Browy FAQ: pricing, comparisons, privacy, browsers

Common questions. Don’t see yours? Open an issue.

Is Browy free?

Yes. Browy is open source under Apache-2.0. The code, the host, and the extension are free.

You bring your own GitHub Copilot subscription for the LLM. Every Copilot plan, Copilot Free included, covers the Copilot CLI, and Browy’s backend ships with its own copy of the CLI. Browy’s model calls draw on your plan’s monthly allowance of GitHub AI Credits, the same allowance Copilot uses in your editor and in the terminal.

How does Browy compare to Browser-Use?

Both are open-source browser-automation agents. Different deployment model:

	Browy	Browser-Use
Surface	Browser extension (Chrome / Edge / Brave)	Python library, a CLI for coding agents and a hosted cloud
Runs against	Your real logged-in browser profile	A local browser, which can reuse your Chrome profile, or one of their cloud browsers
LLM	Your GitHub Copilot subscription	A model you pick: a provider’s model on your own API key, their BU2 model or a local model through Ollama
UI	Side panel chat + DevTools CLI	Your Python code, or a coding agent driving their CLI
Best for	Day-to-day tab automation, “do this with my logged-in account” tasks	Building browser agents into your own code and running them at scale on their cloud

Browy’s main draw is session reuse: your cookies, your logins, your password manager, your other extensions. You don’t re-auth into Gmail, Slack, or GitHub for every task.

How does Browy compare to Skyvern?

Skyvern is an open-source tool that automates browser workflows with LLMs and computer vision. You can use the hosted Skyvern Cloud, or run Skyvern yourself and point it at your own Chrome over remote debugging, logins included. You start its tasks and multi-step workflows from Python or TypeScript code, or from its web UI. Browy runs locally as a Chrome extension plus a native messaging host, and you chat with it in a side panel. If you want repeatable workflows or a hosted service, pick Skyvern. If you want to chat with an agent inside the browser you already use, pick Browy.

Is Browy an alternative to Aider / Cline / Cursor?

No, they’re complementary. Aider, Cline, and Cursor edit a repository on your disk; Browy drives your browser. Use a coding agent for code, Browy for the tabs. If you also want filesystem and shell access from Browy, you can turn on the host tools (bash, read_file, write_file, …) under Settings → Tools, but a dedicated coding agent will give you a much better editing flow.

Does Browy work offline?

No. The LLM (GitHub Copilot) runs in the cloud. The browser-control side runs entirely on your machine.

If you want a fully air-gapped setup, swap Copilot for a local model. We don’t support that today. The browser tools in src/agent/tools/browser.ts are plain { def, run } objects that src/agent/loop.ts wraps for the Copilot SDK, so a local-model fork is plausible.

What browsers are supported?

Chrome, Edge and Brave. Those are the browsers the installer registers Browy’s native host with, on Windows (x64), macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Linux (x64 and arm64). Safari and Firefox are not supported (different extension model + no chrome.debugger equivalent for cross-tab CDP).

What models can Browy use?

Browy can use any model the Copilot CLI offers your account; its model list is the one the CLI returns. Copilot Free and Copilot Student get auto model selection only. Paid plans choose from models by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others, and GitHub keeps the current list on its supported models page. Switch on the fly with /model in the DevTools CLI or in Settings.

Where does my data go?

• Page content the agent reads → GitHub Copilot, through the Copilot CLI that Browy runs: the same path as copilot in a terminal
• Tool calls (clicks, typed text, evaluated JS) → executed locally in your browser via chrome.debugger
• Chat history → stored on your machine: transcripts in the Copilot CLI’s session store under ~/.copilot/, plus a display cache in chrome.storage.local. The host’s log is ~/.browseragent/native-host.log.

Full detail at Privacy & Data.

Can I disable specific tools?

Yes. Open the extension Settings → Tools. Browser tools are on by default, and most of them have a switch to turn them off; disabled tools are stripped from the prompt the model sees. Host tools (run_script, bash, read_file, write_file, grep, glob, web_fetch) are off by default and can be turned on individually. See Tools.

Can I run Browy without opening a browser tab?

Not the browser agent: its browser tools act on a live tab through chrome.debugger. The backend’s command line does include browy run "<task>", a terminal agent that uses the Copilot CLI’s own file, shell and web tools and needs no browser. If a terminal-only Copilot agent is all you want, the GitHub Copilot CLI covers that case directly.

Is Browy a competitor to GitHub Copilot?

No. Browy is built on top of GitHub Copilot. We use the @github/copilot-sdk for model access; Browy adds the browser-control loop and the UI on top of the agent that GitHub already ships.

Can I contribute?

Yes, Apache-2.0, contributions welcome. See Roadmap & contributing and the GitHub project board. Issues tagged good first issue are the entry point.

Where do I report a bug?

github.com/BrowyHQ/browy/issues: please include OS, browser, Browy version (the extension version from chrome://extensions, and the backend version shown at the top of Browy’s settings page), and the host log at ~/.browseragent/native-host.log.