Opera Neon Review 2026: Pricing, Features and Verdict

What it is

Neon is a separate browser from Opera, the European browser company, built around agents. Opera describes it as "a browser built to act": it reads pages, carries context, compares sources, manages tabs and acts when you tell it to. Neon ran in a closed, paid Founders phase from October 2, 2025 and opened to the public on December 11, 2025, according to Opera's press release, which calls it Opera's "experimental browser for AI power users." On March 31, 2026 Opera added an MCP connector.

Neon keeps the core Opera browser features: tab management, snapshots, sidebar messengers, built in ad blocking and a VPN.

Pricing explained

Option	Price	What you get
Opera account plus Neon install	$0	Browser, ad block and VPN; connect your own agents through MCP or CLI
Neon subscription	$19.90 per month	Neon Chat with model choice, Neon Do, Deep Research, One Minute Research, Local Research, Neon Cards

Opera's Neon page lays out three steps: install and log in, connect your own agents through MCP or CLI if you have them, and subscribe to activate Neon's agentic features and top models for $19.90 per month. The FAQ is blunter and calls Neon "a paid product" that "requires a subscription." Either way, Neon's own agents are the paid part.

No annual price is listed, and Opera does not publish usage caps per task on the pages we read.

Value check. $19.90 is roughly the price of ChatGPT Plus or Google AI Pro, but Neon gives you several labs' models instead of one. If you would otherwise pay for two AI subscriptions to get GPT and Claude, Neon can be the cheaper route. If you only want one model, a single lab's plan gives more. See the Price Index for category prices.

Key features

Neon Chat

Everyday chat with your browser as context. It can see the pages you have open, so you can ask it to compare three articles or find contradictions between them without copy and paste. You can pick the model per chat: Gemini, Grok, GPT and GPT Pro, Claude Opus and Claude Sonnet, DeepSeek, GLM-5 and Qwen3, plus creative models like Veo 3.1, Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana Pro.

Neon Do

The agent. It works with the page you are viewing, runs tab commands, supports scheduled tasks and connects with Google tools. Neon Do runs locally inside your browser and interacts with pages directly, while cloud models generate its plans. It shows the steps it plans to take, glows around active tasks and lets you pause, stop or take over at any time.

Research agents

Three separate agents: Deep Research for structured reports, One Minute Research for a fast overview, and Local Research, which runs in your browser session and can use your location based Google results and sources you are logged into, such as paid subscriptions.

Tasks and Neon Cards

A task in Neon is a group of related tabs sharing context, like a trip or a shopping run, so questions apply to the right set of pages. Neon Cards work like skills: saved instructions for a type of task, organized into decks, which you can build or take from a library.

MCP connector and CLI

Neon acts as an MCP server. Outside tools that support MCP, including Claude Code, Lovable and n8n according to Opera, can read your open tabs, see what you are working on, take screenshots and, if you allow it, act in your real logged in session. The connection is read only by default; clicks and form fills need your explicit permission.

Memory

Neon can remember long term preferences such as travel habits or dietary needs, saved when you ask or automatically from conversations. You can view, edit or delete them.

What users say

Neon has no mobile app and no G2, Capterra or Trustpilot listing for the product with enough reviews to cite. Launch coverage focused on the price, with several outlets questioning $19.90 per month for a browser when Comet is free, and Opera's own forum has user threads objecting to the subscription. People who like it point to model choice and the MCP hookup for developer workflows.

Privacy and security

Training. Opera states it does not train models on user data, and its agreements with providers such as OpenAI and Google prohibit them from training on Opera users' data.

What stays local. Opera says Neon is designed so that log in credentials, passwords, card details and cookies stay on your device and are never sent to its AI engine. When you sign in to a site, those credentials are not sent to third party servers including Opera's, and the same goes for payment details.

What goes to the cloud. Neon Chat and the research agents run in the cloud, except Local Research. Neon Do runs locally but uses cloud models for its plans.

Retention. Data is kept on Opera's servers for 365 days so you can continue chats and workflows, then dormant items are deleted automatically. You can review and delete Neon Chat and Neon Do activity yourself.

Responsibility. Opera's FAQ says you use Neon and its agentic features at your own risk and are responsible for what happens while using it.

Prompt injection. Brave reported on October 14, 2025 that Neon's assistant processed hidden HTML, such as a span set to zero opacity, as instructions. In their demo, a page told Neon to open the user's Opera account page, read the email address and send it to an attacker's server, and it did. Opera first closed the report by mistake, then confirmed a fix on October 21, 2025 and published details on October 23. Brave's broader point applies to every agentic browser: until the category finds a structural fix, treat agent actions on logged in sites as risky.

Who it is for

• People who want several labs' models in one browser. Neon's model list is the widest of any AI browser here.
• Developers. The MCP server lets Claude Code and similar tools work in your real browser session.
• Researchers. Three research agents, including one that uses your logged in subscriptions.
• Opera fans. You keep the VPN, ad block and sidebar messengers.

Who should skip it

• Budget buyers. Comet is free and the chat side of Gemini in Chrome costs nothing.
• Phone users. No mobile app yet.
• People who want minimal server retention. 365 days is long; Dia keeps data local by default.
• Teams that need compliance paperwork. We found no SOC 2 report for Neon; Dia has one.

Alternatives

• Comet: free, four platforms, Perplexity search built in.
• Dia: SOC 2 Type II and the most cautious agent design.
• Gemini in Chrome: no new browser, auto browse on Google AI Pro.
• Genspark: an agent workspace with its own AI browser and model mix.

See the best AI browsers for the full ranking.

Verdict

Opera Neon is the most flexible AI browser: model choice from seven or more labs, a local agent that works in your own tabs, research agents and an MCP server that turns the browser into a workspace for outside agents. Those strengths come at $19.90 per month, on desktop only, with a year of server side chat retention. Buy it if model choice or MCP matters to you; otherwise start with Comet or Gemini in Chrome for free.