In 2026, giving a model a browser is no longer the hard part. Open-source agent loops made it a few lines of code, and Browser Use raised its seed round on making websites readable for AI agents. What decides whether an agent works in production now is the infrastructure under it: how fast a session starts, how many run at once, and what else the agent can reach.
Browser Use is an open-source browser agent with a cloud that sells stealth browsers and hosted agent runs. The strongest alternatives are Solari, Browserbase, Steel, Kernel and Hyperbrowser, and Solari leads for teams that bring their own agent: it starts sessions faster on an open benchmark and runs browsers, sandboxes and desktops from one account. This guide covers why teams look past Browser Use, what each alternative costs and where browser agents go next.
Why Do Teams Look Past Browser Use?
Most teams start looking when Browser Use's capacity model stops fitting. Browser Use says its browsers cost $0.02 per hour with no subscription, and that concurrency grows with the total amount paid rather than by plan, from 10 browsers at once up to 1,000, on Browser Use's pricing page. A fleet that has to launch at full width next week cannot wait for its spending history to catch up.
Other triggers follow. The team writes its own agent loop and wants a provider whose whole product is the environment. The agent needs to run the code it writes, or operate a desktop for a computer-use model. Or the bill moves to proxy traffic, a point Browser Use makes about itself: "Browsers are cheap. Traffic is the bill."
What Should a Browser Use Alternative Handle?
A replacement has to run every job the agent runs today. Test these first:
Launch the whole fleet on day one. The agent fans out across a full list of accounts or pages in one pass. You want capacity set by the plan you choose, so a launch never waits on a billing threshold.
Keep logins between runs. The agent signs in to a portal once, and every later session opens already signed in. That removes repeated sign-ins and the security challenges they trigger.
Get past bot checks. Many retail and social sites block plain headless browsers. The agent needs fingerprint settings, residential IPs and CAPTCHA solving it can switch on per session.
Run the code the agent writes. Agents write scripts to clean a CSV or call an API between browser steps. That code needs an isolated machine next to the browser.
Show what the agent did. When an agent submits a form under your company's name, someone has to check it. A replayable recording turns every run into evidence you can review.
The Alternatives at a Glance
Each alternative handles those jobs differently, and the table sorts them by niche.
1. Solari
Solari is the environment an agent runs in: you bring the model and the logic, and Solari supplies the browser, the machine and the screen, the idea behind how Solari started. Here is what Solari does for a team moving off Browser Use:
Sessions that start fast. On Steel's open-source benchmark, with the pull request still open, a Solari session averaged 199.9 ms from create to release across 5,000 runs, with session create at 8 ms, which makes Solari about 4.5x faster than Steel, about 4x faster than Kernel and about 14.8x faster than Browserbase. An agent that opens a fresh browser per task gets that time back on every task.
Capacity you pick up front. For $200 a month, Solari runs 150 concurrent browsers with sessions up to 24 hours. Solari supports up to 100,000 concurrent browsers on Enterprise, so capacity follows the plan you choose, not your spending history.
Logins that stay signed in. A Solari profile saves a login, its cookies and site data in Playwright's storage state format. Your agent signs in once, and every later session reopens the same cookies.
Stealth without a sales call. Turn on stealth for sites with bot defenses, route traffic through a proxy in the country you choose, and let Solari solve the CAPTCHA in the background. Stealth starts at $20 a month.
The agent you already have. Solari browsers work with Playwright and any client that speaks the Chrome DevTools Protocol, so code that connects to a Browser Use browser over CDP can point at a Solari session instead. Record any session and replay it in the console to see exactly what the agent did.
A smaller browser bill. Solari bills browsers at $0.07 per hour on that monthly plan and $0.05 on Team, and Enterprise is a tenth of Team's rate. Each vendor below is compared with the Team rate.
Solari sandboxes run agent-generated code with snapshot and fork, billed at $0.0245 per vCPU-hour on the same plan, and Solari desktops give computer-use models a full Linux screen. An agent that writes a script, runs it and files the result through a website stays on one bill.
2. Browserbase
Browserbase is the incumbent of the category and suits teams that want search and fetch beside the browser.
