Thinking about CloakBrowser's sustainability

[Cloak-HQ]

CloakBrowser launched less than 3 months ago. Since then:

• 14,000+ stars, 1,100+ forks
• 730,000+ binary downloads across 16 releases
• 49 C++ patches maintained across 4 platforms
• Ported from Chromium 139 → 142 → 145 → 146

What started as a side project to scratch our own itch turned into something we didn't expect. Hundreds of issues and feature requests, dozens of support requests and custom integration inquiries every day, to the point where we need to bring on additional team members to keep up.

At some point this stopped being a hobby and became a full-time job. That wasn't the plan, but here we are, and we need to figure out how to make it sustainable.

Every Chromium update means porting dozens of patches. Every new anti-bot technique means research, reverse engineering, and new patches. Every issue means reproducing, debugging, and fixing.

To date, the donations and funding we've received don't even cover our build server costs. This project is a full-time effort generating essentially no revenue. We want to be transparent: without a sustainability model, it becomes harder to justify the time and effort this project demands.

What we're thinking about

• The wrapper (Python + JS) would stay MIT and open source. Always.
• Starting with v147, the latest binary would be available through a paid Pro tier.
• The current version (v146) would stay free on GitHub Releases. Forever.
• When v148 ships, v147 becomes free. There would always be a free version available, one generation behind.
• Nothing that's free today would be taken away.

What's coming in v147

Chromium 147 is incoming, and with it we're developing a rendering correction system. Instead of adding noise to canvas, audio, and font output (which advanced anti-bot systems like CreepJS, FingerprintJS, and BrowserScan can detect as modified), v147 will inject actual rendering output captured from stock Chrome on real hardware.

This means the browser's fingerprint won't just look plausible, it will be identical to a real browser. Sites that currently flag canvas pixel modifications, WebGL rendering mismatches, or audio inconsistencies won't be able to distinguish CloakBrowser from genuine Chrome.

This is the kind of deep R&D that requires sustained funding to maintain.

Why not just donations?

14,000+ stars and we've received about $50-75 in total tips. That doesn't even cover our build server costs. Industry data shows this is normal. 97% of open-source users never contribute back. We don't think donations alone can sustain a project this complex.

We'd love your input

• What do you think about this approach?
• How are you using CloakBrowser today?
• Would you pay for the latest version? What would feel fair?
• Are there other sustainability models you've seen work well?
• If you're using CloakBrowser commercially, we'd especially like to hear from you.

Nothing is decided yet. We want to hear from the community before committing to anything.

Thanks for using CloakBrowser.

[evelaa123]

I found this repository when I urgently needed a free solution for browser automation, and at the time the project felt like a real find. Everything I needed was there out of the box: the patches worked reliably, the Chromium engine gave more trust from anti-bot systems, and the fingerprinting system — while not perfect — was noticeably improving with every release. And that was against the backdrop of all the competitors: something similar existed, but it was either poorly suited for development or relied on JS patches. Building on top of ungoogled-chromium, you've made incredible progress, and the work on the project never stops.

Despite how unfortunate the situation is — developers' work should be valued. Since the project doesn't have major sponsors, moving to a paid model may be the only realistic solution, and users should approach this with understanding. Thank you for your work — it really is time to monetize it.

The approach you're proposing (always one free version one generation behind + Pro for the latest) looks like a fair compromise. It will still be, arguably, the best solution on the market for developers.

Personally, I use CloakBrowser for pet projects without serious monetization, and for my use case a comfortable ceiling would be around $10/month.

I have a question about the licensing model that I think is relevant not just for me. Let's say a developer with a Pro subscription builds an application or tool on top of the latest binary. A few scenarios:

1. The application is used only by them locally — obviously, no issues here.
2. They share this application with a small circle of people (friends, a local IT community, a small open-source project) on a non-commercial basis — would the end users also need to have a Pro subscription? Or does the subscription cover "bundling" the binary in non-commercial projects?
3. Commercial distribution — I assume this is a separate story with a separate license.

It would be great if you could clarify upfront how the Pro tier will relate to distributing and bundling the binary. This would remove a lot of questions for people building something on top of CloakBrowser.

And one more thing — I'd like to offer my help if it's ever needed. It's been really awesome to find your repository and watch it grow by leaps and bounds.

Wishing you the best of luck, and I hope everything works out. It's a shame that no major sponsors have come along yet and the project has simply become too big to keep fully free.

