Today, we’re going over some of the best agent browsers on the market. Read on so you can make an informed decision about which one is best for your own web data infrastructure.
What is an agent browser?
AI agents are revolutionizing our productivity on the web. What once took months can now be accomplished in minutes. With AI agents, we can provide automated, intelligent behavior across concurrent instances. Even a self-hosted model can power a handful of separate AI agents simultaneously.
This brings us to one of the biggest bottlenecks when building AI agents — browser access. AI agents are not people, they are software. That being said, they’re built to automate tasks and behave like people. What do working people need? Tools. The same can be said for these AI agents. Let’s take a look at our home page right here at Data4AI.
As you can see, there are many ways to interact with the page.
- Navbar buttons
- Dropdowns
- Search input box
- Article thumbnails
For a website, this is considered pretty simple. From a human perspective, it’s dead simple. When we look at it from a software perspective, accessing this functionality is impossible without a browser — unless you can reverse engineer the browser’s HTTP calls and substitute the Document Object Model (DOM).
The browser renders the page and lets us interact with it.
Without a browser, we’re left with an HTML document. It contains JavaScript for programming logic. Every button click executes code. After code is executed, the page evolves. Dropdowns become visible. Searches filter article results. You get the idea. The snippet below contains a single button from our home page.
<button type="button" class="app-mobile-menu-toggle rest-btn" aria-controls="app_nav_main" aria-expanded="false" data-label_open="Open menu" data-label_close="Close menu" title="Open menu">
<span class="dfai-svg-icon dfai-svg-icon--dfai_mob_menu_open -open-" aria-hidden="true"><svg class="dfai-svg-icon__link"><use xlink:href="#dfai_mob_menu_open"></use></svg></span><span class="dfai-svg-icon dfai-svg-icon--dfai_mob_menu_close -close-" aria-hidden="true"><svg class="dfai-svg-icon__link"><use xlink:href="#dfai_mob_menu_close"></use></svg></span> Menu
</button>
Honest question, can you click this button to launch the menu?
Your AI agent can’t either.
The real problem is simple. Without a browser, the web doesn’t work as intended. It won’t work for you and it won’t work for your AI agent. Sure, the agent can parse the page and extract data without a browser — so can you. That doesn’t make it efficient or even functional.
People need browser access. AI agents need it too.
Things to consider when selecting an agent browser
Before we look at the best agent browsers, we need to think about the things that make up a good agent browser. This list isn’t exhaustive but this should give you a solid picture of what a decent agent browser is capable of.
- Concurrency: How many concurrent browsers can the provider support? Your concurrency limit directly ties into agent productivity. If your infrastructure is limited to two browsers, your agents can only assist two people at a time.
- CAPTCHA solving: Let’s face it, CAPTCHAs often create more problems than they solve. They are a holdover from the mid-2000s when engineers thought only people could click buttons and interpret images. A CAPTCHA solver keeps your system humming.
- Stability: All software experiences scheduled downtime for maintenance. Do they advertise their uptime? The best tools often give you more than 99% uptime.
- Pricing and bandwidth: Each pricing plan offers a different level of service. You can’t let your system quit running because your plan capped out. A large-scale crash can be detrimental.
Best agent browsers for autonomous AI agents
Bright Data Browser API
Bright Data’s Browser API is built to power agentic infrastructure at scale. They offer unlimited concurrency with up to 399GB of bandwidth at the highest tier, and volume discounts for anything over that. They do offer smaller plans but Bright Data’s infrastructure network is meant to power enterprise-grade software with massive scaling capability.
- Concurrency: Bright Data’s Browser API allows users to run instances with unlimited concurrency. Among cloud providers, this is almost unheard of. If you can build it, you can scale without bottlenecks.
- CAPTCHA solving: Browser API comes with built-in CAPTCHA solving. No configuration is required to use it. Teams can manually disable the CAPTCHA solver from their dashboard.
- Stability: It’s built on top of their proxy infrastructure which boasts 99% uptime and a 99.5% success rate.
- Pricing and bandwidth: Their Pay-As-You-Go plan lets teams pay $8/GB. At scale, teams can use up to 399GB for $1,999/month with enterprise discounts for anything above that.
Hyperbrowser
Hyperbrowser is another provider focused on operations at medium to high scale. Teams can run up to 100 browsers concurrently. Plans go up to 100,000 credits per month. However, teams are welcome to reload their credits at any point so the infrastructure doesn’t fail with usage spikes. They offer 99.99% uptime and built-in CAPTCHA support.
- Concurrency: Teams can run up to 100 instances simultaneously. This is enough to power many applications at medium to high scale.
- CAPTCHA solving: Their free plan doesn’t offer CAPTCHA solving but all paid plans come with a built-in CAPTCHA solver.
- Stability: Hyperbrowser offers 99.99% uptime on their site. Teams receive peace of mind that not all providers can match.
