Headless browser API pricing per browser hour
Hosted headless browsers cost $0.02 (Browser Use) to $0.48 (Kernel's headful browsers) per browser hour at the usage rates the vendors publish, before proxy traffic. For 100 browser hours a month, 3,000 sessions of 2 minutes, the cheapest is Kernel (headless) at $1.00; Browserbase costs $20 (Developer) and Browserless $35 (Prototyping).
3,000 sessions of 2 minutes are 100 browser hours a month. Cheapest: Kernel (headless) at $1.00 ($0.01 an hour). Most expensive: Anchor Browser at $50.
Each vendor's cheapest published monthly plan for that much browser time, before tax and proxy traffic, monthly billing. Sessions in whole minutes; a plan whose longest session is shorter than yours isn't used. The default is Browserbase's own sizing: "A typical web scrape runs in under 2 minutes. 100 hours is roughly 3,000 page-level tasks."
What does each plan include?
| Plan | A month | Includes | Each extra hour | Longest session |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browserbase Free | $0 | 1 h | – | 15 min |
| Developer | $20 | 100 h | $0.12 | 6 h |
| Startup | $99 | 500 h | $0.10 | 6 h |
| Browserless Free | $0 | 8.3 h | – | 2 min |
| Prototyping | $35 | 166.7 h | $0.24 | 15 min |
| Starter | $200 | 1,500 h | $0.204 | 30 min |
| Scale | $500 | 4,166.7 h | $0.18 | 1 h |
| Steel Launch | $0 | – | $0.10 | 15 min |
| Scale | $250 | $100 of usage (1,250 h) | $0.08 | 1 h |
| Hyperbrowser Startup | $30 | 300 h | $0.10 | – |
| Scale | $100 | 1,000 h | $0.10 | – |
| Browser Use Pay as you go | $0 | – | $0.02 | – |
| Kernel (headless) Developer | $0 | $5 of usage (83.3 h) | $0.06 | – |
| Hobbyist | $30 | $10 of usage (166.7 h) | $0.06 | – |
| Start-Up | $200 | $50 of usage (833.3 h) | $0.06 | – |
| Kernel (headful) Developer | $0 | $5 of usage (10.4 h) | $0.48 | – |
| Hobbyist | $30 | $10 of usage (20.8 h) | $0.48 | – |
| Start-Up | $200 | $50 of usage (104.2 h) | $0.48 | – |
| Cloudflare Browser Run Workers Paid | $5 | 10 h | $0.09 | – |
| Anchor Browser Free | $0 | $5 of usage | – | – |
| Starter | $50 | $50 of usage | $0.05 | – |
| Growth | $2,000 | $2,000 of usage | $0.05 | – |
| ZenRows Scraping Browser Build B1 | $19 | 150 h | – | – |
| Build B2 | $29 | 266.7 h | – | – |
| Build B3 | $39 | 400 h | – | – |
| Launch L1 | $69 | 833.3 h | – | – |
| Launch L2 | $99 | 1,666.7 h | – | – |
| Launch L3 | $129 | 2,333.3 h | – | – |
| Growth G1 | $199 | 4,000 h | – | – |
| Growth G2 | $279 | 6,666.7 h | – | – |
| Growth G3 | $399 | 10,000 h | – | – |
| Scale S1 | $549 | 16,666.7 h | – | – |
| Scale S2 | $749 | 26,666.7 h | – | – |
| Scale S3 | $999 | 41,666.7 h | – | – |
| Scale S4 | $1,999 | 93,333.3 h | – | – |
| Scale S5 | $2,999 | 150,000 h | – | – |
Browser hours a plan's fee covers, and what each hour beyond costs at its overage or usage rate ("–" means the plan stops there). Kernel's headful browser costs 8 times its headless one; Anchor adds $0.01 for every browser it starts. "–" for longest session means the vendor states no limit.
How is browser time billed?
- Browserbase: by the minute, with a one-minute minimum per session.
- Browserless: in units of up to 30 seconds per browser connection.
- Steel: by the minute, rounded up.
- Hyperbrowser: per second.
- Browser Use: by the minute, rounded up, with a one-minute minimum.
- Kernel: per second, with no charge for idle time.
- Cloudflare Browser Run: in daily totals of seconds, with the month rounded to the nearest whole hour.
- Anchor Browser: to the nearest full minute, plus $0.01 for each browser created.
- ZenRows Scraping Browser: at 5 credits a minute of session time.
Short sessions cost more where time is rounded up: a 20-second page load uses a whole 30-second unit on Browserless and a whole minute on Browserbase, Steel or Browser Use, and Anchor's $0.01 a browser adds $10 to every 1,000 sessions. Per-second billing (Kernel, Hyperbrowser) charges only the time used.
What does proxy traffic cost on each?
