Cloud browser infrastructure with managed logins for AI agents automating websites
Anchor Browser is a cloud browser platform for AI agents that need to log in to and automate websites without APIs.
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AI Editor ApprovedApproved and published by our AI Editor-in-Chief after full panel analysis.Anchor Browser is a cloud browser platform for AI agents that need to log in to and automate websites without APIs. Developers drive isolated Chromium sessions with Playwright, Puppeteer or natural-language agent tasks. Pricing is credit-based: a free tier includes 5 credits a month, paid plans start at $50 per month for Starter, Team costs $500 and Growth $2,000, overage is $1.00 per credit, and Enterprise is custom. Automation Tasks run Playwright steps that fall back to an AI agent when a step fails, while CAPTCHA solving and city-level residential proxies handle protected sites. TopReviewed's six-seat AI review panel scored it 8.2/10, praising Identities, MFA handling and OmniConnect, which start agent sessions already logged in, while noting that logged-in browsers start on the $50 Starter plan and Extra Stealth and SOC 2 coverage sit on the $2,000 Growth plan. It fits SaaS teams building integrations with portals that lack APIs. Anchor publishes comparisons with Browserbase, Steel, Browserless and Skyvern.
A developer creates a browser session through the REST API or the Node.js and Python SDKs and gets back a CDP URL for Playwright or Puppeteer, plus a live-view URL that can be embedded in another app. For less code, the perform-web-task endpoint takes a plain-language prompt, an optional starting URL and a JSON schema, and returns structured results; it runs on browser-use by default, with OpenAI and Gemini computer-use agents as alternatives. Repeatable jobs become Automation Tasks, built from a written description or by demonstrating the flow once in a live browser, then compiled into versioned steps that can be run from the API.
Most of the platform's depth sits in authentication and in reaching protected sites. Identities store sign-ins so sessions start authenticated, email-based MFA works during identity creation, re-authentication and agent runs, and custom MFA codes can be injected from a customer's own systems. OmniConnect gives SaaS builders a hosted page where their users connect third-party accounts, and credentials passed to agents as secret values are kept out of logs. For access, Anchor offers residential proxies with city-level targeting, CAPTCHA solving, an extra-stealth Chromium build, Cloudflare Web Bot Auth and a sessionless Web Unlocker API that bills only successful fetches. When a task run needed that AI fallback, Anchor explains the root cause and proposes a workflow fix that can be applied in one click.
Anchor targets developers building agent products, SaaS teams that need integrations with sites that lack APIs, service providers, and enterprises automating portals in finance, healthcare, insurance, commerce and government. Pricing is credit-based: a free tier includes 5 credits a month, Starter costs $50 a month, Team $500 and Growth $2,000, each with overage at $1.00 per credit, and Enterprise is custom. Metered usage is billed at $0.01 per browser created, $0.05 per browser hour, $8 per GB of Anchor proxy data and $0.01 to $0.10 per AI step depending on the model tier.
The managed service runs in AWS us-east-2 by default, with US, EU, Asia and Australia regions on higher-tier plans and bring-your-own-cloud or on-premise deployment on Enterprise. Each browser gets its own virtual machine that is destroyed when the session ends, and Anchor states SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR compliance. Documented integrations cover Browser Use, Stagehand, CrewAI, LangChain, n8n, Make and Zapier, and customers can bring their own OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Azure keys, which bills each AI step at a flat $0.01.
The perform-web-task API and agentTask SDK method run a browser agent from a text prompt and return structured output that matches a supplied JSON schema.
Records each session to an MP4 video by default and provides a live-view URL that can be embedded in another application to watch or interact with a running browser.
Builds versioned, reusable workflows from a written task description or a recorded demonstration in a live browser, then runs them on demand through the API.
Solves CAPTCHA challenges, including Cloudflare, with a vision-based method and extension-based fallbacks when a proxy or browser profile is active.
