Maybe soon you will have to pay to browse the internet

Predicting the future of the internet in the age of AI

Imagine a world where browsing the internet costs money—not for data, but for the very act of visiting websites.

That might sound far off, but after exploring Opera Neon, a subscription-based browser, the idea didn’t feel so distant anymore.

The internet started as a free-for-all: Netscape, Chrome, Safari. All zero-cost entry points to a digital world.

But AI is changing that landscape fast.

Opera Neon—with its slick design and AI-powered features—got me thinking: what if you needed to pay just to use the best version of the web? What if we’re headed toward a browser divide—basic access for free, premium for the tools that actually help you get stuff done?

This piece unpacks that possibility. Why paid browsers might go mainstream. Why free ones might lag. And what that means for all of us who live online.

The idea of paying to browse the internet

It sounds absurd. But tools like Opera Neon and Perplexity Comet suggest it’s already happening.

Opera Neon isn’t just sleek design and smooth UX. It uses AI to handle tasks we usually juggle manually—auto-filling forms, summarizing content, booking travel, drafting documents. Its chat assistant responds contextually, factoring in your browsing history.

Perplexity Comet takes it a step further. Personalized search results. Automated research. Instant answers in natural language. These aren’t browsers. They’re assistants built into your internet experience.

So why pay when Chrome is free?

Because these tools do things for you.

Search for a dinner recipe? They’ll surface one, create a shopping list, swap ingredients based on your pantry, and estimate cooking time. Research a trip? They’ll cross-check hotels, find flights, even flag deals.

That’s convenience with compounding returns—especially if you’re online all day.

But none of it is cheap to offer. AI tools eat compute. Models need frequent updates. And engineers need to keep tuning the system. Subscriptions keep all of that alive—same reason you pay for Netflix or Spotify.

There’s a telecom analogy here: Jio’s 2016 rollout in India slashed mobile data prices. Access exploded. But “free” came with a twist—everyone had to pay something, even to receive calls. It reset expectations.

A similar shift could happen here.

Data may stay cheap. But access to a truly usable, intelligent internet might start with a paid browser.

Why not keep using our old free browsers?

Theoretically you can.

But it might start to feel like using a flip phone in a world of smartphones.

The web used to be simple—mostly static pages and a search bar. Today, it’s AI-driven, hyper-personalized, real-time.

Free browsers like Chrome or Firefox weren’t built for this. And updates only go so far.

Let’s say you visit a job board that instantly matches resumes with openings using real-time inference. Your legacy browser might load the site. But that’s it. The AI layer? The part doing the heavy lifting? It won’t run.

Now multiply that across everything: inboxes, dashboards, portals, reports.

Even basic tasks could break or feel sluggish if your browser isn’t built for modern workloads. It’s not that Chrome is bad. It’s that the web is moving faster than it can adapt.

We’ve seen this before.

Old laptops couldn’t run modern games. Early planes wouldn’t survive today’s skies. Legacy browsers might soon fall into the same category—functional, but not competitive.

Look at software development. GitHub Copilot is helping (and sometimes replacing) human coders. Why wouldn’t the same logic apply to browsing?

Sites are being optimized for AI-native tools. Just like developers stopped supporting Internet Explorer, they could stop supporting non-AI browsers too.

Conclusion

The old equation was: free browsers + paid data.

We could soon flip that.

Data stays cheap. But to navigate an AI-rich web, you’ll need tools that can keep up—and those may not be free.

Opera Neon and Perplexity Comet are early signs of where we’re headed. Not everyone will jump on board right away. But the experience speaks for itself.

AI browsers are fast. Contextual. Proactive. Less tab-hopping, more doing.

Sure, there’s friction. Learning curves. Privacy tradeoffs. They’ll need to earn user trust. But the shift is underway. And avoiding it means risking a second-rate internet experience.

Try them out. Use Neon’s AI chat for a week. Test Comet’s automation.

You’ll quickly see what’s possible.

We’re not at the end of the free internet. But we are entering a phase where access and experience won’t always mean the same thing.

Better tools might cost something. But in exchange, they could change how we experience the web altogether.