[juhacz]

Cloak Browser was also a revelation for me. Previous similar projects, which allowed me to amateurishly scrape two websites whose data I needed for my own needs, have either been discontinued or are now being detected.
I was one of the first to donate because I know how much work it must be. I don't know what the price of the Pro version will be, whether it's a subscription or a one-time payment. I'll decide how I'll use it once I receive more information.

On a side note, it's a shame that with so many users, so many people are willing to buy someone a coffee or a beer :(

[eofreternal]

I think locking the latest version behind a paid tier and only making it publicly available when updating to a new version of Chrome is fair

[linghengqian]

I know asking about mirror sites before CloakBrowser was commercialized seems a bit odd. But have you considered hosting a paid version (including the paywall) and a free version on a mirror site available in mainland China?

Currently, most cloud service providers in mainland China, including Tencent Cloud, cannot download the file from https://cloakbrowser.dev/chromium-v146.0.7680.177.3/cloakbrowser-linux-x64.tar.gz or https://github.com/CloakHQ/CloakBrowser/releases/download/chromium-v146.0.7680.177.3/cloakbrowser-linux-x64.tar.gz . This file almost always needs to be uploaded to an S3 bucket and then manually downloaded and used in the Dockerfile.

In contrast, version 1.58.0 of microsoft/playwright includes environment variables responsible for mirror points, such as PLAYWRIGHT_DOWNLOAD_HOST=https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/playwright and PLAYWRIGHT_CHROMIUM_DOWNLOAD_HOST=https://cdn.npmmirror.com/binaries/chrome-for-testing.

[ai474427793]

I'm all for paying for the latest version. It's totally normal to get paid for the hard work you put in. Now, talking about this anti-detection solution, most users are running their own projects and making money from them. When you weigh the loss of getting accounts blocked and businesses shut down against the cost of a better solution, it makes perfect sense and there's plenty of room to invest in it. Keep going! I hope this project sticks around and keeps getting better!

[Replactionap]

I think this approach to commercializing the project is completely justified. A project of this scale simply cannot remain sustainable without proper funding and long-term sponsor support, especially when it requires constant maintenance, patching, reverse engineering, and adaptation to every Chromium update.

At one point, CloakBrowser became the ideal solution for me, and honestly there are very few alternatives that can compete with it right now. One of the biggest reasons is that the project focuses on native-level browser behavior instead of relying on JavaScript-based emulation tricks that many other solutions use.

That seems like a sustainable balance between supporting the developers and keeping the project accessible to the community.

[BardelasMagniv]

The approach seems fair. Keeping the latest version behind a paywall and keeping the free tier a version behind is reasonable. I think a ceiling of 15$ - 20$ USD monthly will be reasonable for most users.

[morpheus9393]

Maybe I would pay $5-10/month for the latest browser version.

[Coding-Doctor-Omar]

I don't think it is justified to monetize it. One of the main advantages you always boasted about in your website is the fact that it is very stealthy and still free, unlike the competitors. Also, Camoufox used to always be free and was totally undetectable before its developer had health issues and had to step back. If Camoufox was able to sustain itself for free, why can't you? Shame on you and on all the bots in the comments section. I will unstar.

[eofreternal]

Maintaining CloakBrowser takes time and energy. You are not entitled to anything free because the creation of that thing was not free

[Coding-Doctor-Omar]

Maintaining Camoufox in 2024/2025 also took time and energy, but it was always free. What's really annoying isn't the monetization itself as much as it is lying in your website and claiming that one of the advantages of CloakBrowser is that it offers all that for free, unlike other stealth browsers. Your website has a giant table that boasts about this lie. If you had been honest from the start, no one would blame you.

[adamant-31]

I'm from Russia. Zennoposter and Zennobrowser are very popular there. The software is paid, plus paid updates every six months. In Zennobrowser, everything is free but limited to 2 simultaneous threads. More than that is paid. There is also a subscription for synchronization.

Take the n8n project — it's completely free but very complex. They make money by hosting paid versions on their own servers, plus a large user base, verification types, and environment variables.

If you follow Zennoposter’s model, about 80% of users will leave because there are alternatives. If you follow n8n’s model, everyone might stay, but revenue will be lower.

There is a large market of traffic arbitrage specialists. Market leaders: Multilogin, Incogniton, and formerly Linken Sphere. Russia and the CIS became major centers for traffic arbitrage, especially aggressive and automated forms. The culture and tools later spread to Western, European, and Asian markets.

If you find the right approach for arbitrage teams working with Facebook, Google, plus automation and AI models, there is serious money. Existing products are expensive, and people pay because arbitrage is high-margin.

