Opera's Neon AI browser now available for $20/month - packed with these power user features

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Opera's Neon AI browser was publically released connected Thursday.
• It comes with a hefty terms tag, $19.90/month.
• Gartner precocious advised businesses to debar utilizing AI browsers.

Opera's AI-powered web browser, Neon, is present disposable to everyone, but it comes with a hefty terms tag of $19.90 per period -- astir apt much than astir radical are consenting to wage for a exertion inactive successful its infancy and with unresolved information risks.

Also: Use an AI browser? 5 ways to support yourself from punctual injections - earlier it's excessively late

Unveiled successful October with exclusive waitlist access, Neon is "an experimental browser for AI powerfulness users," Opera wrote successful a press release published Thursday. The Norway-based bundle institution is hoping customers volition beryllium consenting to wage for an AI browser that leverages aggregate frontier models and tin grip a assortment of web tasks. It's facing ample competition, though: Perplexity and OpenAI person some launched their ain escaped web browsers, called Comet and Atlas, respectively. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Google person been embedding AI features much profoundly into Edge and Chrome.

All these caller products and upgrades are being sold arsenic an betterment to the accepted web browsing experience, 1 that mostly hands the reins implicit to AI to grip boring and time-consuming tasks portion humans beryllium backmost and, successful theory, absorption their attraction connected much important and fulfilling tasks. Browsers person go a captious portion of existent property successful the ongoing AI golden rush, arsenic they service arsenic the portal to the internet. If gathering a chatbot is similar owning a ship, past gathering a web browser is similar owning the ocean.

What Neon offers

Opera seems to recognize that $19.90/month is simply a batch to inquire of the mean consumer, hence the "AI powerfulness users" angle.

"Opera Neon is simply a merchandise for radical who similar to beryllium the archetypal to the newest AI tech," Krystian Kolondra, EVP Browsers and European Fintech astatine Opera, said successful a statement. "It's a rapidly evolving task with important updates released each week."

Also: I've been investigating the apical AI browsers - here's which ones really impressed me

The biggest perk is that it allows entree to a fistful of industry-leading AI models, including GPT-5.1, Gemini 3 Pro, and Nano Banana Pro, each of which ordinarily travel with their ain subscription fees for afloat and unlimited use. 

Neon comes with 4 specialized AI agents that tin grip a circumstantial class of tasks: 

• Chat: For having conversations conscionable arsenic you would with immoderate different chatbot.
• Do: To navigate websites and execute actions connected your behalf, specified arsenic booking a edifice preservation oregon flight.
• Make: To constitute codification and make images and different kinds of content.
• Opera heavy probe cause (or ODRA): To aggregate information, implicit with sources, connected analyzable subjects into neatly packaged reports.

Paying the monthly subscription interest besides unlocks rank to an exclusive Discord assemblage wherever users tin suggest changes and interact straight with institution engineers to "help signifier the browser's roadmap," according to the company.

Neon tin beryllium downloaded here.

Security concerns

Letting AI instrumentality the reins connected your integer beingness shouldn't beryllium done lightly.

When you usage an AI browser, you're granting it support to autonomously presumption and grip delicate idiosyncratic accusation and marque decisions connected your behalf -- and this tin sometimes spell awry. Earlier this month, Gartner published a report advising businesses not to usage AI browsers, arsenic it warns that these browsers could stock proprietary information with their developers' unreality servers and are susceptible to malicious punctual injection attacks, wherever 3rd parties instrumentality the browsers into carrying retired actions that harm users.

Also: Gartner urges businesses to 'block each AI browsers' - what's down the dire warning

Opera addressed these concerns successful an October blog post pursuing Neon's aboriginal entree debut: "Just arsenic agentic browsers unfastened up caller possibilities successful browsing and completing tasks online, truthful tin they beryllium susceptible to caller kinds of attacks that exploit vulnerabilities recovered successful AI agents," the institution wrote. The station past outlined steps the institution had taken to mitigate those risks, including a "prompt analysis" relation that scrutinizes prompts for imaginable threats.

It besides added a caveat: "It is important to admit that owed to the non-deterministic quality of AI models, the hazard of a palmy punctual injection onslaught cannot beryllium wholly reduced to zero." In different words, usage astatine your ain risk.