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Head to head · Browser automation · October 2026 research run

agent-browser vs Airtop

agent-browser scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Airtop's 55.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Airtop leads on reliability. Both do browser automation.

agent-browserVercel Labs · MCP server B66.6/100#263 of 841 AirtopSwitchboard Visual Technologies, Inc. (dba Airtop) · HTTP API C55.3/100#592 of 841

Which one, for what

agent-browser B

Good for Coding agents with a shell that want short commands and compact snapshots.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 84 against 76
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 65
  • Security & auth, 67 against 46
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 25
  • Maintenance & community, 70 against 24

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source

Watch for

The ten most recent CI runs on main, 1 to 8 October 2026, all concluded in failure. In the newest, Windows Rust tests and native end-to-end tests failed

Airtop C

Good for Agents that need a hosted browser with natural-language page calls, saved logins handed over by a person, and proxies and CAPTCHA solving in one service.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 69 against 48

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

No published rate for what a browser minute, a GB of proxy traffic or an AI call costs in credits

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runagent-browserAirtopEdge
Reliability16%204869Airtop +21
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28476agent-browser +8
Agent ergonomics13%16.27865agent-browser +13
Security & auth14%17.56746agent-browser +21
Payments & pricing10%12.56025agent-browser +35
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87024agent-browser +46
Transparency & trust7%8.86161even
Negative events≤1500
Total66.6 · B55.3 · C

Facts side by side

Factagent-browserAirtop
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorVercel LabsSwitchboard Visual Technologies, Inc. (dba Airtop)
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.airtop.ai/api
TransportsstdioHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Proprietary cloud service under Airtop's terms of use. The Node and Python SDKs are MIT per npm and PyPI
Tools exposed158none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-012026-07-01
Terms last updatedno document linked2025-07-29
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2025-09-02
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity44k stars, 2.1M npm/wk16 stars, 16k npm/wk, 246 PyPI/wk

Verdicts

agent-browser

Snapshots with element refs, a 29-tool default MCP profile and opt-in domain allowlists, action policies and content boundary markers suit agent use. The project is at 0.38.2 with no stable release, the ten most recent CI runs on main failed between 1 and 8 October 2026, and every security control is off by default.

Airtop

The cloud browser API has a public OpenAPI 3.1 document, Markdown docs, natural-language page calls with a per-call credit cap, and a status page with no incident in the last 90 days. Credit rates for browser time, proxy traffic and AI calls are not published, and the developer changelog's last entry is dated 3 September 2025.

Before you call either

agent-browser

  1. Run agent-browser install once after npm install -g agent-browser. It downloads Chrome for Testing
  2. Take a fresh snapshot -i after any navigation. Refs survive same-document changes only
  3. Pass --json for machine-readable results and --max-output to cap page text
  4. Set --allowed-domains, --action-policy and --content-boundaries for untrusted sites. None is on by default, and the allowlist rejects --profile, --cdp and --restore
  5. Start MCP with agent-browser mcp, and add profiles such as --tools core,network only when needed

Airtop

  1. Terminate every session with DELETE /v1/sessions/{id}. Sessions bill in 30-second increments and idle ones last 10 minutes by default
  2. Set costThresholdCredits on AI calls and read meta.usage.credits afterwards. Credit rates are not published, so measure them
  3. Use page-query with configuration.outputSchema for structured output. prompt-content and summarize-content are deprecated
  4. When calling REST without the SDK, poll session status until running before creating a window. Only the SDK waits for you
  5. Airtop's integrated proxy cannot reach LinkedIn, ticketing sites and some banks and streaming services. Bring a custom proxy for those

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, agent-browser or Airtop?

agent-browser scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Airtop's 55.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Airtop leads on reliability.

Do agent-browser and Airtop need an API key?

agent-browser needs no key. Airtop needs an API key.

Can an agent call agent-browser and Airtop without installing anything?

agent-browser runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Airtop has a hosted endpoint at https://api.airtop.ai/api.

Are agent-browser and Airtop open source?

agent-browser is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Airtop.

Other comparisons with agent-browser or Airtop

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