Unit consumption

Every Browserless Cloud plan includes a monthly unit allowance. Units are the billing currency for all activity on the platform, and browser sessions, proxy traffic, and CAPTCHA solving each draw from the same balance.

What consumes units

Browser time

Browser time is billed in 30-second increments. Every 30 seconds a browser session is open consumes 1 unit. Partial increments are rounded up, so a session open for 31 seconds consumes 2 units. This applies to all connection methods: BrowserQL, BaaS (Puppeteer/Playwright), and REST APIs.

A session that runs for 45 seconds consumes 2 units, regardless of whether the browser is actively navigating or sitting idle. Close sessions as soon as you're done to avoid unnecessary consumption.

tip

Set a custom timeout on your connections to prevent runaway sessions from draining your balance. The default timeout is 30 seconds.

Proxy traffic

Built-in residential and datacenter proxies consume units based on bandwidth:

Proxy type	Cost
Residential	6 units per MB
Datacenter	2 units per MB

Proxy units are charged on top of browser time. A 30-second session using a residential proxy that transfers 2 MB of data costs 1 (browser time) + 12 (proxy) = 13 units.

Third-party proxies connected through --proxy-server launch args don't consume proxy units. Only Browserless's built-in proxies are metered.

For more details, see the Proxies documentation.

CAPTCHA solving

Each CAPTCHA solve attempt costs 10 units, regardless of whether the solve succeeds or fails. This covers the cost of the third-party solving service.

Using stealth mode and residential proxies reduces how often CAPTCHAs appear, which in turn reduces unit spend on solving.

Summary

Activity	Unit cost
Browser session time	1 unit/30 seconds
Residential proxy traffic	6 units/MB
Datacenter proxy traffic	2 units/MB
CAPTCHA solve attempt	10 units/attempt

Check my consumption

Account dashboard

The Cloud Subscription card on your account dashboard shows your current billing cycle usage at a glance: units consumed, total allowance, concurrency limit, and cycle reset date.

The dashboard also provides interactive charts with hour, day, and week aggregation so you can spot usage trends over time.

The dashboard also includes a download icon () that opens a popup where you can select a timeframe and export your session and unit-consumption data as a JSON file.

Usage API

You can fetch your current consumption programmatically:

cURL

curl --location "https://api.browserless.io/v1/account/usage?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN"

JavaScript

const TOKEN = "YOUR_API_TOKEN_HERE";

const response = await fetch(
  `https://api.browserless.io/v1/account/usage?token=${TOKEN}`
);
const usage = await response.json();
console.log(usage);

Python

import requests

TOKEN = "YOUR_API_TOKEN_HERE"

response = requests.get(
    f"https://api.browserless.io/v1/account/usage?token={TOKEN}"
)
print(response.json())

This is useful for building your own monitoring dashboards or setting up alerts when consumption approaches your plan limit.

Related

• Dashboard: Navigate the Browserless dashboard
• API Tokens: Manage your API token
• Proxies: Residential and datacenter proxy configuration