When a task step's Playwright code fails, an AI agent retries the step so the run can finish, and Anchor then suggests a workflow fix that can be applied in one click.
Creates isolated cloud Chromium sessions that return a CDP URL for driving the browser with Playwright or Puppeteer, created through the REST API or the Node.js and Python SDKs.
Runs sessions in a specialized Chrome environment with anti-detection fingerprinting for sites that block automated browsers; requires an active proxy and the Growth plan.
Routes sessions through Anchor's residential proxy with country and city-level targeting, or through your own HTTP, HTTPS or SOCKS5 proxy, a dedicated sticky IP or the Anchor VPN.
A single sessionless API call that returns fully rendered HTML from CAPTCHA- or bot-protected URLs, billed only for successful 200 responses.
Signs a session's HTTP requests as Anchor Browser with Cloudflare Web Bot Auth, so sites that require Cloudflare's bot authentication can validate the signatures and grant access.
Exposes Anchor's cloud browsers as 24 MCP tools at api.anchorbrowser.io/mcp for Cursor, VS Code, Claude Desktop and other MCP clients, with an open-source server for self-hosting.
An embeddable hosted flow where a product's end users sign in to third-party sites on Anchor's UI, returning a new identity ID to the app's callback URL.
Stores sign-ins as identities that are attached at session creation so the browser starts logged in, with email-based MFA and custom MFA code injection during runs.
Passes passwords and other sensitive values to AI agents during a task without logging them, and cleans them up after the task completes.
For getting started: a free tier with 5 credits each month and the embedded browser agent.
For small teams that need logged-in browsers and CAPTCHA handling; includes 50 credits a month, with overage billed at $1.00 per credit.
For small teams running larger volumes; includes 500 credits a month, with overage billed at $1.00 per credit.
For growing businesses that need compliance attestations and full stealth; includes 2,000 credits a month, with overage billed at $1.00 per credit.
For large-scale operations; custom pricing tailored to the deployment, arranged with Anchor's sales team.
A browser infrastructure play built around the one thing agents actually struggle with: staying logged in.
“Anchor's real product is the authentication layer, not the Chromium sessions. Pricing scales cleanly from a free tier to $2,000/month, with the harder compliance story reserved for Enterprise.”
Most cloud browser tools hand you a CDP URL and call it done. Anchor's identities, MFA injection and OmniConnect sign-in flow solve the part that actually breaks agent automations: getting past login walls on sites with no API. That's a real architectural bet, not a repackaged headless browser.
The credit pricing is transparent down to $0.01 per browser and $0.05 per browser-hour, which I respect. But SOC 2, ISO 27001 and GDPR only show up starting at the $2,000/month Growth tier, and HIPAA terms live behind Enterprise sales, so regulated buyers pay a steep floor to get compliant.
Self-healing automation tasks and the 24-tool hosted MCP server show this team is building for how agents actually get deployed today, not for a Playwright demo. The tradeoff: you're renting infrastructure you can't fully inspect, and credit overage at $1/credit can bite fast on high-volume scraping.
Identity storage, custom MFA injection and the Web Unlocker API billed only on success go beyond what a bare cloud-browser API offers.
SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 are real, but they're gated to the $2,000/month Growth plan, leaving lower tiers without that assurance for sensitive logins.
A session returns a CDP URL in one API call and the free tier ships 5 credits to test immediately, so first integration is fast.
Managed auth and MFA handling for agent-driven web automation is a new capability, not just a cheaper way to run existing browser scripts.
Docs, API reference, SDKs for Node and Python, and a detailed pricing page all point to active development; I couldn't find a changelog to confirm release cadence.
Teams building agent products that must log in to third-party sites with no API.
Skip it if you need HIPAA-grade compliance without committing to an Enterprise contract.
Solid infra bet for login-dependent agents, but the architecture bills you per minute of uncertainty.
“Anchor's per-VM isolation and identity layer are the right primitives for agents that must authenticate like a human. The cost model and tier gating are the parts you need to model before you commit.”
