In 2026, agents became a primary workload for the cloud. Cloudflare made that official at its first Agents Week, where it shipped Sandboxes and renamed Browser Rendering to Browser Run, and every infrastructure vendor now competes to be the place agents run.
That choice sits with the platform engineer who owns the agent pipeline. The best Cloudflare alternatives for AI agents are Solari, Browserbase, Steel, E2B and Daytona: Solari for browsers, sandboxes and desktops from one API, Browserbase and Steel for cloud browsers, E2B and Daytona for code sandboxes. This guide covers why teams look beyond Cloudflare, what each alternative costs and who each one suits.
Key Takeaways
Choose Solari when one agent needs a browser, a sandbox and a desktop on one account, at a lower hourly rate.
Choose Browserbase when you want browsers bundled with search and fetch calls from one vendor.
Choose Steel when you want an open-source browser you can also self-host.
Choose E2B when your agent only runs code and you want a focused sandbox product.
Choose Daytona when your agents need GPU or Windows sandboxes on pay-as-you-go billing.
Why Do Teams Look for a Cloudflare Alternative?
Most teams start looking when their agents outgrow the way Cloudflare packages them: sandboxes that live inside Workers, browsers billed on two meters, or a new agent that needs more than one kind of machine.
Your stack does not run on Workers. Cloudflare Sandboxes are started from a Worker, and HTTP from the Internet reaches each instance only through that Worker. A team whose agents run on another cloud adds a Workers deployment just to start a machine, a familiar form of vendor lock-in.
The bill has several meters. Cloudflare bills Containers for CPU, memory and disk, and bills the Workers and Durable Objects behind each sandbox separately. Forecasting a fleet means modelling every one of them.
Browser concurrency is billed too. Cloudflare charges Browser Run sessions for browser hours and for concurrent browsers, counted as the monthly average of the daily peak. A team that runs a large burst every morning pays for that peak across the whole month.
The agent needs more than one surface. A coding agent that also signs in to a website, or a computer-use model that needs a screen, works best when the browser, the sandbox and the desktop come from the same account. Splitting them across vendors means two keys, two bills and two sets of limits.
1. Solari
Solari is one API for browsers, sandboxes and desktops, with one account and one bill, so your agent can run code and operate the web without a second vendor.
Core capabilities. Solari browsers are ready in 8 ms, and your agent drives them with Playwright, Puppeteer or any client that speaks the Chrome DevTools Protocol. A profile saves a login, its cookies and site data in Playwright's storage state format, so your agent signs in once and every later session starts signed in. Stealth and proxies handle sites that block automation, and recording gives you a replay of what the agent did.
Sandboxes and desktops. Every Solari sandbox is a microVM of your own by default, with commands, files, snapshot and fork. Pause it and its memory and processes are saved, so your agent resumes exactly where it stopped. A Solari desktop is a full Linux computer with a graphical screen that usually starts in about a second, and a paused desktop doesn't count against your plan's limit on running VMs.
Pricing and plans. Solari starts with a free plan at $0 a month, then Starter at $20 a month and Professional at $200 a month, where browsers cost $0.07 an hour and 150 run at once. Solari supports up to 100,000 concurrent browsers on Enterprise, so you can run a whole fleet in one pass. Solari is about 2x cheaper than Browserbase and about 1.6x cheaper than Steel per browser hour, and almost 3x cheaper than E2B and Daytona per sandbox hour, at list prices.
Where it shines. A Solari sandbox hour also costs less than Cloudflare's, billing is per second while an environment runs, and one key covers browsers, sandboxes and desktops. Your agent gets speed and a lower bill on the same account.
Who it's best for. Platform engineers whose agents write code and work on the web in the same job. If your agent runs code in a sandbox, checks the result in a browser and hands a screen task to a computer-use model, all three run on one key.
2. Browserbase
Browserbase is a cloud browser platform for agents that sells search, fetch and agent runs alongside its browsers.
Pricing and plans. Browserbase's plans run from Free with 3 concurrent browsers and 1 browser hour, to Developer at $20 a month with 25 concurrent browsers and 100 browser hours, to Startup at $99 a month with 100 concurrent browsers and 500 browser hours, with overage at $0.12 and $0.10 an hour. A team with steady monthly volume fits inside Startup before overage starts.
Where it shines. Browserbase bundles search and fetch calls with its browsers, and its Scale plan adds HIPAA (BAA), DPA and SSO. That suits a team that wants browsing and web data from one vendor.
Trade-off. Sessions on the Free plan are short, and captcha solving starts on Developer. A long agent run needs a paid plan from day one.
3. Steel
Steel is a browser API for agents built around Steel Browser, which is open source and runs in Steel's cloud or on your own machines.
Pricing and plans. Steel's Launch plan is $0 a month plus usage with a $30 one-time credit, 10 concurrent sessions and $0.10 per browser hour, and its Scale plan is $250 a month with a $100 monthly credit, 100 concurrent sessions and $0.08 per browser hour. At steady volume the hourly rate matters more to your bill than the plan fee.
Where it shines. Steel Browser can be self-hosted, so a team can run the same browser on its own machines and in Steel's cloud. That suits teams with data-residency rules or a strong preference for owning the stack.
Trade-off. Session length grows with the plan, and the stealth browser comes with Enterprise. Long-running agents and sites that block automation push a team toward a custom contract.
4. E2B
E2B is a sandbox platform for running AI-generated code, billed per second.
Pricing and plans. E2B's Hobby plan is free with a $100 one-time credit, 1-hour sessions and 20 concurrent sandboxes, its Pro plan is $150 a month plus usage with 24-hour sessions and 100 concurrent sandboxes, and its Enterprise plan requires a $3,000 monthly minimum. The fee covers limits, not usage, so compute is billed on top.
Where it shines. E2B focuses on code execution for agents, with custom CPU and RAM on Pro and bring-your-own-cloud deployment on Enterprise. A team that only needs a sandbox for agent code gets a focused product.
Trade-off. Multi-day and persistent sessions sit on Enterprise, so the minimum applies before an agent can keep its machine for days. Teams with long-running agents meet that line early.
5. Daytona
Daytona is a usage-based sandbox cloud for agents, with container, Linux VM, Windows and GPU sandboxes.
Pricing and plans. Daytona charges $0.0504 per vCPU-hour and $0.0162 per GiB-hour of memory, billed per second, with $200 in free compute to start, no fixed plan fee and GPU sandboxes such as an Nvidia H100 at $2.27 an hour on preemptible capacity. Pay-as-you-go suits teams whose load changes month to month.
Where it shines. Daytona offers GPU and Windows sandboxes alongside Linux, so agents that run models or test Windows software stay on one platform. Its startups program adds credits for early teams.
Trade-off. Daytona sandboxes run as Linux containers by default, and a team that wants a full virtual machine with its own kernel picks the Linux VM class. Untrusted agent code calls for choosing that class deliberately.
How to Choose a Cloudflare Alternative
Choose Solari over Cloudflare when your agents run outside Workers, when one job needs a browser, a sandbox and a desktop, or when the hourly rate decides the bill. Choose Browserbase or Steel when the job is browsing only, and E2B or Daytona when it is code only.
Stay with Cloudflare when your application already runs on Workers and your agents live next to it. Cloudflare is the more established platform with the larger network and ecosystem; Solari is the younger company and moves faster on speed and price.
Get Started With Solari
Start with the job that costs you most on Cloudflare today, such as a coding agent that needs a sandbox outside Workers, and move the rest once it runs cleanly. Solari is the fastest and cheapest way to run cloud browsers and VMs for AI agents. Get started with a free account and start running your agents today.
