# Smooth: a low-latency browser-agent API with explicit task pricing

Canonical: https://mudpie.ai/companies/smooth/
Breadcrumb: [Home](https://mudpie.ai/) / [Companies](https://mudpie.ai/companies/) / [Smooth: a low-latency browser-agent API with explicit task pricing](https://mudpie.ai/companies/smooth/)
Author: Ali Abouelatta (https://mudpie.ai/authors/ali-abouelatta/)
Published: 2026-09-19
Updated: 2026-09-19
Research type: Company profile
Method: Company and accelerator sources checked 2026-09-19. Product claims are attributed to their sources; this is research, not a hands-on product trial.

Smooth is a browser-agent API for developers who need autonomous web actions to be fast, cheap, and repeatable. The buyer decision is whether a browser agent's benchmark and price advantage survives the real site, login, CAPTCHA, proxy, session, and failure conditions in the buyer's workflow.

## What it does

Smooth says developers can launch browser tasks through an API, with instant browser spin-up, persistent sessions, custom proxies, auto-CAPTCHA handling, and a free starting tier. Its docs and homepage position it for scraping, testing, and workflow automation, with a WebVoyager score and speed/cost comparisons to Browser Use ([Smooth homepage](https://www.smooth.sh/); [Smooth docs](https://docs.smooth.sh/performance)).

| Fact | What the public sources say |
| --- | --- |
| Buyer | Developers building browser automation, testing, scraping, and agent workflows |
| API | Task launch, persistent sessions, proxies, browser execution, and result retrieval |
| Public pricing | Free credits; Starter $50/month; Growth $500/month; Enterprise custom |
| Public benchmark claim | Smooth says it scores 92% on WebVoyager and is 5x faster and 7x cheaper than Browser Use |
| Founder | Antonio Vespoli |

## Why it fits

Smooth's proposition is operational rather than philosophical. If a workflow needs a browser because there is no API, the developer cares about start time, session persistence, CAPTCHA and proxy behavior, retries, and cost per successful task. A clean four-line API and small models can be useful if the agent still completes the job reliably.

The benchmark and comparison figures are company-published. A buyer should run the exact login, MFA, navigation, rate-limit, failure, and data-boundary cases that matter, and distinguish a benchmark score from success on its own sites. The pricing page includes concurrency, credits, proxies, persistent sessions, and enterprise options; the unit cost still depends on task steps and retries ([Smooth pricing](https://www.smooth.sh/pricing)).

Vespoli's public background includes a computing master's degree at Imperial College London and three years at AWS on real-time streaming technology ([YC company profile](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/smooth)).

Short version: Smooth is worth a bake-off for a team that has browser work the APIs cannot cover. Test the failure path and the legal permission to automate the site before trusting the headline speed.

## Sources checked — 2026-09-19

- [YC company profile](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/smooth)
- [Smooth homepage](https://www.smooth.sh/)
- [Smooth pricing](https://www.smooth.sh/pricing)
- [Smooth performance docs](https://docs.smooth.sh/performance)

## Cohort context

Smooth is listed in Fall 2024. In our 2026-09-18 directory snapshot, 57 of 94 listed companies in that cohort have YC’s primary industry label B2B (60.6%). This is a current-directory comparison, not an original intake count or a performance ranking. [Nine-cohort dataset](https://mudpie.ai/research/yc-cohorts-2026-09-19.json).

## Public website snapshot

Observed 2026-09-19T16:14:45.256Z in raw homepage HTML. This records visible metadata and advertised links, not agent execution or product quality.

| Signal | Homepage observation |
| --- | --- |
| Product description metadata | Observed |
| Canonical link | Not observed in this response |
| H1 or H2 heading | Observed |
| Typed structured data | Not observed in this response |
| Docs/developer link | Observed |
| Pricing link | Observed |
| llms.txt link | Not observed in this response |
| Markdown alternate | Not observed in this response |

[Public observations](https://mudpie.ai/research/yc-homepage-links-2026-09-19.json) · [Collection method](https://mudpie.ai/research/yc-homepage-methods/README.md). Missing links here do not establish that a capability or file is absent elsewhere.


## Author disclosure

I cofound Lazyweb and publish Mudpie. This is an owner-written publication, not an independent testing organization. Research notes distinguish observations, sourced reporting and editorial judgment.