Short answer: Browser Use (ours) costs $0.06 per browser-hour with no subscription, and it and KERNEL have the fastest session lifecycle here, about 20 ms apart, with the lead changing between BrowserArena runs. Pick Browserbase for debugging, Steel or Browserless to self-host, Anchor for per-task pricing, and Hyperbrowser for one credit pool across browsers, sandboxes and web APIs. For stealth scores and fleet costs, see our cloud browser comparison.
For enterprise we offer cheaper prices; save with a commitment.
We make Browser Use. Every price, limit and region below is from the provider's own pricing page, docs or repo, checked October 27, 2026, and linked in the table.
Comparison
| Provider | Best for | Price per browser-hour | Concurrent browsers, by plan | Stealth / CAPTCHA ∗ | Session lifecycle † | Regions | Open source / self-host |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browser Use | Pay as you go; Browser Use agents | $0.06, usage-based, no subscription; proxy $5/GB | 10 at $0; 50 after a $100 top-up; up to 1,000 | 90.5% (reference). CAPTCHA solving on by default | 386 ms | US; EU (Frankfurt) | Agent library (MIT) runs locally; cloud browsers: no self-host listed |
| KERNEL | Fast sessions; agents that disconnect while they wait | $0.06 headless, $0.48 headful, per second; plans $0, $30 or $200/month | 5 / 10 / 150; Enterprise custom | 80.5%. Stealth and CAPTCHA solver on all plans | 366 ms | us-east; eu-west, ap-southeast from Start-Up ($200) | Browser images (Apache-2.0) |
| Browserbase | Debugging: live view, replays, logs | $20 or $99/month with 100 or 500 h, then $0.12 or $0.10; proxy $12 or $10/GB | 3 / 25 / 100 / 250+ | 78.5%. Basic stealth and CAPTCHA from Developer; Verified on Scale | 662 ms | us-west-2, us-east-1, eu-central-1, ap-southeast-1 | Stagehand (MIT); no on-prem |
| Steel | Self-hosting | $0.10 on Launch ($0); $0.08 on Scale ($250/month); proxy $10 or $6/GB | 10 / 100 / 1,000+ | 74.5%. CAPTCHA $3 or $1 per 1,000; Stealth Browser on Enterprise | 1,462 ms | us-east only | steel-browser (Apache-2.0); local has no CAPTCHA solving |
| Browserless | Existing Puppeteer/Playwright scripts; Firefox and WebKit | $0.18 to $0.24 overage (1 unit/30s); plans $0 to $350/month, billed yearly; proxy 6 units/MB | 2 / 10 / 40 / 100; Enterprise: hundreds+ | 77.5%. Stealth route; CAPTCHA 10 units per solve, all plans | No result | San Francisco, London, Amsterdam | Docker; SSPL-1.0 or commercial license |
| Anchor | Per-task pricing; managed logins | $0.05 + $0.01 per browser; plans $0, $50 or $2,000/month; proxy $8/GB | 5 / 25 / 200 / 500+ | 82%. CAPTCHA from Starter ($50); full stealth from Growth ($2,000) | 2,960 ms | US; EU, Asia, Australia from Growth | Your cloud or on-prem on Enterprise |
| Hyperbrowser | One credit pool for browsers, sandboxes, web APIs and agents | $0.10, in credits; plans $0, $30 or $100/month; proxy $10/GB | 1 / 25 / 100 / 1,000+ | 73.5%. Basic stealth and CAPTCHA from Startup; Ultra Stealth on Enterprise | 1,005 ms | us-central, us-east, us-west, europe-west; asia-south on Enterprise and Select | HyperAgent (AGPL-3.0); no self-host listed |
- ∗ Stealth: share of 200 visits to 100 bot-protected sites that got through on Stealth Bench V2, September 25, 2026. We built and ran it, and it favors us (Browser Use is marked reference). The sites were picked because Browser Use Cloud historically got through where stock Chrome with a US proxy did not, so they are hard on purpose and not a balanced sample of the web. Anchor led the others at 82%.