Pricing and plans. Browserbase says its Developer plan is $20 a month with 25 concurrent browsers and 100 browser hours, then $0.12 per browser hour, and its Startup plan $99 a month with 500 browser hours, then $0.10, on Browserbase's pricing page, which puts Solari's Team rate at about 2x cheaper per browser hour at list price. Inside the included hours you pay a flat fee, and overage is where the bill grows.
Where it shines. Browserbase bundles search calls, fetch calls and agent runs with every plan. A team that wants web tools beside the browser keeps that breadth in one account.
Trade-off. Browserbase's Free plan caps session length and leaves out CAPTCHA solving. A logged-in agent prototyped on the free tier meets that ceiling first.
3. Steel
Steel is an open-source browser API for agents, for teams that want the option to run the browser themselves.
Pricing and plans. Steel says its Scale plan is $250 a month plus usage, with 100 concurrent sessions and browsers at $0.08 per hour, on Steel's pricing page, which makes Solari's Team rate about 1.6x cheaper at list price. Concurrency is fixed by the plan from day one, so you know your ceiling on launch day.
Where it shines. Steel Browser is open source and can be self-hosted. A team with data-residency rules can keep the browser inside its own network.
Trade-off. Steel keeps its stealth browser and its longest sessions for Enterprise. Long-running, logged-in agents meet a contract step sooner than on a self-serve plan.
4. Kernel
Kernel is browser infrastructure for agents with managed logins, and its billing rewards agents that idle between steps.
Pricing and plans. Kernel says its headless browsers bill at $0.0000166667 per second of active runtime and enter standby 5 seconds after the last CDP or Live View activity, per Kernel's pricing docs. Its free plan includes stealth mode with a CAPTCHA solver and proxy, plus managed auth. You get stealth on day one, and a usage rate you model yourself.
Where it shines. An agent waiting on a model pays for the time it works, not the time it thinks. Agents that spend most of a run waiting on model calls see that in the bill.
Trade-off. Active-runtime billing is precise but harder to forecast than an hourly rate. HIPAA coverage sits on Kernel's Enterprise plan only.
5. Hyperbrowser
Hyperbrowser sells browsers, sandboxes, web data and hosted agents from one credit balance, and suits teams that want to keep the Browser Use agent on a different host.
Pricing and plans. Hyperbrowser says its Startup plan is $30 a month with $30 of usage and 25 concurrent sessions, and that hosted Browser Use agents bill at $0.02 per step on top of browser time, on Hyperbrowser's pricing page. A chatty agent costs more per task than a direct one.
Where it shines. One balance covers browsers, sandboxes and search calls. You get the Browser Use agent plus code execution without writing your own loop.
Trade-off. Hyperbrowser charges the same browser-hour rate on its Free, Startup and Scale plans, so a bigger plan buys capacity, not a lower rate. Ultra stealth mode is Enterprise only.
Where Are Browser Agents Going Next?
Over the next year, browser agents change in four ways:
From browsers to whole computers. Models with computer use already operate software through a screen. Agents will need a browser, a machine and a desktop from one provider.
Fleets instead of sessions. One job will fan out across thousands of browsers at once. Start time and concurrency will decide how fast it finishes.
Logins as infrastructure. Saved profiles and managed auth will become standard. Agents will work inside the accounts a team already pays for.
Every run on the record. Teams will expect a replay of what each agent did before it acted. Recordings will sit next to server logs.
What stays human is judgment: which jobs to hand to agents, what they may submit under your name, and when to stop a run.
Which Browser Use Alternative Should You Choose?
Choose Browserbase for search beside the browser, Steel for a browser you can self-host, Kernel for agents that idle between steps, and Hyperbrowser to keep the Browser Use agent on a new host. Stay with Browser Use when its open-source agent is the reason you signed up and its pay-as-you-go capacity keeps pace with your growth.
Choose Solari when session speed, capacity set by plan, and sandboxes or desktops on the same account decide the build. Browser Use is the more established project with the larger open-source community; Solari is the younger company and moves faster on session speed and the infrastructure around the browser.
Get Started With Solari
Start with one job: point the code of a single Browser Use task at a Solari browser with a profile attached, then compare the two runs at the same concurrency. Solari is the fastest and cheapest way to run cloud browsers and VMs for browser agents. Get started with a free account and start running your agents today.
