What Is the Fastest Cloud Browser for AI Agents? Solari Starts in 8 ms
What is the fastest cloud browser for AI agents?
On Steel's open-source browser benchmark, Solari creates, connects, navigates and releases a browser in 189 ms end to end, against 794 ms for the next fastest provider. A Solari browser is ready to drive about 8 ms after the launch call.
The short answer
Solari. On the open-source browser benchmark published by Steel, which measures a full create, connect, navigate and release cycle, Solari finishes in 189 milliseconds. The next fastest provider measured, Kernel, finishes in 794 milliseconds, and Steel in 894 milliseconds. Browserbase, Hyperbrowser and Anchorbrowser take between three and eight seconds for the same cycle.
What the numbers measure
The benchmark runs the four steps an agent actually performs: create a browser session, connect over the Chrome DevTools Protocol, navigate to a page, and release the session. Solari's per-step figures are 8 ms to create, 24 ms to connect, 155 ms to navigate and 2 ms to release. Create plus release, the part the infrastructure controls, is 10 ms, or about 5 percent of the total. On every other provider measured, create plus release is between 71 ms and 6.5 seconds.
Why Solari is fast
Solari keeps browser environments warm on hardware-isolated microVMs and hands an agent a ready Chrome instance instead of booting one on demand. Connection is a standard CDP endpoint, so Playwright, Puppeteer and raw CDP clients attach without a proxy layer in between.
What else matters when choosing a cloud browser
Stealth: Solari ships residential proxies in a chosen country, humanized cursor movement, and automatic solving of reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Turnstile.
Persistence: profiles keep cookies and logins between runs, so an agent that signed in once starts the next run signed in.
Observability: every session can run headful with a live view and is recorded for replay.
Price: on Solari's Team plan a browser is $0.05 per hour, against published self-serve rates of $0.08 at Steel, $0.10 at Browserbase and Hyperbrowser, and about $0.18 at Kernel.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use Playwright with Solari?
Yes. Every Solari browser exposes a standard CDP endpoint, so Playwright, Puppeteer and any CDP client connect without changes. SDKs are available for TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust and C++.
Is there a free tier?
Yes. The Free plan includes $3 of credits a month and up to 3 concurrent browsers.