Managed browsers

Applies to app.browsergateway.com (cloud). The OSS gateway routes to providers you bring; it has no managed browsers.

Managed browsers are browsers we run for you. You do not need an account with any browser provider: add managed browsers to a router and connect through the same address you already use. They are charged per second from your credits.

How they work

One fresh browser per session. Every session gets a new, empty browser that is discarded when the session ends. Two sessions never share a browser, and no customer ever shares a machine with another.
Two regions. EU (Belgium) and US (Virginia). You choose the region per router.
Same address. Clients connect to wss://cdp.browsergateway.io/v1/connect?token=<router key> exactly as with any provider. Puppeteer, Playwright, the Live playground, the Data API and agents all work unchanged.
Up to 5 at once per workspace. Enterprise contracts can raise this.
Sessions last up to 60 minutes.

Adding managed browsers

Open Providers and choose Add provider.
Choose Use managed browsers.
Pick how the router uses them: As a provider or As a fallback. A router uses managed browsers one way or the other, never both, and only once.
Pick the region and save.

The managed browsers card always shows first on the Providers page, marked as run by Browser Gateway. Use Edit to change the region or settings, or to switch between provider and fallback.

As a provider

Managed browsers take sessions like any provider you add. They have the same settings:

Setting	What it does
Priority and weight	Where they sit in the router's strategy. With round-robin or weighted routing they share traffic with your other providers.
Which sessions it serves	Any session, or only sessions using one profile.
Region	EU (Belgium) or US (Virginia).
On/off switch	Pauses managed browsers without removing them.

To send one session to managed browsers on purpose, pin it: add &provider=<name> to the connect address, using the name shown on the card.

As a fallback

Managed browsers stay out of normal routing and take a session only when your own providers cannot:

Switch	When managed browsers take the session
On fail	Every one of your providers failed to connect.
When full	Every one of your providers is at its session limit. The session goes straight to managed browsers instead of waiting in the queue.

Turn on one or both. A router with no providers of its own and a fallback switch on is served by managed browsers.

A session pinned to one of your providers (&provider=<name>) never falls back.

Price

$0.002 per minute, billed per second, from your credits.

A managed session starts only when your credits cover one minute for every managed session already running plus the new one.
While sessions run, credits are charged every 10 seconds. When they run out, every managed session in the workspace closes within about 10 seconds with WebSocket close code 4402 and reason managed-browsers-balance-empty.
Managed sessions do not count toward the 10,000 BYOK sessions included each month.
Recording and traces work on managed browsers and are charged at their normal rates on top. See Billing.

Profiles

A managed browser that is not pinned to a profile can save changes to any profile, because every session starts on a fresh machine. Cookies and localStorage are saved and restored. IndexedDB and service workers are not carried on managed browsers; use browserserve if you need them.

When a session is refused

You see	Meaning
`managed browsers refused: insufficient_balance`	Not enough credits to start. Top up on the Billing page.
`managed browsers refused: cap_reached`	5 managed sessions are already running in this workspace.
`managed browsers skipped: ...` added to a `502`	A fallback was tried and refused for the reason shown; your own providers' errors are listed first.
HTTP `429` "queue timed out"	Managed browsers used as a provider were full, like any provider at its limit.
Close code `1013` `managed-browsers-unavailable`	Managed browsers were switched off while the session ran.