Smooth CLI
Ranked 2 of 5 browser agents by recommenders
Recommended as a token-efficient browser for AI agents that can test localhost apps. Critics mostly object to running in the cloud and sending data to a third party.
Recommended as a token-efficient browser for AI agents that can test localhost apps. Critics mostly object to running in the cloud and sending data to a third party.
17 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 59%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Cheaper and faster than alternatives
“Making Smooth as cost-effective as possible it's been a core goal for us”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents” “Our approach is actually very cost-effective compared to alternatives.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents” “our technology is today 5x faster and 7x cheaper than browser-use”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Runs only in the cloud
“I am not gonna run this is in the cloud for my use cases.”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents” “Offer up the locally hosted option and it'll be more widely adopted by those who actually want to use it as opposed to tinker.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents” “until I realized that this doesn't run on my computer”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents” Expensive, another subscription
“Way too expensive, I'll wait for a free/open source browser optimized to be used by agents.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents” “no way in hell am I adding yet another bill and using a web browser of all things as SaaS”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents” “Certainly not frustrated enough to pay to send my data to a 3rd party”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents” - Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents”
Unclear security and data handling
“I didn't find a single mention of security anywhere (as far as I could tell!)”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents” “I'm unwilling to send my data to a 3rd party that is so new on the scene”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents” “Certainly not frustrated enough to pay to send my data to a 3rd party”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents”
Other browser agents people recommend
The four most recommended other browser agents, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browser Use | 52 | 25 | 68% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Smooth CLIThis page | 10 | 7 | 59% | 2 | — | — |
| PageAgent | 9 | 7 | 56% | 1 | — | — |
| Rover by rtrvr.ai | 7 | 1 | 88% | 6 | — | — |
| TinyFish Web Agent | 6 | 1 | 86% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
22 of the 23 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“The tool assumes that you will pretty much end up changing the spec/plan during implementation, based on how it's going.”
“our technology is today 5x faster and 7x cheaper than browser-use”
“making all requests originate from your own residential address has been a major success compared to other cloud-only solutions”
“I built a browser agent that can almost certainly handle that task.”
“the natural language intent layer is the right call”
“I am not gonna run this is in the cloud for my use cases.”
“It still may not be quite ideal. For example, right now I was building a clone of Counter Strike. There's such large files that tunneling would be cumbersome.”
“it can actually test apps running on your localhost with our tunneling feature”
“it makes it harder for Claude to test dev apps”
“I'm unwilling to send my data to a 3rd party that is so new on the scene”
“no way in hell am I adding yet another bill and using a web browser of all things as SaaS”
“subscribing to anything these days is a hard sell”
“reproducible comparisons with open-source setups would strengthen the claim”
“Certainly not frustrated enough to pay to send my data to a 3rd party”
“Offer up the locally hosted option and it'll be more widely adopted by those who actually want to use it as opposed to tinker.”
“Making Smooth as cost-effective as possible it's been a core goal for us”
“until I realized that this doesn't run on my computer”
“Our approach is actually very cost-effective compared to alternatives.”
“Way too expensive, I'll wait for a free/open source browser optimized to be used by agents.”
“we developed a token-efficient representation of the webpages that combines both visual and textual elements”
“I didn't find a single mention of security anywhere (as far as I could tell!)”
“the landing page and docs pages of Smooth aren't all that token-efficient”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.