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Head to head · Browser automation · October 2026 research run

agent-browser vs Notte

agent-browser scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Notte's 63.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Notte leads on reliability and maintenance & community. Both do browser automation.

agent-browserVercel Labs · MCP server B66.6/100#263 of 841 NotteNotte Labs Inc. · HTTP API B63.2/100#365 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 74
  • Security & auth, 67 against 56
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 40

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

Notte B

Good for Teams that want hosted browsers together with agents, vaults for logins, personas with mailboxes and scheduled browser functions behind one key.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 58 against 48
  • Maintenance & community, 83 against 70

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

status.notte.cc shows the Scrape API down on 15 of 90 days (about 6 hours in total) and CAPTCHA solving at 88.9 per cent availability

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runagent-browserNotteEdge
Reliability16%204858Notte +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28474agent-browser +10
Agent ergonomics13%16.27875agent-browser +3
Security & auth14%17.56756agent-browser +11
Payments & pricing10%12.56040agent-browser +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87083Notte +13
Transparency & trust7%8.86161even
Negative events≤1500
Total66.6 · B63.2 · B

Facts side by side

Factagent-browserNotte
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorVercel LabsNotte Labs Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.notte.cc
TransportsstdioHTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Proprietary hosted service under Notte's terms of service. The core repository is SSPL-1.0 and the Node SDK is MIT
Tools exposed1588
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-012026-10-07
Terms last updatedno document linkedcouldn't be read
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedcouldn't be read
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Popularity44k stars, 2.1M npm/wk1.3k npm/wk, 5.1k 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.

Notte

Notte publishes an OpenAPI 3.1 contract for 100 operations, a hosted MCP server with eight tools and OAuth, and a free plan with $10 of credits and no card. Its status page records about six hours of Scrape API downtime in 90 days, and a bot check blocked our read of the terms and privacy policy.

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

Notte

  1. Send Authorization: Bearer $NOTTE_API_KEY to https://api.notte.cc. A person creates the key in the console at console.notte.cc first
  2. Stop every session when the task ends. Sessions close after 3 idle minutes or 15 minutes in total by default, and the Free plan caps a session at 15 minutes
  3. Use https://api.notte.cc/mcp for browser work. Function and agent administration tools are only on https://api.notte.cc/mcp/full
  4. Back off on 429 and on 529, which means the cluster has too many sessions. The SDKs do not retry rate limits for you
  5. Download session replays within 24 hours. The recordings page says they are deleted after that

Questions

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

agent-browser scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Notte's 63.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Notte leads on reliability and maintenance & community.

Do agent-browser and Notte need an API key?

agent-browser needs no key. Notte takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

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

agent-browser runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Notte has a hosted endpoint at https://api.notte.cc.

Are agent-browser and Notte open source?

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

Other comparisons with agent-browser or Notte

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