Browserbase vs Steel: where the plans cross over
Published prices compared, with the arithmetic shown. Last checked . Prices only: we have not tested reliability, speed or output quality.
At a glance
| Browserbase | Steel | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | browser infrastructure | browser infrastructure |
| Free tier | Free plan: 1 browser hour, 3 concurrent browsers, 1,000 search and 1,000 fetch calls, $5 in model tokens. | $30 one-time usage credit on Launch; no card needed. |
| Entry paid price | from $20/mo | from $250/mo |
| MCP / agent support | Yes | Not confirmed |
| Verification | full verification | partial verification |
| Official pricing page | Pricing (opens official site in a new tab) | Pricing (opens official site in a new tab) |
Analysis
Browserbase and Steel both sell cloud browser sessions for agents. Steel is open source and offers a free-to-start plan; its paid Scale plan has a high base fee but a lower hourly rate.
The plans
- Browserbase: Free (1 hour), Developer $20/month (100 hours, 25 concurrent), Startup $99/month (500 hours, 100 concurrent). Overage $0.12 per hour on Developer, $0.10 on Startup.
- Steel: Launch $0/month plus usage ($0.10 per hour, a one-time $30 credit, 10 concurrent, 15-minute sessions). Scale $250/month with $100 of usage included each month, $0.08 per hour, 100 concurrent, 1-hour sessions.
Where the money crosses over
At 100 concurrent sessions, Browserbase Startup ($99) is far cheaper to enter than Steel Scale ($250). Counting only browser hours, a monthly total for H hours is about $99 + $0.10 × (H − 500) on Browserbase Startup and $250 + ($0.08 × H − $100) on Steel Scale once usage exceeds the included credit. Those two lines cross at roughly 5,050 browser hours per month; below that Browserbase Startup is cheaper, above it Steel Scale is. (Example: at 2,000 hours Browserbase is $249 and Steel is $310; at 10,000 hours Browserbase is $1,049 and Steel $950.) This ignores proxies, captcha solving, model tokens, and assumes Steel's included usage applies to browser hours.
Entry level
For small projects Steel Launch has no monthly fee and charges $0.10 per hour, which matches Browserbase's best overage rate; Browserbase Developer's effective $0.20 per hour includes more bundled features. Steel's pricing page also lists CAPTCHA solves ($3 per 1,000 on Launch) and proxy bandwidth ($10 per GB on Launch, $6 on Scale); Browserbase lists $12 per GB (Developer) and $10 per GB (Startup).
Agent support
Browserbase documents an MCP server on its official docs. We could not confirm an MCP server for Steel from the pages we checked, so it is shown as unconfirmed rather than “no”. Steel describes its browser API as open source, which matters if you want to self-host.
Verdict
Browserbase is the better fit for small to mid usage with high concurrency; Steel Scale only makes sense at very high monthly hours or if you value open-source self-hosting and longer sessions. These are published prices only; we have no reliability or detection-rate data.
Price ladders from the data
Effective price per unit at each published plan (monthly spend shown). Overage and assumption-based rows are excluded here; see each vendor page.
Remote browser hour
Browserbase
- $0.20 Developer (included hours) · $20/mo
- $0.198 Startup (included hours) · $99/mo
Steel
- $0.10 Launch · pay as you go
- $0.08 Scale · $250/mo
What we could not verify
- Browserbase: Stealth and captcha handling are plan features without a separate per-page price.
- Steel: Which plan the $5/1k /scrape rate applies to is unclear on the page.; No MCP server confirmed on the pages checked.