Bright Data Browser API alternative in 2026, priced per hour

You know the price before the run

Time is the one number you control. A five minute session costs $0.0083 on SpecStream, and 1,000 of them cost $8.33, whatever the pages weigh.

Per GB, the same 1,000 sessions have no fixed price. At $8 per GB they cost about $16 if each one loads 2 MB and about $80 if each one loads 10 MB. Bright Data's own FAQ says: "Because you pay by traffic, you probably will want to minimize it." On SpecStream there is nothing to trim. Load the images if the task needs them.

Your Playwright or Puppeteer code stays

A session's connect_url is a WebSocket that speaks the Chrome DevTools Protocol. Playwright's connect_over_cdp and Puppeteer's connect take it as it is, so the only line that changes is the address. Its token belongs to that one session, so you can hand it to a sandbox without your API key.

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.connect_over_cdp(connect_url)
    page = browser.contexts[0].new_page()
    page.goto("https://example.com/pricing")
    print(page.title())
    browser.close()

An agent with no browser library sends one step at a time to POST /v1/browser/sessions/{id}/actions, at $1 per 1,000 steps. The setup for agents is in SpecStream for agents.

A page you only read costs $0.0008

Most scraping jobs open a browser to read a page that needs JavaScript. The Extract API does that in one call for $0.80 per 1,000 pages: a page that refuses a plain read is tried again as a browser would ask for it, then in a real browser, at the same price. It scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB, as the benchmarks page shows.

Keep browser sessions for the steps that click, type or sign in, and send the reads to Extract. On Bright Data a read through the Browser API is billed per GB like any other session.

Browserbase

The Developer plan is $20 a month with 100 browser hours, then $0.12 a browser hour, and proxies cost $12 per GB after the first GB. SpecStream charges $0.10 an hour from the first second with no plan.

Steel

Browser hours cost $0.10 or $0.08 by plan, CAPTCHA solves $3 per 1,000, and a new account gets $30 of credits one time. SpecStream charges $0.10 an hour on every account and starts you with $10 of credit.

Hyperbrowser

Browser time is 100 credits an hour, $0.10, plus $10 per GB for any proxy data used. SpecStream charges the same $0.10 an hour and does not meter traffic.

Browserless

Billed in units of up to 30 seconds of browser time per connection. Prototyping is $25 a month billed annually for 20,000 units, then $0.0020 a unit, which is $0.24 an hour. SpecStream charges $0.10 an hour by the second.