The architecture decision that matters here: each browser session gets its own VM, destroyed on session end. That's the correct isolation model for anything touching customer credentials — no shared-state leakage between agent runs, no noisy-neighbor risk on a shared Chromium pool. If you're automating logins across finance or healthcare portals, that per-session VM boundary is the thing your security team will actually ask about, not the MFA injection.
The self-healing fallback — Playwright code failing over to an AI agent — is pragmatic engineering, but it's also where unit economics get fuzzy: $0.01 to $0.10 per AI step depending on model tier means your cost curve isn't flat, it's workload-shaped. OmniConnect's hosted sign-in flow is the more durable architectural bet for SaaS builders, since it externalizes a genuinely hard auth-UX problem.
Stack fit is good: CDP URLs mean Playwright and Puppeteer teams don't rewrite anything, and the 24-tool MCP server at api.anchorbrowser.io means Cursor or Claude Desktop integration is a config change, not a project. Three-year risk is tier-driven: BYOC and on-prem only exist at Enterprise, so anyone who outgrows Growth's 200 concurrent browsers faces a negotiation, not a toggle.
The Web Unlocker API and Cloudflare Web Bot Auth put it ahead of plain headless-browser services on access, though pricing granularity makes cost forecasting a real exercise.
CDP URLs for Playwright/Puppeteer plus a prompt-driven perform-web-task endpoint cover both the code-first and low-code developer.
Hosted MCP server exposing 24 tools plus documented LangChain, CrewAI and n8n hooks means minimal glue code for an agent stack already in place.
BYOC and on-prem deployment live only at Enterprise, making the Growth-to-Enterprise jump a contract negotiation, not a config change.
Per-session VM isolation plus identity-attached auth is deeper infrastructure than a shared-browser-pool competitor offers.
Engineering teams building agent products that must authenticate into third-party sites without an API.
You need on-premise deployment or BYOC without an Enterprise sales conversation.
Four tiers, three metered line items, and a 40x jump from Starter to Growth.
“Pricing is published down to the cent: $0.01 per browser, $0.05 per browser-hour, $8 per GB of proxy data. The model is transparent. Forecasting the invoice at scale is a different exercise.”
$50, $500, $2,000. Four credit tiers, flat jumps, no in-between. Starter gives 50 credits a month, Growth gives 2,000 — a 40x price step for a 40x credit step. Clean ratio. Procurement can model that in a spreadsheet without a sales call.
Overage runs $1.00 per credit on every paid tier. A team of agents running 2,000 Team-tier credits plus 500 overage credits adds $500/month — $6K/year beyond sticker. Add browser-hour and proxy-GB metering on top and the invoice stops looking like the pricing page. Year 1 budget at $500/month list is really a floor, not a ceiling.
No term length or renewal window published for paid plans, which I couldn't confirm either way — check before signing anything beyond month-to-month. Enterprise is contact-sales, as expected at that tier. For everything under it, self-serve billing and visible per-unit rates beat the quote-gated norm in this category.
Self-serve signup at $50/month with no sales call removes typical procurement friction; Enterprise reintroduces it for BAA and HIPAA terms.
No published term length or renewal clause for paid tiers; monthly billing implied but not confirmed.
All four paid tiers and every metered rate ($0.01/browser, $0.05/browser-hour, $8/GB) are on the pricing page; only Enterprise is quote-gated.
0.1 credits per completed task on Free and Growth tiers gives a countable unit, but AI-step cost variance across model tiers blurs the per-task math.
Credit overage at $1.00 each plus per-browser, per-hour, and per-GB metering means list price is a starting estimate, not a 3-year number.
Teams that want self-serve, itemized pricing and can forecast credit usage before committing past Free.
You need a fixed monthly number for budget approval rather than a metered estimate.
