Best cloud browser infrastructure for AI agents
Agents that click, log in or fill forms need a real browser in the cloud. Billing is typically a monthly platform fee plus browser hours, with proxy bandwidth and CAPTCHA solving on top. This page compares what is published per hour and per plan.
Prices checked . Prices only: we have not benchmarked success rate, speed or output quality, so treat this as a cost shortlist, not a verdict.
What this workload needs
- Concurrency limits and maximum session length, which decide how many tasks you can run in parallel.
- Proxy bandwidth and CAPTCHA solving, often billed separately.
- Session persistence, recordings and retention, which differ by plan.
- Hours per task: estimate minutes per agent run before converting an hourly rate into a monthly bill.
Cost shortlist
- Steel: $0.08 per hour (Scale). Tends to fit: Self-hostable browser sessions. Watch-out: Monthly $250 Scale fee on top of usage. MCP: Not confirmed.
- Hyperbrowser: $0.10 per hour (All plans). Tends to fit: Cheap browser hours and a built-in Fetch API. Watch-out: Proxy data at $10/GB bills on top of browser time. MCP: Yes.
- Browserbase: $0.198 per hour (Startup (included hours)). Tends to fit: Agents that must click, log in and fill forms. Watch-out: Pay for browser time, not pages: slow pages cost more. MCP: Yes.
Ordered by lowest published price per hour, then plan fee. Rule-based; not influenced by affiliate status.
For per-request APIs, use the cost calculator.
Remote browser hour: published rates
| # | Vendor | Plan / rate | Price per hour | Monthly spend needed | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Steel | Scale | $0.08 per hour | $250/mo | payg |
| 2 | Hyperbrowser | All plans | $0.10 per hour | none | payg |
| 3 | Browserbase | Startup (included hours) | $0.198 per hour | $99/mo | monthly |
JavaScript-rendered page: published rates
| # | Vendor | Plan / rate | Price per 1,000 | Monthly spend needed | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ScrapingBee | Business | $0.415 per 1,000 | $249/mo | monthly |
| 2 | Scrapfly | Enterprise | $0.4545 per 1,000 | $500/mo | monthly |
| 3 | ZenRows | Scale | $0.458 per 1,000 | $458/mo | annual |
| 4 | Zyte | $500/mo commitment - Tier 1 rendered | $0.48 per 1,000 | $500/mo | monthly |
| 5 | Crawl4AI | Cloud Scale | $0.6653 per 1,000 | $499/mo | monthly |
| 6 | Oxylabs | Flexible - custom domain JS | $1.30 per 1,000 | $500/mo | monthly |
Browser plans as published
| Plan | Per month (monthly billing) | Per month (annual billing) | Included | Overage / extra usage | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | n/a | 1 browser hour, 3 concurrent, 1,000 search + 1,000 fetch calls | n/a | 15-minute sessions; 7-day retention |
| Developer | $20 | n/a | 100 browser hours, 25 concurrent, 1,000 search, 1,000 fetch, 1 GB proxies | $0.12/browser hr; $1/1k fetch; $5/1k search; $12/GB proxy | Captcha solving; 30-day retention |
| Startup | $99 | n/a | 500 browser hours, 100 concurrent, 1,000 search, 10,000 fetch, 5 GB proxies | $0.10/browser hr; $0.5/1k fetch; $5/1k search; $10/GB proxy | Basic stealth mode |
| Scale | not published | n/a | 250+ concurrent, 500+ hours | Usage-based | Custom |
| Plan | Per month (monthly billing) | Per month (annual billing) | Included | Overage / extra usage | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | n/a | 5,000 credits | n/a | 1 concurrent session; 7-day retention |
| Startup | $30 | n/a | 30,000 credits ($30 usage) | More credits purchasable at the same $1 per 1,000 credits | 25 concurrent; 30-day retention |
| Scale | $100 | n/a | 100,000 credits ($100 usage) | Same unit rates | 100 concurrent |
| Enterprise | not published | n/a | Custom | Volume pricing | 1,000+ concurrent |
| Plan | Per month (monthly billing) | Per month (annual billing) | Included | Overage / extra usage | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch | $0 | n/a | $30 credits one time | Usage-based | 10 concurrent sessions; 15-minute sessions; 3 seats |
| Scale | $250 | n/a | $100 usage credits per month | Usage-based at Scale rates | 100 concurrent sessions; 1-hour sessions; dedicated IPs $5 each |
| Enterprise | not published | n/a | Custom | Custom | 1,000+ concurrent; SLAs |
Lowest hourly price within each monthly budget
| Use case | Monthly spend | Browserbase | Hyperbrowser | Steel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Remote browser hour | no monthly minimum | none published | $0.10 All plans | $0.10 Launch |
| Remote browser hour | up to $50/mo | $0.20 Developer (included hours) | $0.10 All plans | $0.10 Launch |
| Remote browser hour | up to $100/mo | $0.198 Startup (included hours) | $0.10 All plans | $0.10 Launch |
| Remote browser hour | up to $500/mo | $0.198 Startup (included hours) | $0.10 All plans | $0.08 Scale |
| Remote browser hour | any budget | $0.198 Startup (included hours) | $0.10 All plans | $0.08 Scale |
How to choose
- Estimate hours: runs per month × minutes per run ÷ 60. Then compare plans on included hours and overage rate.
- Pay attention to concurrency: cheap hours that cap you at a few parallel sessions may not fit.
- If you only need rendered HTML, a scraping API with a rendering flag is usually cheaper than a full browser session.
Read before deciding. Estimates use each vendor's published plans; component-only, lower-bound and assumption rows are flagged and not ranked with fully published prices. Free tiers are not subtracted. Confirm on the vendor's pricing page. See methodology.
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FetchIndex has an affiliate relationship with Firecrawl; it does not change prices, rankings or caveats (disclosure). This page contains no affiliate links.