- Pricing and bandwidth: Usage is measured using a credit system. Their free plan offers up to 1,000 credits. The Starter plan costs $30/month for 30,000 credits and their Scale plan offers 100,000 credits for $100/month.
Steel
Steel is an open source option that also hosts their products within the cloud. They offer up to 100 concurrent instances and teams can contact them for higher scale. Their status page shows stable uptime over 90 days and teams can use up to 166GB of bandwidth. Steel provides a stable and transparent product. Teams can build at upper-mid tier scale and negotiate custom plans for enterprise use.
- Concurrency: Steel’s Pro plan offers up to 100 concurrent sessions. This is the upper end of mid-tier agent browser plans. Enterprise teams can inquire about unlimited concurrency but it’s not directly offered in normal plans.
- CAPTCHA solving: All paid plans come with CAPTCHA solving.
- Stability: Steel’s status can be checked in real-time here. When we looked, the page showed a 99.474% uptime over 90 days.
- Pricing and bandwidth: Steel offers a free plan with 100 hours/month (1,000 credits). Their Starter plan costs $29/month for up to 2.9GB and 290 hours. Their Startups plan lets teams access up to 166GB of bandwidth for $499/month.
Browserbase
Browserbase is another upper mid-tier option. They support up to 100 browser instances with standard pricing and more with custom packages. We looked at their status page and saw one incident over a 90 day period. If your team is looking at moderate usage and potentially custom enterprise packages in the future, they make sense.
- Concurrency: Browserbase offers up to 100 concurrent browsers on their tiered plans. Custom plans are available with over 250 concurrent instances.
- CAPTCHA solving: All paid plans come with automated CAPTCHA solving.
- Stability: Browserbase makes no uptime statement on their page. However, teams can view their current status here. When we looked, there was one incident over a 90 day period.
- Pricing and bandwidth: They offer a free plan with up to one hour of runtime monthly. The Developer plan costs $20/month with up to 100 browser hours and 1GB of proxy bandwidth. The Startup plan costs $99/month and provides up to 500 browser hours with 5GB of bandwidth.
Airtop
Airtop provides users with a unique automation framework using natural language entirely. Teams can run up to 100 concurrent browser sessions on the top tier plan. Airtop is a great choice for teams looking to launch agents at medium scale with no code involved.
- Concurrency: Run up to 100 sessions at a time.
- CAPTCHA solving: Airtop provides a CAPTCHA solver and proxy rotation.
- Stability: Their site does not mention uptime.
- Pricing and bandwidth: Airtop’s pricing is rather straightforward. Rather than charging for bandwidth, they use a credit system. Their starter plan costs $29/month for 30,000 credits. Their Enterprise plan costs $380/month for 500,000 credits.
Axiom.ai
Axiom is a growing provider. They allow users to self-host with unlimited concurrency or run up to 20 instances using their infrastructure. Axiom does come with CAPTCHA solving but requires a third-party integration which can be something of a pain point compared to other options. They support up to 700 runtime hours per month at their highest tier.
- Concurrency: According to Axiom’s pricing page, they offer unlimited desktop concurrency and support for up to 20 bots in the cloud. To simplify, on your own hardware, you get unlimited concurrency. When using their cloud infrastructure, you get up to 20 concurrent browsers.
- CAPTCHA solving: Axiom uses a third party tool, 2captcha for CAPTCHA solving. Users need to create an account and use their 2captcha API key from within Axiom.
- Stability: Axiom doesn’t advertise an uptime. You can view their current 90-day uptime here. When we checked, it showed 100%.
- Pricing and bandwidth: Plans range from $15/month for their starter with five hours of runtime. Axiom Ultimate offers up to 700 runtime hours for $600/month.
Side by side comparison of agent browsers
| Provider | Concurrent instances | CAPTCHA solving | 99% uptime | Monthly price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bright Data Browser API | ∞ | built-in | yes | $0–$1,999 |
| Hyperbrowser | 100 | built-in | yes | $0–$100 |
| Steel | 100 | built-in | yes | $0–$499 |
| Browserbase | 100 | built-in | n/a | $0–$99 |
| Airtop | 100 | built-in | n/a | $0–$380 |
| Axiom.ai | 20 | requires integration | yes | $15–$600 |
Conclusion
Choosing the right agent browser comes down to your individual project needs. Enterprise teams might choose Bright Data’s Browser API for unlimited concurrency. Startups might choose Axiom or Airtop to quickly spin up AI agents using natural language. Hyperbrowser, Steel and Browserbase all provide solid mid-tier options for teams who need scale but not enterprise scale.
Before the rise of AI, browsers were already a vital tool to anybody using a computer. Today, they’re also a staple for any team needing complex web automation. There are other agent browsers out there but these tools give you a clear path forward so you can ship your next application.