CDP in, logged-in session out — the part that usually breaks is handled upstream
“Session creation still returns a CDP URL Playwright already knows how to drive, so there's no new mental model to learn. The friction moves from writing selectors to budgeting credits and tier limits.”
The core loop is familiar: create a session, get a CDP URL, point Playwright or Puppeteer at it like you always have. That's the right call architecturally — zero API to relearn for the browser-driving part. The perform-web-task endpoint and Automation Tasks are the new surface, and that's where day-3 reality kicks in: you're now writing JSON schemas and task descriptions instead of selectors, which is a different skill than most agent-automation teams have built muscle for.
Docs cover REST, Node.js and Python SDKs plus 24 MCP tools for Cursor and Claude Desktop — that breadth suggests people who actually wire this into agent pipelines wrote it, not just a marketing page. The live-view embed URL is a nice debugging surface when a run fails silently.
The real fight is operational: Extra Stealth Mode needs an active proxy and the Growth plan, so a stealth requirement discovered mid-project means a plan jump, not a config flag.
CDP-based sessions mean existing Playwright code runs unchanged, but cost forecasting across four metered line items becomes a recurring chore.
API reference, SDK docs and an open-source MCP server for self-hosting point to engineers documenting their own tool, not a marketing team.
Extra Stealth Mode requiring both an active proxy and the Growth plan is a gate you hit mid-build, not during initial setup.
Automation Tasks compile demonstrated flows into versioned steps with AI fallback, but concurrent-browser caps (25 to 50 to 200) force replanning as usage grows.
SDKs for Node.js and Python plus a hosted MCP server with 24 tools slot into Cursor, Claude Desktop and LangChain without custom glue code.
Teams already comfortable with Playwright who need authenticated sessions against sites without APIs.
You need stealth browsing or compliance certifications without committing to a $2,000/month Growth plan.
A developer tool, not a product you click around in — and that's mostly fine.
“Anchor Browser is built for code, not people, so judging it by clicks and screens misses the point. But the parts that do have a human face — the live-view embed, the dashboard, the docs — tell you whether day one feels like a real tool or a pile of endpoints.”
There's no app to open here really, it's an API with a dashboard bolted on for watching sessions. That's fine for the job, but it means your first ten minutes are reading docs and writing a session-creation call, not poking around a UI. The live-view embed URL is the one genuinely human touch, a window into a running browser, and it's the kind of thing that saves you at 2am when a script's doing something weird and you can't tell why.
The MP4 session recordings are the quiet feature I like most. Three months in, when some automation breaks on a site redesign, having a video of exactly what the browser saw beats staring at stack traces. That's reliability you feel in the bad moments, not the good ones.
Mobile doesn't really apply, this lives in your codebase. The real learning curve isn't the API, it's picking between browser-use, OpenAI, and Gemini computer-use agents for the task endpoint, and figuring out credits ($50/month gets you 50) before a surprise invoice shows up.
Session recording to MP4 and an embeddable live-view URL show someone thought about how you'd actually debug this day to day.
CDP URLs mean Playwright veterans get moving fast, but choosing between browser-use and OpenAI/Gemini computer-use agents for perform-web-task adds a decision beginners won't expect.
This is API infrastructure consumed from a codebase, so mobile isn't really the battlefield, but I found no mobile-facing way to monitor sessions on the go.
The free tier with 5 credits a month lets you poke at the API before paying, but this is a docs-first, code-first start, not a guided one.
Per-session VM isolation and default video recording of every run give you a real paper trail when something goes sideways.
Developers who want to drive logged-in browser sessions from code and need a video trail when things break.
Avoid if you want a visual, click-around product rather than something you integrate through an API.
Browser automation with login built in, priced in four separate meters
“Anchor solves the login problem Playwright and Puppeteer don't handle. The compliance story and the pricing story both get more complicated as you go up the tiers.”
"Faster, cheaper, more reliable than human operations" is the kind of superlative that ages poorly, but underneath it the feature list is specific: CDP URLs, Identities with MFA injection, a Web Unlocker API billed only on 200s. That specificity is what makes me believe the core claim more than the homepage copy.