- Browserbase: Developer: 1 GB included, then $12 per GB; Startup: 5 GB included, then $10 per GB. No proxies on Free.
- Browserless: 6 units per MB of residential proxy traffic, from the plan's units: $9 to $12 per GB at overage rates.
- Steel: $10 per GB on Launch, $6 on Scale.
- Hyperbrowser: $10 per GB (10,000 credits).
- Browser Use: $5 per GB through its residential proxies, which are on by default; $0.20 per GB direct or through your own proxy.
- Kernel: No charge for proxies.
- Anchor Browser: $8 per GB; $0.2 per GB of traffic with your own proxy or none.
- ZenRows Scraping Browser: 25,000 credits per GB of every session's traffic, $1.67 to $10.56 per GB depending on the plan.
- Bright Data Browser API: The whole bill: $8 per GB pay as you go, down to $5 on its $1,999 plan, with proxies, unlocking and CAPTCHA solving included.
Cloudflare Browser Run lists no proxy traffic on its pricing page. To size traffic, a whole page loaded in a browser is 1,963 KB at HTTP Archive's 2025 median: see the proxy bandwidth calculator and residential proxy prices.
What about Bright Data's Browser API?
It bills traffic instead of time: $8 per GB pay as you go, down to $5 per GB on its $1,999 plan (399 GB included), with proxies, unlocking and CAPTCHA solving in the price. At 1,963 KB a page, 1,000 whole pages cost about $15.70 at $8 per GB, however long the browser runs.
Quick answers
How much does a headless browser API cost?
$0.02 to $0.48 per browser hour on the published hourly rates of the 9 browser APIs we compare that bill by the hour, plus proxy traffic. For 100 hours a month the cheapest is Kernel (headless) at $1.00.
How much does Browserbase cost?
Free: 1 browser hour a month at no charge, no overage; Developer: $20 a month for 100 browser hours, then $0.12 an hour; Startup: $99 a month for 500 browser hours, then $0.10 an hour. Browser time is billed by the minute, with a one-minute minimum per session.
How much does Browserless cost?
Billed monthly: Free: 1,000 units (8.3 browser hours) a month at no charge, no overage; Prototyping: $35 a month for 20,000 units (166.7 browser hours), then $0.24 an hour; Starter: $200 a month for 180,000 units (1,500 browser hours), then $0.204 an hour; Scale: $500 a month for 500,000 units (4,166.7 browser hours), then $0.18 an hour. Billed yearly: Prototyping $25, Starter $140 and Scale $350 a month.
What is a Browserless unit?
A “Unit” is a block of browser time of up to 30 seconds per browser connection. Longer-running automations use an extra Unit for every 30 seconds. A browser running for an hour uses 120 units.
How much does Steel cost?
Launch: $0.10 an hour, no monthly fee; Scale: $250 a month with $100 of usage, at $0.08 an hour. Browser hours are billed by the minute, rounded up.
How much does Hyperbrowser cost?
Startup: $30 a month for 30,000 credits (300 browser hours), then $0.10 an hour; Scale: $100 a month for 100,000 credits (1,000 browser hours), then $0.10 an hour. Sessions are billed per second; the Free plan includes 5,000 credits.
How much does Browser Use cost?
$0.02 per browser hour from prepaid credits (from $5, never expiring), plus traffic: its residential proxies are on by default.
How much does Cloudflare Browser Rendering cost?
Cloudflare's Browser Run (formerly Browser Rendering) comes with the Workers Paid plan, $5 a month, which includes 10 browser hours; each hour beyond costs $0.09. Browser sessions also pay $2 a month for each concurrent browser above 10, averaged over the month.
How much does Kernel cost?
$0.06 per hour for a headless browser and $0.48 for a headful one, billed per second, after each plan's monthly credits: Developer free with $5, Hobbyist $30 a month with $10 and Start-Up $200 a month with $50.
Two of them head to head: Browserbase vs Browserless. Solving CAPTCHAs separately? See CAPTCHA solver pricing. Need pages rather than a browser? A scraping API runs the browser for you: compare them in the scraping cost calculator or see web unlocker pricing.
Anchor Browser: Plans are credits at $1 each; browser use without AI tasks is billed at the infrastructure rates. The home page's cost example labels browser time $0.09 an hour; the pricing docs list $0.05, which we use. Hyperbrowser's Free plan (5,000 credits) isn't ranked: its page doesn't say the credits renew each month. Steel's Launch plan also gives $30 in one-time free usage credits, valid for 90 days, not counted here.
Sources: Browserbase, Browserless, Steel, Hyperbrowser, Browser Use, Kernel, Cloudflare Browser Run, Anchor Browser, Bright Data Browser API, and ZenRows' pricing docs for its browser sessions, read on the date below.
Prices checked against each platform's own pricing page on .