Skyvern vs Stagehand
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Skyvern and Stagehand.
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Verdict: Stagehand wins
Stagehand scores 4.2/5, edging out Skyvern at 4.0/5. Engineers building production browser agents who want natural-language actions with a Playwright escape hatch and can tolerate per-action LLM costs.
Skyvern AI browser agent for workflow automation | Stagehand Browser automation for complex web tasks using AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 4.0 (1 review) | 4.2 (1 review) |
| Pricing Model | freemium | free |
| Starting Price | Free tier available | Free |
| Best For | Developers and ops teams automating login-gated, dynamic, CAPTCHA-protected browser workflows that keep breaking traditional scripts. | Engineers building production browser agents who want natural-language actions with a Playwright escape hatch and can tolerate per-action LLM costs. |
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Team Features | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Tags | open sourcefree tierapi accessbyok | free tieropen sourceapi access |
| Visit Skyvern → | Visit Stagehand → |
Skyvern
Pros
- + Vision-driven navigation survives UI changes that break selector-based scripts — layout drift in my test did not stop a run
- + Per-step run traces explain what the agent did and why, which turns failures into diagnoses instead of guesswork
- + Native CAPTCHA and 2FA/TOTP handling removes the two flows that most automation tools refuse to touch
- + Open-source AGPL core with a documented Docker self-host path for teams that cannot send credentials to a cloud vendor
- + Credit sizing is transparent: the pricing page publishes estimated action counts per tier (~170 / ~1,200 / ~6,200)
Cons
- - Per-action cost is inherently higher than scripted automation — each step carries LLM round trips, and self-hosters pay their own LLM API bills
- - Free tier (5,000 credits, 1 concurrent run) is an evaluation tier; team workspaces and 2FA support start at $149/month
- - Reliability on the hardest bot-protected and rate-limited sites is not something I would stake an SLA on despite native CAPTCHA solving
- - Seed-stage company with a small team; funding figures conflict across databases ($728K vs $2.7M) and long-term support is an open question
- - Not the right tool for high-volume extraction over stable pages, where a plain scraper is faster and far cheaper
Stagehand
Pros
- + MIT-licensed SDK runs locally against any Chromium browser; in my test the act() call re-resolved after I rewrote a login button's classes and wrappers, while my hand-written Playwright selector broke
- + extract() returns schema-validated typed data (pydantic/Zod/struct) — pulling an invoice table into typed fields removed the JSON cleanup step entirely
- + observe() hands back real selectors, so I filled login credentials with ordinary Playwright calls and the secrets never reached the model
- + Full TypeScript, Python and Go support from one monorepo, with deep locators that reached nested iframes and a closed shadow DOM in my runs
- + Token cost per action is a fraction of screenshot-driven agents I have tested, because page context is a trimmed accessibility tree rather than images
Cons
- - Every act/extract/observe call is an LLM round trip — my ten-step workflow ran noticeably slower than the equivalent pure Playwright script
- - Code-only: no recorder or visual builder, so non-programmers cannot build or maintain automations
- - Anti-bot features (stealth, residential proxies, verified sessions) live in paid Browserbase plans, not the free SDK
- - Pages with canvas-rendered or heavily obfuscated UIs leave the accessibility tree thin and the AI primitives degrade
- - v4 is still moving fast; I pin versions because major upgrades have meant migration work
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Skyvern or Stagehand?▼
Stagehand scores higher at 4.2/5 vs 4.0/5 for Skyvern, making it the better-rated option in our comparison.
What is the difference between Skyvern and Stagehand?▼
Skyvern: Open-source AI browser automation agent that can navigate complex websites, extract data, and complete workflows using LLMs and computer vision. Stagehand: Stagehand is an SDK for building browser agents, with a Playwright-style API and selectors that repair themselves when a page changes, in TypeScript, Python and Go.
Is Skyvern or Stagehand more affordable?▼
Skyvern starts at €0/mo, Stagehand starts at €0/mo. Check the comparison table above for current pricing.
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