# Airtop vs Anchor Browser

> Anchor Browser scores 67.3 (B) on agent readiness against Airtop's 55.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Airtop leads on transparency & trust. Both do browser automation. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-anchor-browser
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-anchor-browser.md (~2,400 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-anchor-browser.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-anchor-browser.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Anchor Browser scores 67.3 (B) on agent readiness against Airtop's 55.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Airtop leads on transparency & trust. Both do browser automation.

- Airtop: grade C, 55.3/100, rank #511 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/airtop.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/airtop.json
- Anchor Browser: grade B, 67.3/100, rank #211 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/anchor-browser.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/anchor-browser.json

## Which one, for what

### 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:
- Transparency & trust, 61 against 51

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

### Anchor Browser (B)

Good for: Agents that must work inside signed-in accounts, with managed identities, MFA handling and a human sign-in link, and agents that need to start with no human signup.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 69
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 65
- Security & auth, 54 against 46
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 25
- Maintenance & community, 57 against 24

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No service agreement or API terms found. anchorbrowser.io/terms is a website terms of use dated 16 March 2025


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Airtop | Anchor Browser | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 69 | 80 | Anchor Browser +11 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 80 | Anchor Browser +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 73 | Anchor Browser +8 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 46 | 54 | Anchor Browser +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 60 | Anchor Browser +35 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 24 | 57 | Anchor Browser +33 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 51 | Airtop +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.3 · C** | **67.3 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Airtop | Anchor Browser |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Switchboard Visual Technologies, Inc. (dba Airtop) | Anchor Forge Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.airtop.ai/api` | `https://api.anchorbrowser.io` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary cloud service under Airtop's terms of use. The Node and Python SDKs are MIT per npm and PyPI | Proprietary cloud service. No service agreement was found, only a website terms of use. The TypeScript and Python SDKs and the self-hosted MCP server are Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-07-01 | 2026-07-28 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-07-29 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-09-02 | 2026-02-24 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes |  |
| Popularity | 16 stars, 16k npm/wk, 246 PyPI/wk | 43k npm/wk, 10k PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**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.

**Anchor Browser.** The API has a public OpenAPI 3.1 document, per-unit prices and Agent Access, an unauthenticated flow that issues a trial API key without a dashboard account. No service agreement is published, only a website terms of use, and the documented CDP connection puts the API key in the URL.

## Before you call either

### 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

### Anchor Browser

1. Send the key in the `anchor-api-key` header. For CDP, build `wss://connect.anchorbrowser.io?apiKey=<key>&sessionId=<id>` and keep that URL out of logs
2. Set `session.timeout.idle_timeout` and `max_duration` and end sessions with DELETE. The default maximum is 180 minutes, and browser time bills by the minute
3. Session creation is capped at 5 a minute on Free, 25 on Starter and 100 on Growth. On 429, wait for the `Retry-After` seconds
4. Connect the `Anchor` MCP server or `Anchor (all)`, not both, because the docs say the pair duplicates tool names
5. Authenticated browsers, CAPTCHA solving and proxies by country need the Starter plan or higher. The Free plan and Agent Access keys run plain sessions and web tasks

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Airtop or Anchor Browser?

Anchor Browser scores 67.3 (B) on agent readiness against Airtop's 55.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Airtop leads on transparency & trust.

### Do Airtop and Anchor Browser need an API key?

Airtop needs an API key. Anchor Browser takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Airtop and Anchor Browser without installing anything?

Yes. Airtop has a hosted endpoint at https://api.airtop.ai/api and Anchor Browser at https://api.anchorbrowser.io.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-anchor-browser.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-anchor-browser.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "airtop", "b": "anchor-browser"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare airtop anchor-browser`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/airtop.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/anchor-browser.json

## Other comparisons with Airtop or Anchor Browser

- [Airtop vs Browser Use](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-browser-use.md)
- [Airtop vs Browserbase](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-browserbase.md)
- [Airtop vs Browserless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-browserless.md)
- [Airtop vs Chrome DevTools MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-chrome-devtools-mcp.md)
- [Airtop vs Hyperbrowser](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-hyperbrowser.md)
- [Airtop vs Notte](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-notte.md)
- [Airtop vs Playwright MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-playwright-mcp.md)
- [Airtop vs Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-puppeteer-reference-server-archived.md)
- [Airtop vs Skyvern](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-skyvern.md)
- [Airtop vs Steel](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-steel.md)
- [Anchor Browser vs Browser Use](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-browser-use.md)
- [Anchor Browser vs Browserbase](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-browserbase.md)
- [Anchor Browser vs Browserless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-browserless.md)
- [Anchor Browser vs Chrome DevTools MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-chrome-devtools-mcp.md)
- [Anchor Browser vs Hyperbrowser](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-hyperbrowser.md)
- [Anchor Browser vs Notte](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-notte.md)
- [Anchor Browser vs Playwright MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-playwright-mcp.md)
- [Anchor Browser vs Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-puppeteer-reference-server-archived.md)
- [Anchor Browser vs Skyvern](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-skyvern.md)
- [Anchor Browser vs Steel](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-steel.md)