AI
Opera launches new AI browser and charges $20/month for it
Opera’s Neon browser is here, charging $19.90 a month, while rivals hand out AI browsers for free.
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Opera just dropped its shiny new AI browser, Neon, and they’re asking for $19.90 a month like it’s some premium streaming service.
Meanwhile, the rest of the tech world is handing out AI browsers like free samples at Costco.
Opera’s betting big on “agentic browsing” with Neon, which sounds fancy but basically means your browser now has specialized AI minions.
There’s “Tasks” for creating dedicated workspaces and “Do” for handling web browsing duties. You can even save your favorite AI prompts as “Cards” because, apparently, we need browser trading cards now.
But here’s where it gets interesting: Opera’s charging premium prices while everyone else is playing the free game. Perplexity launched its Comet browser in July without asking for your firstborn.
OpenAI dropped its ChatGPT Agent, Google stuffed Gemini into Chrome, and Atlassian just straight-up bought The Browser Company (makers of the Dia browser) to get in on the action.
The timing feels… bold? Desperate? Sure, Opera’s offering might be fancier, but good luck getting people to pay $240 annually for browsing when Chrome does AI stuff for free.
Opera’s banking on users wanting specialized AI agents over the kitchen-sink approach everyone else is taking. Whether people will actually fork over Netflix money for a browser remains to be seen.
For now, most users are stuck on a waitlist anyway, so Opera’s essentially created artificial scarcity for a product in a market that’s giving away similar features.
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