How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s(browser-use.com)
297 points by gregpr07 1 day ago | 208 comments
tl;dr: Browser Use rebuilt its cloud browser infrastructure on Firecracker microVMs running nested inside regular EC2 (rather than bare-metal), cutting session start times to under 1s and costs from $0.06 to $0.02/browser-hour. Key optimizations included using 2MB memory pages and a custom userfaultfd handler to slash page faults 91x, dynamic vCPU pinning after Chromium launch, and a Chromium fork with real fingerprints enabling fully headless stealth (81% block-avoidance). Next up: snapshotting VMs after Chromium is already running to eliminate the remaining ~545ms startup cost.
HN Discussion:
  • ~Clarification from Unikraft that the migration wasn't due to technical limits but EC2 autoscaling support
  • Bot-scaling infrastructure makes captchas worse and harms legitimate users
  • Nested virtualization context missing - only recently possible on non-metal EC2
  • Sticking with Chromium is questionable; lighter alternatives like Lightpanda yield bigger wins
  • ~Simpler architectures (warm pools, AWS Lambda) could achieve similar results without the complexity