At first glance, Browser Use and Mobilerun might seem like they solve the same problem. But they don't. Browser use gives your AI agent access to a browser, while Mobilerun gives it access to a mobile device. That distinction determines what your agent can actually automate.
What is Browser Use?
Browser Use is AI browser automation: you give an agent a natural-language task and it drives a real web browser to complete it. It comes in two forms. There's the open-source Python library (browser-use), which you run on your own machine and point at your own LLM provider, and there's Browser Use Cloud, a managed API that runs the same idea on hosted, stealth browser infrastructure so you don't manage anything yourself.
The pitch is that you send a task like "List the top 20 posts on Hacker News today with their points" and get structured results back. Under the hood the agent looks at the page, decides the next action, clicks, types, scrolls, and repeats until the task is done.
What Browser Use provides
Two modes: Agent and Browser. The Agent runs your natural-language task end to end and hands back a result. The Browser mode gives you a raw cloud browser over the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) so your own code drives it. The infrastructure is the same infrastructure, but the control level is different.
Stealth browsers: The Cloud runs a forked Chromium built to get agents past bot detection and access sites that block ordinary automation.
CAPTCHA solving and residential proxies: You get proxies that span 195+ countries and are on by default, which helps sessions look like real regional users.
Framework compatibility: You can connect Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium to the hosted browsers over CDP, so existing scripts keep working.
Profiles and authentication: Persistent browser state lets an agent log in once and reuse that session. There's tooling for 2FA and for syncing local cookies up to the cloud.
Structured output: Get validated structured data back from a task instead of loose text.
Live preview, recording, and human-in-the-loop: Watch the agent's browser in real time, embed it in your own app, replay sessions, and hand control to a human mid-task for approvals, payments, or tricky auth.
Deterministic rerun: Run a task once, then re-execute the cached script for effectively $0 in LLM cost.
Integrations:An MCP server, n8n node, and webhooks make it easy to wire into agent stacks and existing workflows.
Why AI agents use it
For a browser-based agent, the browser is the "hands." An assistant researching a topic might be told "Go to Hacker News and pull today's top posts," let Browser Use launch a stealth Chromium, observe the page, decide the next action, click, and continue. The loop repeats until the task is done, and because it's real Chromium with real proxies, it can reach sites that reject naive scrapers.
How Browser Use differs from Mobilerun
The biggest distinction is the environment each one automates. Browser Use only ever sees what's inside a web browser. Mobilerun controls the whole mobile device.
Browser Use's view of the world
Browser Use runs Chromium locally or in the cloud which means it operates entirely within the browser. Browseruse agent can navigate, click buttons, fill forms, read page content, execute JavaScript, take screenshots, and upload or download files. What it cannot do is leave the browser: it can't install a native Android or iOS app, open WhatsApp, receive an SMS or push notification, grant OS-level permissions, toggle Wi-Fi, or open device Settings. All of that happens at the device/OS level, outside Chromium. For SMS- or app-based 2FA, the practical answer is a human in the loop or a stored credential/OTP, not the browser reading a text message itself.
Mobilerun's view of the world
Mobilerun runs AI agents that control real Android and iOS devices in its cloud or on your own hardware. The agent gets a natural-language goal like "open Settings and turn on dark mode" and taps, swipes, and types its way there. It controls the entire device: the home screen, Chrome, the Play Store, WhatsApp, Settings, Files, notifications, native apps, and system UI. It can install and uninstall apps, grant or revoke Android runtime permissions, read the accessibility UI tree, set GPS location, timezone, and locale, manage eSIMs and proxies, and even drive the device's own Chrome over CDP when a task does need the browser. An agent moves freely across all of it as part of a single workflow.
A concrete example
A workflow that crosses app boundaries shows the gap clearly:
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Open Play Store → install an app → grant permissions → open Gmail → retrieve an OTP → switch back to the app → verify the account → enable notifications → parse the screen data.
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Browser Use can't run this end to end, because most of it happens outside the browser. Mobilerun is designed exactly for it.
By contrast, a typical Browser Use agent stays entirely on the web: open LinkedIn, search for a company, extract employee names, and download a CSV.
A Mobilerun agent is device-first: install TikTok, create an account, receive an OTP, complete onboarding, upload a video, return to TikTok, and publish.
Underlying automation model
Browser Use operates through the browser. In Browser mode it exposes a raw browser over the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP), the same protocol Playwright, Puppeteer, and Selenium speak, giving access to the DOM, network events, and console logs. In Agent mode it wraps that in an AI loop.
Mobilerun operates at the mobile device level. Rather than being limited to a browser's DOM, it works from the device's a11y UI tree and screenshots across native apps, web views, and system screens, executing real taps with stealth mode that emulates human-like typing speed, jitter, and curved swipe paths.
Scaling
Both platforms are built for concurrency, but they scale different resources. Browser Use scales stealth browser sessions on managed cloud infrastructure. Mobilerun scales fleets of real or cloud-hosted mobile devices.
Open source and self-hosting
Both have an open-source core. Browser Use's library runs locally against your own LLM key, with the Cloud as the managed path to production. Mobilerun's framework runs the open-source mobilerun package on your own machine against your own Android device over adb, again with your own LLM key, while its Cloud offers hosted devices billed through credits. In both cases: run it yourself for control, or use the cloud to skip the infrastructure.
When to use which
Choose Browser Use when your workflow lives entirely on the web: large-scale scraping, browser-based AI agents, end-to-end web testing, form automation, data extraction, or any task that needs to reach protected sites and scale across many concurrent browser sessions.
Choose Mobilerun when you need to automate Android or iOS apps, your workflow crosses multiple apps, you need device features like notifications, permissions, GPS, SIM/eSIM, or file storage, or you're testing and operating mobile apps end to end.
Can they complement each other?
Yes. They're more complementary than competitive, unless the task is strictly browser automation. In some architectures they handle different parts of the same workflow. A core AI agent might use Browser Use to gather information from websites while Mobilerun handles the mobile portion: installing an app, signing in with an OTP, validating push notifications.
The takeaway is the one we started with. Browser Use gives your agent a browser; Mobilerun gives it a phone. Pick based on where the work actually happens.
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