- Each provider used its own proxy, CAPTCHA solver and the stealth setting its standard plans offer (Steel's have none). Browserbase ran its standard mode, since its Verified mode needs the contact-sales Scale plan. Hyperbrowser ran its standard stealth mode; Ultra Stealth needs an Enterprise plan and was not tested. 17 of Browserless's 200 visits were unresolved and count as not through; had all got through it would be 86%, and an independent rerun put it at 83%.
- † Session lifecycle: median time to create a session, connect over CDP, load a page and release it, on BrowserArena's October 26, 2026 run (200 runs, built by Notte); lower is better. Browserless: all 200 runs failed to connect (401). Browserbase was tested in us-west-2 from a us-east-1 runner.
What to check before you pick
- Cost per finished task, not per hour: minimum billing, proxy GB, per-browser fees and retries.
- Concurrency and create rate: a burst of tasks needs both.
- Site access: stealth, proxies and CAPTCHA solving decide whether the agent gets in.
- Session cap: a long task dies at the plan's limit.
- Region: put the browser near your agent; every action is a round trip.
Where each one fits, and the catch
1. Browser Use
- Fits: agents that need stealth with pay-as-you-go pricing, with residential proxies in 195+ countries. Drive them over CDP with Playwright or Puppeteer, or run Browser Use agents on the same browsers.
- Catch: sessions end at 4 hours. Closing CDP does not stop the browser; stop it through the API, or it bills until it times out.
2. KERNEL
- Fits: latency-bound agents, and agents that disconnect while they wait: with no CDP, WebDriver or Live View client connected for 5 seconds, a browser goes into standby and stops billing (not GPU browsers). Managed Auth is included on every plan, 3 connections on the free one.
- Catch: an agent that holds its CDP connection open never goes into standby, and standby browsers still hold a concurrency slot. Regions, BYO proxies and GPU need the $200/month Start-Up plan. Compare: Browser Use vs KERNEL.
3. Browserbase
- Fits: teams that debug a lot: live view, replays, logs, and four regions including Singapore. Stagehand is its agent framework.
- Catch: sessions end at 15 minutes on Free and 6 hours on Developer and Startup. Verified stealth needs the contact-sales Scale plan (plans).
For a closer look at pricing, stealth, performance, and developer tooling, see Browser Use vs Browserbase.
4. Steel
- Fits: you must run browsers on your own machines.
- Catch: cloud sessions end at 15 minutes on Launch and 1 hour on Scale; browsers run only in us-east. On Launch, CAPTCHA solving and Steel proxies need a $10 deposit (pricing).
5. Browserless
- Fits: existing Puppeteer or Playwright scripts, and Firefox or WebKit.
- Catch: sessions end at 2, 15, 30 or 60 minutes by plan, a reconnect costs a fresh unit, and each CAPTCHA solve costs 10 units (pricing).
For a detailed comparison of pricing, browser support, and deployment options, see Browser Use vs Browserless.
6. Anchor
- Fits: per-run task pricing: a failed run pays no task fee. Authenticated browsers for third-party logins start on Starter.
- Catch: the $0.01 per-browser fee adds up on many short sessions; full stealth and non-US regions start at $2,000/month (pricing).
7. Hyperbrowser
- Fits: teams that also need sandboxes or web data APIs: one plan's credits cover browsers, sandboxes, web data and agents (pricing).
- Catch: Free runs 1 browser at a time on 5,000 credits; Ultra Stealth is Enterprise only (pricing).
What browser infrastructure is
A managed service that runs browsers for your browser agent or script: it starts them, keeps them alive, handles crashes, and gives you a Chrome DevTools Protocol or WebDriver URL to connect to. You start a session through an API, connect, run the task, and stop the session.
Test your shortlist on your own sites before committing: a provider that gets through one site may get blocked on the next.
