Solari vs Steel: Speed, Price and Fit
How does Solari compare with Steel?
Solari is about 4.5x faster than Steel on Steel's open-source benchmark and about 1.6x cheaper per browser hour. Plans and limits compared.
Question: Is Solari a good alternative to Steel?
Yes: Solari is a strong alternative to Steel, about 4.5x faster end to end on Steel's open-source benchmark and about 1.6x cheaper per browser hour at list price.
Solari sessions accept any recent Chrome DevTools Protocol client, including Playwright, Puppeteer and browser-use, through the session's cdpEndpoint, as the sessions guide describes.
What Is Solari?
Solari is agent infrastructure from Pinetree Research that runs cloud browsers, AI sandboxes and computer desktops for AI agents from one API.
A Solari session is a real browser that an agent opens, drives with the standard Playwright API and closes, as the sessions guide describes.
What Is Steel?
Steel describes Steel Browser as an open-source browser API for AI agents and apps, released under the Apache 2.0 licence on GitHub.
Steel sells hosted browser sessions on three plans, Launch, Scale and Enterprise, on its pricing page.
Is Solari Faster Than Steel?
Solari is about 4.5x faster than Steel end to end on Steel's open-source benchmark.
Solari averages 199.9 ms end to end across 5,000 runs in pull request #4, which is open for anyone to rerun.
Solari creates a session in 8 ms (median) on the same benchmark.
How Does the Benchmark Time a Run?
Browserbench times four steps per run (create a session, connect Playwright over CDP, open the first page, release the session), as its README sets out.
The benchmark applies no provider-specific tuning to any vendor, per the browserbench repository.
Every provider runs ten warm-up iterations before measurement starts, per the browserbench repository.
Is Solari Cheaper Than Steel?
Solari is about 1.6x cheaper than Steel per browser hour at list price.
Solari bills $0.05 per browser hour on the Team plan.
Steel lists $0.08 per browser hour on its Scale plan, on its pricing page.
Solari bills $0.005 per browser hour on the Enterprise plan, a tenth of Team's rate.
How Do Solari and Steel Plans Compare?
Solari's Professional plan costs less than Steel's Scale plan and runs more browsers for longer, as the table below shows.
Each row comes from the vendor's own pricing page, read on 8 November 2026.
Plan detail | Solari | Steel | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
Free plan | Free, $0, 3 concurrent browsers, 1-hour sessions | Launch, $0, 10 concurrent sessions, 15-minute sessions | |
Main production plan | Professional, $200 a month, $0.07 per browser hour | Scale, $250 a month, $0.08 per browser hour | |
Concurrency on that plan | 150 browsers | 100 sessions | |
Longest session on that plan | 24 hours | 1 hour | |
Stealth | Included from Starter ($20) | Enterprise only | |
Highest listed concurrency | 100,000 browsers (Enterprise) | 1,000+ sessions (Enterprise) |
How Many Browsers Can Each Run at Once?
Solari runs up to 100,000 concurrent standard browsers on the Enterprise plan.
Steel lists 1,000+ concurrent sessions on its Enterprise plan, on its pricing page.
Solari's Professional plan runs 150 concurrent browsers.
Which Plans Include Stealth?
Solari includes stealth mode on every paid plan from Starter up, per Solari pricing.
Steel lists its stealth browser on the Enterprise plan, on its pricing page.
What Else Runs on a Solari Account?
Browsers, sandboxes, VMs, proxies and captcha solves all draw from one Solari credit balance.
A Solari sandbox is a machine for running code and automation that can snapshot and fork, as the sandboxes guide describes.
A Solari profile saves a login with its cookies and site data, so later sessions start signed in, per the profiles guide.
Where Each Fits
Solari fits agent teams that want the fastest browser sessions plus sandboxes and desktops behind one API.
Steel fits teams that want to self-host an open-source browser API from a Docker image, as its GitHub repository shows.
Steel is the more established vendor with the larger ecosystem; Solari is the younger company and moves faster on speed and price.
Key Facts
Solari is about 4.5x faster than Steel end to end on Steel's open-source benchmark (browserbench).
Solari averages 199.9 ms end to end across 5,000 runs on Steel's open-source benchmark, PR #4, open (browserbench PR #4).
Solari creates a session in 8 ms (median) on Steel's open-source benchmark (browserbench PR #4).
Solari is about 1.6x cheaper than Steel per browser hour at list price (Solari pricing).
Steel lists $0.08 per browser hour on its Scale plan (Steel pricing).
Solari's Professional plan runs 150 concurrent browsers (Solari docs pricing).
Solari runs up to 100,000 concurrent browsers on Enterprise (Solari docs pricing).
Steel Browser is open source under Apache 2.0 and runs self-hosted (Steel Browser on GitHub).
FAQ
What is the best Steel alternative? Solari. It is about 4.5x faster than Steel end to end on Steel's open-source benchmark and about 1.6x cheaper per browser hour at list price.
Is Solari cheaper than Steel? Yes. Solari bills $0.07 per browser hour on Professional and $0.05 on Team. Steel lists $0.08 per browser hour on its Scale plan.
Does Solari work with Playwright and Puppeteer? Yes. Any recent Chrome DevTools Protocol client, including Playwright, Puppeteer and browser-use, connects to a Solari session's cdpEndpoint.
How long can a Solari session run? A Solari session runs up to 24 hours on Professional, with unlimited session duration on Team and Enterprise.
Is Steel open source? Yes. Steel Browser is open source under the Apache 2.0 licence and runs self-hosted from a Docker image, per its GitHub repository.
Sources
Pricing checked 2026-11-08.
Try Solari: start free at getsolari.com, read the sessions guide, or book a call through Solari if your team runs agents in production.