---
title: "Browser cost calculator: Browserbase, Steel, Browserless, Browser Use, Hyperbrowser and Kernel pricing"
description: "Enter your browser hours, browsers at once and proxy traffic, and see the cheapest plan at each cloud browser provider, from their own pricing pages, next to running browsers on your own machine."
canonical: "https://scalebrowser.net/check/browser-cost"
last_modified: "2026-10-23T18:22:53.000Z"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://scalebrowser.net/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

one check

# Browser cost calculator

What a month of browsers costs at Browserbase, Steel, Browserless, Browser Use, Hyperbrowser and Kernel, next to running them on your own machine. Enter your hours, how many browsers run at once and your proxy traffic.

Five browsers for eight hours on 22 working days are 880 browser hours. Each row is the cheapest self-serve plan that allows that many browsers at once, from the providers' own pricing pages as of Oct 23, 2026.

| Provider                                                                                                                                                                                     | Plan          | Per month | Per browser hour |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------- | --------- | ---------------- |
| [Browser Use (opens in a new tab)](https://browser-use.com/pricing)Billed by the minute; its residential proxy is on by default at $5/GB ($0.20/GB with your own).                           | Pay as you go | $6        | $0.02 per hour   |
| [Kernel, headless (opens in a new tab)](https://www.kernel.sh/pricing)Billed per second of active use, no charge in standby.                                                                 | Free          | $13       | $0.043 per hour  |
| [Steel (opens in a new tab)](https://steel.dev/pricing)Launch starts with $30 of credits once; Enterprise with 1,000+ sessions on request.                                                   | Launch        | $30       | $0.10 per hour   |
| [Hyperbrowser (opens in a new tab)](https://www.hyperbrowser.ai/pricing)The monthly fee comes back as usage credit; a free account starts with 5,000 credits once.                           | Startup       | $30       | $0.10 per hour   |
| [Scalebrowser](https://scalebrowser.net/pricing)Runs on your own machine: browser hours cost nothing extra, and the hardware, power and proxy are yours.                                     | Solo          | $39       | $0.13 per hour   |
| [Browserbase (opens in a new tab)](https://www.browserbase.com/pricing)Scale plan with 250+ browsers on request.                                                                             | Developer     | $44       | $0.147 per hour  |
| [Browserless (opens in a new tab)](https://www.browserless.io/pricing)Prices billed annually; a unit is up to 30 seconds per browser connection. Its own proxies are billed in units per MB. | Prototyping   | $57       | $0.19 per hour   |
| [Kernel, with a window (opens in a new tab)](https://www.kernel.sh/pricing)A headful browser costs eight times the headless rate per second.                                                 | Free          | $139      | $0.463 per hour  |

How is the cost worked out?

For each provider the calculator takes every self-serve plan that allows your number of browsers at once, adds the monthly fee, the browser hours and proxy traffic beyond what the plan includes, subtracts any monthly usage credit, and shows the cheapest. A plan that cannot bill your usage, such as a free tier with no extra hours, is skipped. Above a provider's largest self-serve plan the row says "On request".

What does a cloud browser cost per hour?

Between $0.02 and $0.48 per browser hour on the plans listed here, before any monthly fee. Kernel charges eight times as much for a browser with a window as for a headless one, and Browserless bills in units of up to 30 seconds per connection, so 120 units are one browser hour.

Why does Scalebrowser not charge per hour?

The browsers run on your own computer, so an hour costs us nothing to sell. You pay for how many browsers may run at the same time, and every plan runs the same browser. The machine, its power and the proxy are yours to provide; see [the pricing page](https://scalebrowser.net/pricing) for the plans.

Which is cheapest for an AI agent?

It depends on the shape of the work. A few hours a month is cheapest pay as you go in the cloud. Many hours, or browsers that stay open all day, cost less at a flat price per browser running at once. Accounts that must keep the same device and address from one run to the next are a separate question from price: [cloud browser or local browser](https://scalebrowser.net/blog/cloud-browser) compares the two on that.

How current are these prices?

Each provider's numbers were read from its own pricing page on the date shown above the table, and each provider name links to that page. Prices change; when a row and the provider's page disagree, the provider's page is right.

[The full check. Reads all five layers and shows where they contradict each other.](https://scalebrowser.net/check)

What this one page cannot tell you

Model tokens, captcha solving and your own hardware and power are not in these numbers, and neither are negotiated or annual discounts beyond what a pricing page states.