Opera Neon AI Browser Now Available For A Monthly Fee Of $19.90

Opera has introduced Neon, an AI-first web browser that shuns “supply-side adtech players” in favor of being more “targeted for demand.” It costs $19.90 a month. Access starts off with a waitlist, indicating a gradual rollout as the company ramps up its own AI services.

What Neon Does Differently From Traditional Browsers

Like Opera, the experimental browser Neon eschews a traditional sidebar and makes an AI console the focus from launch. The assistant can read instructions, figure out what to do based on them and then execute tasks across the web — including opening sources of information, collecting content or taking actions directly in the browser.

Opera calls this an “agentic” approach: You make a goal, the browser makes it happen. In reality, it spans from multi-tab research flows to tasks that require a transaction. The reward is time back, and that’s especially true for online chores you have to do repeatedly.

Agentic tools in Neon that you can direct and control

Neon Do is the main tool. Give it a job, say, look through prominent NASA flyby missions, and it’ll pop open a curated cluster of pertinent pages in tidy tabs for you to peruse the most trusted sources without your having to hunt for them manually. Opera’s demo has it spinning up a number of tabs assembled for context as it works.

It can also perform jobs: comparison shopping, travel bookings, gathering application materials or extracting structured data from sites. You can observe its behavior live, halt the automation and seize control at any time — an important “human-in-the-loop” failsafe should the agent go wayward.

For routines, Neon introduces Cards — reusable task templates you can create or import from the community. In one of them, Weekly Dinner Planning, it creates a five-day meal plan, auto-creates a shopping list and flags overlaps in your pantry to avoid double purchases. For power users, there’s the option of delving deeper with Neon Make, a tool that lets you build custom AI agents that will handle more complex workflows involving multiple steps.

Pricing and access details for Opera’s Neon browser

Neon costs $19.90 a month, plus the waitlist to join. That pricing easily puts it in the AI subscription tier of which many consumers are now familiar, through services like premium chatbot plans. Opera says Neon also brings over classic features from its primary browser, such as VPN integration, bookmarks and tab management, so users don’t have to pick between functionality and automation.

How Opera Neon stacks up against AI-powered browsers

Neon comes amid a wave of AI-infused surfing. Microsoft bakes Copilot all through Edge and Google keeps on injecting Gemini throughout the Chrome ecosystem. Research assistants like Perplexity are helping to push AI-led reading and sourcing, and independent browser makers have flirted with agentic features that summarize and navigate for you. Neon’s pitch is more ambitious: a browser that does the clicking and tab-wrangling for you, not only summarizing.

The distinction is the subscription fee. The vast majority of browsers are free, subsidized by search revenue or advertising. Opera is wagering that a segment of the population — knowledge workers, students, creators, and anyone else who gets lost in repetitive web tasks — will pay for a tool that translates prompts into actions and results.

Why the price could stick for an agentic AI browser

Running agentic AI isn’t cheap. And beyond the massive compute for large-model inference, the automation layer itself needs strong guardrails, real-time feedback and integrations with sites and services. Industry analysts also are well aware of the fact that lasting AI features tend to lie behind paid tiers due to ongoing inference costs scaling with usage. It’s fair to say that Neon’s price reflects that reality and what consumers already perceive with premium AI offerings.

There’s also a strategic angle. Opera’s share of the global browser market sits in the low single digits according to StatCounter, so differentiation is key. But if Neon consistently saves time on research, trip-planning and admin work, it could give Opera a new and meaningful identity in amongst browser incumbents whose core functionality is ubiquitous.

Early questions for buyers considering Opera Neon

Like all agentic systems, there will be questions regarding review and accuracy. Users will want clarity around how Neon decides to trust which sources, what happens when login and payment flows are automatically executed and what data is kept or retained in order to improve its models. Opera’s handoff of live control is a smart design choice, but enterprises and privacy advocates alike will be looking for the details of these policies and some level of granular permissions.

If Opera can sell substantial time savings — think transforming a 30-minute research task into a five-minute supervised run — Neon would pay for itself quickly, in terms of wasted time if not actual money.

If not, friction of one new browser and a recurring fee is going to be a high bar. The waitlist rollout indicates that the company likely intends to fine-tune the experience with early adopters before cracking the gates wide open.

Bottom line on Opera Neon and its AI-first approach

Neon is Opera’s most distilled swing at an AI-stewarded browser: a tool that does the task-crunching of opening tabs, finding sources and finishing web tasks for you, with you as its supervisor.

Priced at $19.90 a month, with waitlist access for the time being, it’s aimed at people who value saved time as much as pure speed — and who are willing to let the browser do more than browse.