Agents now hold a browser open for minutes or hours: models with computer use click through real sites, and agents that drive a headless browser sign in, research and write before they let go. The way a vendor counts browser time now decides most of the bill.
Browserless bills units of browser time in monthly bundles, with overage past the bundle; Solari bills each browser by the hour it is open, from one credit balance that caps your spend. Here is what each model charges for, and what the same work costs on Solari.
How Does Browserless Pricing Work?
Browserless charges in units, and each unit is a slice of browser time. A Browserless unit is a block of browser time of up to 30 seconds per browser connection, and a longer automation uses another unit for each further block.
Reconnects are billed as new work. Browserless counts each session reconnect as a new browser connection with a fresh unit charge, so an agent that drops and rejoins a session pays again each time it connects.
Plans sell those units in monthly bundles. Browserless runs a Free plan, then Prototyping, Starter and Scale plans with larger bundles, and Enterprise on custom pricing. Its paid plans are priced billed annually, with a discount for paying yearly, so check the monthly-billing price too if you want to stay flexible.
What Do You Get on Each Browserless Plan?
Each Browserless tier raises three things together: the unit bundle, the number of concurrent browsers and the session cap. Moving up a plan is how you buy longer sessions, not only more time.
Session length is often the limit an agent meets first. A sign-in flow followed by a long research task can outrun a short cap, and the agent then reconnects, which starts a fresh unit.
Add-ons draw from the same bundle. Browserless charges 6 units per MB of residential proxy traffic, 2 units per MB of datacenter proxy traffic and 10 units per successful captcha solve, so a job behind bot checks spends units on traffic as well as on time.
Past the bundle, overage applies. Each paid Browserless plan bills a per-unit overage, at a lower rate on the larger plans, so a busy month keeps running and the extra units arrive on the invoice.
What Drives a Browser Bill Up?
Five things decide most of a browser bill on any vendor. Estimate each one before you pick a plan:
Session length. Count how long each agent task keeps a browser open, from sign-in to the last page. Short scripted calls cost little on either model; long agent tasks favour a vendor that bills open time by the hour.
Reconnects. Agents that pause, hand off or recover from an error often rejoin a session. On Browserless each new connection starts a fresh unit, so the reconnect rate of your agent belongs in the estimate.
Proxies and captchas. Sites that block automation need a proxy and sometimes a captcha solve. Price these per GB and per solve, because a stealth-heavy job can spend more on traffic than on browser time.
Concurrency. The number of browsers you run at once usually sets your tier before total hours do. A fleet that checks a whole list in parallel needs a plan sized for the peak, not the average.
What happens at the limit. Some plans keep running and bill overage; others stop at the balance. Know which one you are on before an agent loops overnight.
What Does the Same Work Cost on Solari?
Solari bills a browser per hour while its session is open, at one rate per plan, from one balance that also pays for sandboxes and desktops. Solari runs cloud browsers, sandboxes and desktops from one API, so your estimate is browser hours times one rate.
One hourly rate per plan. Solari charges $0.15 per browser hour on Free, $0.10 on Starter, $0.07 on Professional and $0.05 on Team. Enterprise runs at $0.005, a tenth of Team's rate, for fleets at the largest scale.
Credits that cap your spend. Each Solari plan fee comes back as the same amount of usage credit, so Professional's $200 a month buys $200 of browsers, sandboxes and desktops. Solari bills only up to your balance, so your spend stops where your credits stop.
Room for long tasks. Solari sessions run up to 1 hour on Free, 5 hours on Starter and without a limit on Team and Enterprise. Your agent can sign in, research and write up in one session instead of reconnecting.
Concurrency that scales with the plan. Solari runs 3 concurrent browsers on Free, 20 on Starter, 150 on Professional and up to 100,000 concurrent browsers on Enterprise. You can check every account on a list at once instead of queueing them.
Stealth, logins and replays. Turn on stealth for sites that block automation, with proxies at $4.00 per GB from Professional up ($6.00 on Starter) and captchas at the rates above, all from the same balance. A Solari profile saves your agent's cookies and site data so it stays signed in between sessions, and a recorded session replays exactly what the agent did.
When an agent also needs to run code or operate a desktop app, Solari sandboxes and desktops bill from the same balance, on one account and one bill.
Moving a script over is small. Solari works with Playwright, Puppeteer and any client that speaks the Chrome DevTools Protocol, so an existing Browserless script changes its connection URL and keeps its logic.
Where Is Browser Pricing Going Next?
Browser pricing is moving toward the way agents actually run. Over the next year, expect four changes:
Billing on open time. As agent sessions grow longer, vendors will price the hour a browser is open rather than short blocks per connection.
One balance across surfaces. Agents that browse, run code and use desktop apps will want one bill, not three vendors.
Spend caps by default. Teams will expect a hard stop at the balance so a looping agent cannot run up an invoice.
Stealth priced on its own. Proxy traffic and captcha solves will keep separate, visible rates, because they vary far more by site than browser time does.
What stays human is the estimate itself: knowing how long your tasks run, how often they reconnect and which sites need stealth. The team that measures those three things picks the right plan the first time.
Get Started With Solari
Choose Solari when your agents keep browsers open for long tasks, run many sessions at once or need sandboxes and desktops on the same bill. Stay with Browserless when you need a licensed self-hosted deployment: Browserless is the more established vendor with a self-hosting option, and Solari is the younger company that moves faster on speed and price.
Start by moving one long-running agent task and compare a week of browser hours against your current unit spend. Solari is the fastest and cheapest way to run cloud browsers and VMs for browser automation agents. Get started with a free account and start running your agents today.