What I'd watch is the compliance gating. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 sit on the $2,000/month Growth tier, HIPAA needs an Enterprise call. Fine if you're already there, awkward if you scale into a regulated workload mid-contract.
Exit portability is decent on paper — CDP means your Playwright code isn't locked in. But Identities, OmniConnect flows and Automation Tasks are proprietary. Leave in 18 months and you're rebuilding the auth layer, not just swapping an SDK. No named competitor here to compare against directly, which makes differentiation hard to judge from outside.
Managed auth plus MFA handling is a real gap versus raw Playwright, though I found no named rival to size it against.
CDP output avoids script lock-in, but Identities and Automation Tasks are proprietary and don't travel.
Docs, API reference and a dedicated MCP server with 24 tools suggest active build-out; I couldn't find a changelog.
Homepage superlatives aside, the docs back specific claims like MFA injection and per-session VM isolation.
Named mechanics (identities, OmniConnect, self-healing fallback) are concrete enough to check, not vague promises.
Teams that need agents logging into third-party sites with MFA and can absorb Growth-tier pricing for compliance.
Avoid if you need HIPAA or SOC 2 coverage on a budget below $2,000 a month.
Common questions answered by our AI research team
Anchor Browser has a free tier with 5 credits a month. Paid plans are Starter at $50/month, Team at $500/month and Growth at $2,000/month, each billing overage at $1.00 per credit, and Enterprise pricing is custom.
Usage is metered at $0.01 per browser created, $0.05 per browser hour and $8 per GB of Anchor proxy data. AI steps cost $0.01 to $0.10 each depending on the model tier, or a flat $0.01 with your own LLM key.
Yes. Creating a session returns a CDP URL that Playwright or Puppeteer connects to, plus a live-view URL you can embed in your own app. Node.js and Python SDKs wrap session creation.
Yes. Identities store sign-ins so sessions start logged in, email-based MFA is handled during identity creation, re-authentication and agent sessions, and custom MFA codes can be injected from your own systems mid-run.
Yes. Anchor has achieved SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification and states HIPAA and GDPR compliance. SOC 2, ISO 27001 and GDPR come with the Growth plan, while BAA and HIPAA terms are part of Enterprise.
Who Anchor Browser competes with, and how each one differs
Browserbase is the most heavily funded pure browser-infrastructure rival ($40M Series B at a $300M valuation, June 2025), billing per browser-hour and pairing cloud Chromium with its own Stagehand automation SDK rather than Anchor's authentication-first, task-caching approach.
Airtop targets the same authenticated-session niche (OAuth, 2FA and CAPTCHA handling for enterprise agent workflows), making it Anchor's closest positioning match, though Airtop prices on a credit system ($26/mo for 30,000 credits) rather than Anchor's flat per-seat tiers.
Steel ships as an open-source, self-hostable browser API built on Puppeteer/CDP that teams can run on their own infrastructure, unlike Anchor's fully managed cloud sessions.
Hyperbrowser bundles its cloud Chromium sessions with prebuilt scraping, crawling and structured-extraction APIs, positioning itself as a data-extraction platform rather than Anchor's authentication-and-reliability focus.
Browser Use is the most widely adopted open-source (MIT) browser-agent framework, competing on its own hosted $0.02/browser-hour cloud tier and agent-loop design rather than Anchor's authentication layer.
Skyvern is a vision-LLM agent product (AGPL-3.0 licensed) that reads pages visually to complete form-heavy workflows, competing one layer up from Anchor's infrastructure-plus-authentication offering.
Company
Anchor Forge Inc.Founded
2024Pricing
From $50/moFree Plan
AvailableAnchor Forge Inc. (trading as Anchor Browser) is a Tel Aviv-based company that provides cloud-hosted Chromium browser infrastructure for AI agents, founded in October 2024.
