CloakBrowser vs Stagehand
CloakBrowser (CloakHQ) and Stagehand (Browserbase) side by side on public data, as of Oct 6, 2026.
Stagehand has 8.5x the weekly package downloads of CloakBrowser (2.5M against 289K). CloakBrowser has 1.3x the GitHub stars of Stagehand (31.9K against 25.5K). Over the last 30 days downloads moved -26% for CloakBrowser and +16% for Stagehand. CloakBrowser shipped 8 stable releases in the past 90 days. Stagehand shipped 7 stable releases in the past 90 days.
Side-by-side numbers
| Metric | CloakBrowser | Stagehand |
|---|---|---|
| Pulse Score | 41 | 58 |
| Overall rank | #81 | #21 |
| Downloads, last 7 days | 289K | 2.5M |
| Downloads, 7-day change | down 25.3% | up 13.4% |
| Downloads, 30-day change | down 26.0% | up 16.5% |
| VS Code installs | — | — |
| Marketplace rating | — | — |
| GitHub stars | 31.9K | 25.5K |
| Homebrew installs, 30 days | — | — |
| Hacker News mentions, 30 days | 2 | 17 |
| Latest stable release | 152.0.7977.82.1-p… · 13d ago | 3.7.3 · 39d ago |
| Stable releases, 90 days | 8 | 7 |
| Terminal-Bench (best run) | — | — |
| Price | Free (OSS) | Free + $20/mo |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| First released | February 2026 | October 2024 |
| Interfaces | — | API |
| Models | Any LLM selected by provider/model string (for example openai/gpt-5.4-mini) with your own API key |
Trends
CloakBrowser
Stealth Chromium that passes every bot detection test. Drop-in Playwright replacement with source-level fingerprint patches. 30/30 tests passed.
Pricing: Open source under the MIT licence; check the website for any paid hosted plans.
Latest release 152.0.7977.82.1-pro:
- The newest Chromium, 152. The engine, its features, and the version it reports all step up to the current major, so you stay current with what real browsers ship.
- Windows persona, another deep pass — the fonts your browser reports now line up the same way everywhere a site can read them. Coverage is broader and more accurate, and more of your graphics and…
- The macOS persona on 152 — its graphics, text, and media are refreshed for the new engine. It runs on Linux and macOS only, not on Windows. Select it with --fingerprint-platform=macos, and install…
- A more reliable proxy connection — the proxy connection mode now works across more setups, and a rare connection hang is fixed. Enable it alongside your --proxy-server with…
Stagehand
Open-source SDK from Browserbase for building browser agents that mix natural-language actions (act, extract, observe, agent) with code, available in TypeScript, Python and Go and runnable locally or on Browserbase cloud browsers.
Pricing: Stagehand itself is free (MIT). Optional Browserbase cloud browsers: Free $0 (1 browser hour, $5 in model tokens), Developer $20/month (100 hours), Startup $99/month (500 hours), Scale custom; model usage is billed separately.
Latest release 3.7.3:
- #2842 f86e609 Thanks @seanmcguire12! - update the MCP SDK to v1.30 and refresh supporting dependency versions
- #2836 94a0ee4 Thanks @seanmcguire12! - fix cross-frame xpaths building logic for coordinates inside of iframes.