Smart strategy: separate the core browser from paid modules like arbitrage tools, multi-accounting, synchronization, team grouping, and cookie import/export. Make those commercial. Many teams and developers have moved from Russia and CIS to the West, Europe, and Asia, taking the industry with them.

Monetization for CloakBrowser developers: don’t just compete on features. Go deeper into the arbitrage workflow.

Free core: browser with unlimited profiles, 2–3 simultaneous threads, basic fingerprint spoofing.

Paid modules: team and sync subscription per seat, cookie import/export, bulk profile management, AI-assisted automation.

Ecosystem add-ons: SMS activation integration with a revenue cut, built-in proxy rental with rotation, auto-registration tools for Facebook, Google, TikTok charged per scenario or subscription.

Multilogin and Incogniton sell only the browser. You would sell the whole workflow — browser, proxies, SMS, auto-registration, automation — in one place. That is a stronger offer for teams currently using 4–6 separate tools. The market has money. It just needs one coherent product.

Еще

1 Direct integration with snippets for n8n and similar platforms
Build official nodes and snippets for the major automation platforms — so users can control the browser directly from n8n: open a profile, switch a proxy, run a scenario. This instantly gives you access to those platforms' existing audiences.
Global platforms worth building paid integrations with:

n8n — open-source, 100k+ GitHub stars, 200k active users
Make (formerly Integromat) — the most popular visual no-code automation tool
Zapier — largest non-technical user base in the world
Pipedream — developer-first, huge developer audience
Node-RED — popular in IoT and among technical teams
Activepieces — open-source alternative, growing fast
Latenode — newer player with a built-in headless browser, direct competitor and potential partner
Huginn — agent-based system, popular among privacy-focused users

Monetization: a paid "CloakBrowser Connector" module that plugs into any of these platforms. Sold as an add-on.

2. Advanced human behavior emulation snippets
   This is a separate paid module — a library of behavioral scenarios.
   What's inside:

Mouse movement emulation: trembling, acceleration, deceleration, random deviation — each element on the page behaves differently (the mouse approaches a button differently than a headline or an image)
Typing with mistakes: typos, deletion, pauses, corrections — exactly like a real person
Full behavioral scenarios in the ZennoPoster style: hover over a heading → wait → scroll → hover over an image → click — all with realistic movement physics
Random pauses, speed spikes, fatigue simulation (slowing down toward the end of a session)

This is precisely what Multilogin and Incogniton don't offer at this level. It's a direct strike at their weakest point.

3. Full monetization strategy — the complete picture
   The browser itself is free. That's your trojan horse for audience acquisition.
   The money comes from add-ons:

Paid modules: multi-accounting, synchronization, team management, cookie import/export
Human behavior library (mouse, keyboard, full scenarios) — subscription
SMS activation built directly into the interface — affiliate cut from each activation
Proxy rental with rotation — own infrastructure or revenue share with providers
Account auto-registration (Facebook, Google, TikTok, etc.) — paid scenario templates
Integrations with n8n, Make, Zapier and others — paid connector module

Taking a step toward the arbitrage community gives you a paying audience that is already used to spending money on tools. They are not looking for cheap — they are looking for what works and doesn't get banned. Give them that, and they will pay.

"I'm telling you this as a former arbitrage specialist. My team and I paid $100–150 per browser back in 2015–2017. In arbitrage, time matters — time is money. And this is your chance."

[eofreternal]

I vote against making the human behavior module paid. That part of the code has been contributed to by the community under the expectation that it remains open-source and free and available for everyone to use. I have no problem making the browser paid, but I do have an issue with making the cloakbrowser package paid. Even if a fork is created and closed-source patches are added, it would still leave a bad taste in my mouth.

[morpheus9393]

Is Zenno still alive? Worked about 12 years with ZennoPoster until ZennoLab was acquired and greed became the only thing that mattered. Customers were just lied to and ripped off, while Zenno kept getting worse and worse until it was basically unusable.
Is it still alive? Have not heared from it since a long time. Nowadays all this can be done with little coding knowledge and the AI of your choice.

Regarding the human behaviour module: I don't think you can claim money for it. Made a much more sophisticated human behaviour emulation in about half an hour.

[0xbffff600]

They are still alive and well I stopped using them because they basically became useless for the major sites with advanced bot detection.

[dimitrivisser]

I am willing to pay. I used camofox before but it doesn't work anymore with cloudflare. Your work solves a problem for me. The most important thing is that you can continue with what you are doing. That is in my interest as well.

[noodleman420]

To be honest, I wouldn't mind paying monthly for this