Use casesBrowser agent
Browser agents drive a real Chromium, or a whole desktop with a mouse and keyboard. Memory is the constraint, not CPU, and logins are the thing people forget to keep.
Short answer: The cheapest machine that runs it as described is Agent 37 at $36.30 a month, then Lizard ($85.79) and Boat ($90.00). 16 of 16 providers run it without a catch. Machine cost only, before any AI model, at list prices checked 29 October 2026.
“I want an agent that opens websites, clicks and fills in forms, or uses a whole desktop.”
A browser agent reads pages as text or screenshots and clicks, types and scrolls like a person. A computer-use agent does the same with a full desktop. Both need a machine with a display and enough memory for Chromium.
Sessions are usually short and thrown away. If the agent must stay logged in to sites, keep its browser profile, which means keeping the disk or saving a snapshot.
From its own documentation, each line linked to the page it comes from
2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 10 GiB for a browser; Browserless gives the same minimum. A full desktop is more comfortable at 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 20 GiB.
battleships.dev, built by the Boat team
No. Typical sessions are minutes long.
battleships.dev, built by the Boat team
Nothing, unless logins must survive: then the browser profile and cookies.
battleships.dev, built by the Boat team
About 3% CPU on average; Chromium's memory is what fills the machine.
battleships.dev, built by the Boat team
Easiest first. “Without a terminal” means someone who does not type commands can get it running from the provider's website.
| Provider | How | Without a terminal? | What it involves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tensorlake | Official guide or template | No | Boot `tensorlake/ubuntu-vnc`, which ships XFCE, TigerVNC, Firefox and Chrome, then either drive the desktop through `connectDesktop()` for screenshots, clicks and typing, or start Chrome with `--remote-debugging-port=9222` and tunnel it to localhost so Playwright, Puppeteer or `chrome-devtools-mcp` drive it as if it were local. Snapshot a warmed profile so parallel agents start with cookies already in place.Tensorlake: computer use ↗ |
Read from each provider's documentation on 29 October 2026. A provider not listed as one click can still be the right home; it means someone has to follow its instructions.
Three starting points for different people, each with its catch
The agent-browser image comes with a desktop and Chromium you can open from the dashboard, and an idle machine pauses itself and wakes when its preview link is used.
Catch: The free plan is one 4 vCPU / 8 GiB machine that pauses after 30 idle minutes.
A full Ubuntu VM with room for a browser, at a flat hourly price per size.
Catch: At thousands of sessions a month, the plan's start limits apply, and paid starts come out of the wallet.
Documents computer use, with sandboxes started from an SDK and per-second billing.
Catch: Each sandbox's disk is capped at 10 GiB.
Beyond these providers. Browser services such as Browser Use Cloud sell hosted browser time (from $0.02 per browser-hour) without a machine to manage.
Compare these three head to head: features and cost side by side.
30,000 ten-minute browser sessions a month on 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 10 GiB machines, thrown away after each. Chromium needs memory more than CPU: about 3% CPU on average. Change any number; open a row for the arithmetic.
List prices only, excluding model tokens, egressData the machine sends out to the internet, such as downloads to a user or uploads to another service. Some providers charge per GB; most agents send very little., taxes and anything a provider does not publish. How the numbers are made.
Each page compares every provider, with a source for every row
Sizes, regions and hardware — A size is a bundle of CPU, memory and disk, and the bundle decides what you can run. A region decides how far away it is and whose laws it sits under. Neither is as flexible as the word “cloud” suggests.
Isolation: what kind of computer you get — Every provider says “sandbox”. Underneath, it is a container, a gVisor container, a microVM or a full virtual machine, and that decides what your agent can install, run and break.
Reaching it: links, ports and who can open them — A machine nobody can reach is not an agent. There are four doors in — an HTTPS link, a raw TCP port, SSH, and the provider's API — and the important difference is who can open each one.
Snapshots, forks and templates — Four jobs hide under “snapshot”: a restore point on one machine, a reusable image for new machines, a copy of a running machine, and a backup that survives losing the host. Ask which one you are getting.