Browserbase runs headless browsers as a service, which is what an AI agent needs the moment a task involves a site that will not give you an API. You are billed for browser hours, and — the part that surprises people — for proxy bandwidth, which on a scraping-heavy workload is usually the larger of the two.
| Plan | Price | Included | Overage & notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 3 concurrent, 1 browser hour | 15-min sessions, 7-day retention |
| Developer | $20 / mo | 25 concurrent, 100 browser hours | Then ≈$0.12/hr; 1 GB proxy included |
| Startup | $99 / mo | Higher concurrency | Then ≈$0.10/hr overage |
| Proxy bandwidth | ≈$12 / GB | Beyond included allowance | Usually the dominant line item |
→ Estimate your bill on the API cost calculator or model a whole app with the AI app cost estimator.
Yes — a genuine free plan with 3 concurrent browsers, 1 browser hour, 15-minute session cap, 1,000 Search and 1,000 Fetch API calls, one project and 7-day data retention. Enough to build against and demo; not enough to run a job continuously, since one browser hour is exactly one browser alive for an hour. Compare it with other free allowances on the free API tiers page.
1. Sign up at browserbase.com.
2. From the dashboard settings, copy your API key and project ID.
3. Point Playwright or Puppeteer at the Browserbase connect URL instead of a local browser.
4. Block images and fonts unless you need them — that is the proxy-bandwidth bill, not a micro-optimisation.
Test it:
If you only need the page contents rather than a live interactive browser, a scraping API is dramatically cheaper — see the web scraping API cost calculator and the guides for Firecrawl, ScraperAPI and Bright Data. Hosting your own Playwright workers on a VPS removes the per-hour charge entirely and replaces it with ops work plus your own proxy bill, which is a real tradeoff rather than an obvious win. Budget the full agent around it with the computer-use agent cost calculator.
Reference pricing (July 2026): a Free plan with 3 concurrent browsers and 1 browser hour included; Developer at $20 a month with 25 concurrent browsers, 100 browser hours and 1 GB of proxy bandwidth included; Startup at $99 a month; and custom Scale pricing above that. Overage runs about $0.12 per browser hour on Developer and $0.10 on Startup, with proxy bandwidth billed around $12 per GB beyond the included allowance.
Yes. The Free plan includes 3 concurrent browsers, 1 browser hour, sessions up to 15 minutes, 1,000 Search API calls, 1,000 Fetch API calls, one project and 7-day data retention. That is enough to build and demo against but not to run anything continuously — one browser hour is one browser running for sixty minutes.
Because it is priced per gigabyte at roughly $12, while browser time is priced per hour at roughly $0.12. A single browser hour loading media-heavy pages through the proxy can easily move more than a gigabyte, at which point the bandwidth line is a hundred times the compute line. If your workload permits it, blocking images and fonts at the browser level is usually the single largest cost reduction available.
Sign up at browserbase.com, open the dashboard, and copy your API key and project ID from the settings page. The Free plan is active immediately. The service is driven through Playwright or Puppeteer over a connect URL, so existing automation code usually works with a changed connection string.
Not affiliated with Browserbase. Prices are reference estimates — always verify on the official pricing page.