Browser agents now spend their working day on the web the way people do. Models with computer use operate browsers and screens, signing in, clicking through pages and waiting on the model between steps.
That shift changes what a browser should cost. Bright Data built its pricing for web scraping, where the job is moving bytes, so its browser product bills per gigabyte of traffic. Solari bills browsers per hour instead, and charges for proxy traffic only on the sessions you route through a proxy. This guide explains what each model charges for, what the same work costs on Solari, and which bill fits the agent you run.
How Does Bright Data Pricing Work?
Bright Data charges for what crosses the wire. Its browser product, its proxy networks and its unblocking API each have their own meter, and a stack that uses more than one pays on each.
Browser API and Agent Browser. Bright Data says its browser product is priced per GB of traffic with no per-request fees, on pay as you go, on monthly plans that include a block of gigabytes, or on a custom Enterprise contract. Proxies and CAPTCHA solving are included in that rate. Every image, script and video a page loads counts toward the bill.
Web Unlocker. Bright Data says Web Unlocker bills per thousand requests and only for successful ones. It returns one page per API call, so it suits fetching pages, not an agent that clicks through a flow.
Proxy networks and commitments. Bright Data says its residential proxies bill per GB, count bandwidth in both directions and carry a monthly commitment that does not roll over. Its residential and mobile networks also require a know-your-customer check before first use, and an account is suspended once its balance is used up unless funds are added.
A per-GB bill tracks page weight. An agent on a media-heavy retail site pays more per step than one reading a plain text page, so the cost of a run is hard to predict until it has run.
What Does the Same Browser Work Cost on Solari?
Solari charges for time instead of traffic. You pay for each hour a browser session is open, and your plan sets the hourly rate and how many sessions run at once.
Solari's hourly browser rate falls with every plan, and Enterprise runs browsers at a tenth of Team's rate, so a large fleet costs far less per hour than a small one. Each monthly fee comes back as usage credit, and the Free plan includes $3 of monthly credits to try your first agent.
What sits on top of the hourly rate:
Proxies. Solari bills proxy traffic per GB: $6.00 per GB on Starter and $4.00 per GB on Professional and above. You pay it only on sessions routed through a residential, static ISP or mobile IP; every other session pays the hourly rate alone.
CAPTCHA solving. Solari charges $0.01 per solve on Starter and $0.005 per solve on Professional and above. You pay for a solve only when a challenge appears.
Stealth. Stealth mode bills at a higher per-second rate than the default browser, and proxies and CAPTCHA solving run inside it. Turn it on for sites that block automation and keep the default browser everywhere else.
One balance, no overage. Browsers, sandboxes, VMs, proxies and solves draw from one credit balance, and credits refill each month without rolling over. Solari never bills past your balance, so there is no end-of-month overage charge.
Which Pricing Model Costs Less for Your Agent?
Per-GB pricing costs less when your agent loads light pages and spends most of its time waiting. Hourly pricing costs less when pages are heavy, sessions are short and busy, or most sites need no proxy. These are the jobs where the difference shows:
Price and stock checks on public pages. Many retail pages load without bot checks. On Solari those sessions run on the default browser at the hourly rate with no traffic meter, while on a per-GB bill every product image counts.
Logged-in workflows. Agents that work inside a CRM, a supplier portal or a data tool spend minutes per task in one session. On an hourly bill those minutes count; on a per-GB bill the waiting is free but every dashboard reload counts. Solari profiles save the login's cookies and site data, so each run starts signed in instead of loading the login flow again.
Geo-targeted research behind bot defenses. Here both bills meter traffic: Bright Data's GB rate includes the proxy, and Solari adds proxy GB to the browser hour. Solari's blockHeavy setting refuses video and large images before they cross the proxy, so you pay proxy traffic only for the parts of a page your agent needs.
Long runs that wait on a model. An agent that thinks between clicks keeps a session open while moving little data. Release the session while the model works and open a fresh one for the next step; with a profile attached, the new session picks up the same login.
Agents that also run code. If your agent parses results, scores leads or writes files, it needs a machine as well as a browser. Solari sandboxes run that code from the same balance, so one bill covers the browser and the compute.
What Role Does Solari Play?
Solari is the infrastructure your agent runs on: cloud browsers, sandboxes and desktops from one API. Your agent brings the logic; Solari gives it a place to work and a bill you can predict from the hours you run.
Sessions on demand. Your agent opens a Solari session by API when it needs one and releases it when the step is done. Short sessions keep an hourly bill small.
Bring the scripts you have. Solari works with Playwright, Puppeteer and any client that speaks the Chrome DevTools Protocol. Moving a Bright Data script over is a change to the connection URL.
A record of every run. Record a session and replay it later to see exactly what your agent loaded. That replay shows which pages drove the proxy traffic on a bill.
Computers for apps with no API. Solari desktops give a computer-use model a full Linux screen to operate. They draw from the same balance as your browsers.
Where Is Agent Pricing Going Next?
Over the next year, infrastructure bills will follow how agents work rather than how scrapers worked:
Billing by session time. Agents act more than they download. Expect more vendors to price the session, with traffic as an add-on for proxied work.
One bill for mixed fleets. An agent that browses, runs code and operates a desktop will not want three vendors. Buyers will compare the whole stack, not the browser alone.
Spend limits built in. Finance teams will ask for hard caps before agents run unattended. A balance that stops at zero becomes the norm.
Agents that use any app. Computer-use models already operate software through a screen. Desktops will join browsers on the same invoice.
What stays human is the judgment on what to collect and where to act. The teams that win will pick a bill that matches how their agents spend time, then tune the agents, not the invoice.
Which Should You Choose?
Choose Bright Data when your job is bulk collection across sites with heavy bot defenses and you want proxies, unblocking and datasets from one vendor, billed by the gigabyte. Choose Solari when your agent works in sessions, signs in, clicks and runs code, and you want to pay for time at rates that fall as you scale. Bright Data is the more established vendor with the larger proxy network; Solari is the younger company and moves faster on speed and price.
Get Started With Solari
Start with one job, such as a nightly price check, and run it for a week to see what your sessions cost by the hour. Solari is the fastest and cheapest way to run cloud browsers and VMs for web agents. Get started with a free account and start running your agents today.
