S
B
Browserless
Login Join Starter Story
Source
Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 90 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →
Browserless logo

How Browserless Makes Money

Cloud-based browser automation service for developers

How did Browserless monetize?

Summary of the sourced claims below

Browserless monetizes primarily through recurring subscription plans that offer different levels of usage units per month, including a free tier and paid tiers such as Starter, Scale, and Enterprise with custom pricing. They also use a usage-based pricing model where each browser session consumes units based on its duration, with longer sessions consuming more units. Additionally, Browserless generates revenue through an old-school license model alongside the monthly subscription for hosted access.

Revenue sources

4 sources · grouped by how Browserless makes money

  • Recurring subscriptions

    · 9 mentions · 8 sources
    “Business size: ~$4M ARR, under 10 people ... He ran the business solo to $60K MRR before bringing on operational help. ... It took three years of nights and weekends to reach $500K ARR. ... His first 10 customers came from answering questions on GitHub and Stack Overflow - no outbound, no ads. .....”
    high
    Show 8 more quotes
    “It currently generates revenue in two ways: an old-school license model and a monthly subscription for “hosted” access.”
    high
    “browserless is one of those newfangled “SaaS” businesses (software-as-a-service)... This can be as simple as taking screenshots of your page, perusing the internet for data, or even generating PDFs of a cool dashboard on your site... This is fine for them: they can recoup their expenses via margi...”
    medium
    “Thankfully bootstrapping meant that our MRR was steady and covered all of our costs, so there wasn’t a VC funded runway to race against.”
    high
    “Sign up for a 7-day trial of browserless to test it with your existing Puppeteer scripts.”
    medium
    “We can sign on to Browserless’ Scale plan to learn how its browser automation feature works. Visit the homepage, click Pricing, and then Scale. Start your 7-day trial.”
    medium
    “Free tier: You receive 1,000 units per month, with support for up to 10 concurrent browsers... Starter ($50/month): Includes around 5,000 units per month ... Scale ($200/month): Steps up to roughly 40,000 units per month... Enterprise: Custom pricing or pay as you go at roughly $0.00008 per secon...”
    high
    “His first customer paid $200 a month. Total infrastructure cost was $50. He was profitable from day one. But growth was painfully slow. He ended his first year at about $1,000 in MRR.”
    high
    “His first customer paid $200 a month. Total infrastructure cost was $50. He was profitable from day one. But growth was painfully slow. He ended his first year at about $1,000 in MRR. ... Today, Browserless is approaching $4 million in ARR”
    high

  • Usage-based fees

    · 5 mentions · 4 sources
    “Browserless employs a unit-based pricing model, where each browser session consumes units based on its duration. Simple REST API calls, such as grabbing a screenshot, typically use just 1 or 2 units. However, longer scraping sessions lasting several minutes will quickly consume dozens of units.”
    high
    Show 4 more quotes
    “Currently, I’m working on a new usage-based account type that does per-second billing. This has been an incredibly interesting feature, and often requested, since it’s really cheap to get started ($0.00008/second!).”
    medium
    “I naturally came to an on-demand model where I buy no infrastructure until someone signs up. It’s then, and only then, does my software go and provision for a new account. When I originally started I think I had a baseline cost of around $40/ in order to keep things running, which is nothing when...”
    medium
    “Note: as this process is resource intensive, it will use extra Units, and is not available for our legacy free tier users.”
    medium
    “Overages (per unit)N.A.$0.0020$0.0017$0.0015”
    high

  • One-time / lifetime deals

    · 1 mention
    “It currently generates revenue in two ways: an old-school license model and a monthly subscription for “hosted” access.”
    high

  • Services & consulting

    · 1 mention
    “Normally you’d have to charge for stuff like this, and we definitely do for bigger projects, but I feel it’s really important to win over fans versus build a user-base, especially when you’re not spending money on marketing.”
    medium

How 1,886 businesses make money

Of businesses with mapped revenue sources, the share using each — Browserless’s highlighted.
  • Recurring subscriptions
    54% ◀
  • Services & consulting
    29% ◀
  • Physical products
    28%
  • One-time / lifetime deals
    24% ◀
  • Affiliate / referral commissions
    15%
  • Course / training sales
    13%
  • Sponsorships & partnerships
    9%
  • Usage-based fees
    9% ◀
  • Add-ons & upsells
    9%
  • Advertising revenue
    9%
  • Marketplace commissions
    6%
  • Licensing
    2%
  • Setup / onboarding fees
    2%
  • Donations & tips
    2%
S
Starter Story
Support Privacy Terms