Browser automation tools
Ten tools for driving a website that has no API, what each is genuinely best at, and where each one runs out. We build one of them and say so.
Why people go looking for one
Almost nobody sets out wanting to automate a browser. They want a job done, they find the system has no API, and driving the interface is what is left. That is the wall: a supplier portal, an internal tool nobody will build an integration for, a government or bank site with a login and no developer docs. Search bears it out, and the modifiers say who is stuck. "rpa for mac" completes ten ways, because Power Automate Desktop is Windows only and the people looking hardest are the ones it will not run for. "browser automation tools free" and "no code browser automation" are the other two, which is somebody without a budget or without a developer. Those three constraints, no API, no Windows, no code, are what actually separate the tools below.
These split cleanly into three kinds and the list is ordered to show it: managed products that run the browser for you, no-code tools that run in yours, and libraries you write code against. Claritty is one of the ten and is listed first because we built it, not because it wins every row. For a developer the honest answer is Playwright, and it is written down in its own entry rather than buried. Nothing here quotes a price or a feature tally, because those change and a roundup that goes stale is worse than no roundup at all.
Claritty
AI workflow automation you describe rather than assemble. You write down the job in plain language, Claritty wires it into the tools you already use and runs it on a schedule or a trigger, and it stops for your approval before it does anything real.
Best for. Work that involves a judgment call, and work trapped in a system with no API. If the task is a clean if-this-then-that between two apps with good APIs, a trigger-action tool will do it with less machinery.
- You describe the outcome instead of drawing a graph of steps.
- A dry run shows what it would have sent before it sends it, and nothing writes, sends or pays until you approve it.
- Reaches tools with no API: record the task once, check the steps it wrote down, then it repeats them in a Claritty-run browser rather than yours. It keeps what you clicked and never what you typed.
- Credentials are brokered server-side, so no key is ever pasted into a step.
- Every run is recorded step by step, so you can see what it actually did.
- The integration catalog is smaller than the long-established trigger-action tools. A niche SaaS is more likely to have a Zapier connector than a Claritty one.
- The platform is hosted. If you need the automation engine itself inside your own network, look at the self-hostable options here. Clarity Studio runs locally, but it is the desktop app rather than the platform.
- It is a young product. The tools below have years of community answers, templates and third-party tutorials behind them.
- The free tier is metered rather than limited: three automations and five runs, taking real actions on your real data. Building your own app, as opposed to running automations, is the paid line.
- The browser recorder extension is not out yet. The automation runs today, but you get to it by describing the task rather than recording it, and Claritty builds the same thing.
Power Automate
Two products under one name. Cloud flows connect services in the trigger-action shape. Power Automate Desktop records what you do in a Windows application or browser and replays it, which is how it reaches systems with no API.
Best for. Organisations already inside Microsoft 365 and Dynamics. Its depth into that estate, including admin-level operations, goes further than a general-purpose tool can reach.
- The deepest integration with Microsoft 365 and Dynamics of anything here.
- Desktop flows reach thick Windows applications, not only web ones.
- Already licensed inside many organisations, so adoption is an internal conversation rather than a purchase.
- Power Automate Desktop is Windows only. There is no Mac equivalent inside Microsoft, which is the single most common reason people go looking.
- Desktop flows run on a machine you provide and keep available.
- Recorded click paths break when the underlying application changes.
UiPath
Enterprise robotic process automation. It drives desktop applications and browsers directly, with attended robots that work alongside a person and unattended ones that run on their own.
Best for. Desktop applications, not just browsers. If the system you need to automate is a Windows client rather than a web app, UiPath reaches places Claritty does not.
- Automates thick desktop software, not only the browser.
- Built for governed rollouts across many processes and many people.
- Mature tooling for orchestration, queues and exception handling at scale.
- Weight. It is an enterprise programme with an implementation behind it, not something you set up over a lunch break.
- Desktop automation is tied to machines you provide and maintain.
- Recorded UI paths are brittle when the underlying application changes.
Axiom.ai
A browser automation extension. You build a click path in Chrome and it repeats it on the site, which is how it reaches web tools with no API.
Best for. Quick, self-directed scraping and form filling you want to set up yourself in an afternoon, with no platform underneath it.
- Low commitment. It is a browser extension, so there is very little to adopt.
- Reaches sites with no API, which most connector-based tools cannot.
- The click path is the automation, so a site redesign breaks it and you rebuild it.
- Built around a Chrome extension, so its reach is what Chrome can reach. A desktop application is out of scope in a way it is not for the RPA platforms here.
Bardeen
A browser-based automation tool with AI steps, aimed at individual knowledge workers automating their own repetitive browser work.
Best for. One person automating their own workflow, on their own machine, without asking anyone.
- Fast to start, with a library of ready-made playbooks.
- Works directly against the pages you already have open.
- Built around an individual rather than a team with shared approvals and audit.
- Extension-first, so what a run can reach is what your browser can reach.
Browse.ai
A no-code tool for extracting data from websites and watching pages for changes. You point it at a page, show it what to pull, and it returns rows on a schedule.
Best for. Getting structured data OUT of websites, and monitoring pages for change. For scraping specifically it is a sharper instrument than Claritty, which is built to act rather than to harvest.
- Purpose-built for extraction and change monitoring rather than adapted to it.
- Handles pagination and list pages without you describing every case.
- No code, and quick to a first result.
- Built around getting data out and watching for change. It can fill a form and click through on the way, but a run ends in extracted rows rather than in a business action taken on your behalf and held for your approval.
- Site redesigns break extractors, as they do for anything that reads a page by position.
Apify
A platform for running web scrapers at scale, with a marketplace of ready-made ones and the proxy and storage infrastructure underneath.
Best for. Scraping at volume, where the hard parts are proxies, rate limits and concurrency rather than the automation itself.
- Infrastructure for scale: proxies, queues, storage, retries.
- A large library of existing scrapers for common targets.
- Runs your own code too, so it is not limited to what the marketplace covers.
- Developer-shaped underneath. Running a store Actor needs no code, but compute units, proxies and concurrency are the vocabulary, and anything custom is a code change.
- Aimed at data collection rather than at doing your work for you.
Playwright
An open-source browser automation library from Microsoft. You write the automation in code, and it drives Chromium, Firefox and WebKit through one API.
Best for. Anyone who can write code. This is the honest answer for a developer: it is more capable, more reliable and more precise than every no-code tool on this page, Claritty included, and it costs nothing.
- Auto-waiting removes most of the flakiness that makes recorded click paths break.
- Cross-browser through a single API, and it runs anywhere you can run Node or Python.
- Open source, no vendor, no per-run cost.
- It is a library, not a product. There is no schedule, no approval step, no run history and no one to call.
- Someone has to host it, watch it and fix it when a selector moves.
- Out of reach for the person who has the problem but does not write code, which is most of the people searching for this.
Selenium
The oldest and most widely deployed browser automation project, and the basis of the W3C WebDriver standard. Bindings exist for most languages.
Best for. Organisations that need the broadest possible language and browser support, or already run a Selenium Grid.
- The de facto standard, with more existing skills and answers behind it than anything else here.
- Bindings in most major languages, not just JavaScript and Python.
- Grid distributes runs across many machines and browsers.
- Older ergonomics than Playwright. Waiting and flakiness are yours to manage.
- Same as any library: no schedule, no approvals, no run record, and infrastructure to keep alive.
Automation Anywhere
Cloud-native enterprise RPA, in the same tier as UiPath. Bots automate application interfaces, with central orchestration and audit.
Best for. Regulated environments that need central control, audit trails and role separation across a large bot estate.
- Cloud-native control plane for managing many bots.
- Governance and audit built for regulated industries.
- Reaches desktop applications as well as web ones.
- Enterprise procurement and implementation effort.
- Overpowered for a team automating a handful of recurring jobs.
Questions people ask
What is the best browser automation tool for a Mac?
Anything hosted, plus every library. The question is asked because Power Automate Desktop is Windows only and has no Mac equivalent inside Microsoft. Claritty runs the browser as a managed service, so the machine you sit at is irrelevant. Browse.ai and Apify are hosted for the same reason. Axiom and Bardeen are Chrome extensions and run wherever Chrome does, including macOS. Playwright and Selenium both run natively on macOS. The only genuinely Windows-bound options here are Power Automate Desktop and the desktop halves of UiPath and Automation Anywhere.
Do I need to keep my computer on?
It depends which kind you pick, and it separates them more sharply than any feature. Claritty, Browse.ai and Apify are managed, so nothing of yours runs. Axiom schedules its runs in its own cloud by default, so a scheduled Axiom automation does not need yours either. Bardeen is extension-first and whether a given run needs your browser open depends on the automation. Power Automate Desktop, UiPath and Automation Anywhere run on machines you provide and keep running. Playwright and Selenium run wherever you host them, which means you own a server rather than a laptop.
Is there a free browser automation tool?
Playwright and Selenium are open source and free forever, and for a developer they are genuinely the best tools on this list, not a compromise. The cost is not licensing, it is that somebody has to write the script, host it, and fix it when a selector moves. Most of the no-code tools here have a free tier that is a way to try them rather than a way to run production work. If "free" in your search means "no budget" rather than "no licence", the libraries are the real answer and the honest tradeoff is your time instead of your money.
What breaks browser automation, and can anything survive it?
A site redesign. Every tool here reads a page by position or by selector, so when the page moves, the automation misses. Nothing on this list is immune and any vendor claiming otherwise is overselling. What differs is the blast radius: a library fails loudly in your CI, a scraper returns empty rows, and a tool that acts can do the wrong thing quietly. That last case is why Claritty holds every real action for approval and shows you what it is about to do, so a broken run costs you a rejected draft rather than a wrong email your customer reads.
What is the difference between browser automation and RPA?
Scope. Browser automation drives a web page. RPA, in the UiPath and Automation Anywhere sense, also drives thick desktop applications, the accounting client and the terminal emulator that never got a web version. If your problem is entirely in a browser, an RPA platform is a large amount of machinery for it. If the system you need is a Windows application, the browser-only tools on this page cannot reach it at all.
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