# Airtop vs Selenium

> Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) to Airtop's 55.3 (C) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-selenium
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-selenium.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-selenium.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtop-vs-selenium.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: 2026-10-14

Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Airtop's 55.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do browser automation.

- Airtop: grade C, 55.3/100, rank #700 of 1076. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/airtop.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/airtop.json
- Selenium: grade BB, 73.6/100, rank #90 of 1076. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/selenium.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/selenium.json
- Best browser automation tools for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/browser/index.md
- All 120 browser comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browser/index.md

## 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.

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

### Selenium (BB)

Good for: Agents that write test or automation scripts in any of five languages, and teams with a Grid.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 90 against 69
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 76
- Agent ergonomics, 70 against 65
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 25
- Maintenance & community, 94 against 24
- Transparency & trust, 74 against 61

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: No MCP server from the project. The docs point to community servers and say they are third-party


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Airtop | Selenium | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 69 | 90 | