figured out how to use search engine to find what I needed, read a webpage to answer my questions, and even it can organize my chaotic mess of tabs into neat groups. It was a genuine "whoa" moment for me. That's…

    2025 · browserfly.app · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    The runtime framework for agentic user interfaces!

    May 2026 · usemontage.ai · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Hey HN! I built Browser AI after getting frustrated with the official Playwright MCP server in Claude Code. If you've used it, you know the pain: - 20+ separate tools that Claude has to juggle (click, fill, navigate, wait_for_selector, etc.) - Context window explosions from verbose screenshot data and DOM snapshots - Constant tool selection errors where Claude picks the wrong tool or forgets parameters Browser AI wraps Playwright MCP with a single natural language interface. Instead of Claude managing dozens of tools, you get one: browser_ai.execute. Just tell it what you want in plain…

    Nov 2025 · aibrowser.surf · its alternatives →

  21. 21
    VibeCSS▲117

    AI Design Agent for Google Chrome

    Dec 2025 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22
    Integuru▲161

    Hey HN! We’re Alan and Richard from Integuru (YC W24). We generate fast, reliable integrations for platforms lacking official APIs. About 2 years ago, we released the first agent that reverse-engineers network traffic to build integrations (https://github.com/Integuru-AI/Integuru). Since then, we’ve developed a new approach to reverse-engineer platforms’ source code directly. This solution also includes authentication support. Here’s a demo: https://youtu.be/4l2L8fILC2g?si=nbWbDiFrWZIWRPM7. Many AI products need to integrate with web apps, but platforms…

    May 2026 · integuru.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23SA

    Simplex is an SDK that provides low-level functions you can use to create reliable web automations using code and natural language. Here's a quick video to show you how it works: https://www.loom.com/share/8d27d0f9e0f34c77a81b0ac770151c12 A couple weeks ago, we needed a way to automatically find 3D assets from the internet for one of our work contracts. We didn’t need an AI to choose all the steps for us autonomously — we knew generally what the flow to find items should be and just needed some intelligence to handle different webpage formats. Playwright couldn’t easily…

    2025 · simplex.sh · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    A multiplayer mobile browser with AI agents on every webpage

    Mar 2026 · basementbrowser.com · its alternatives →

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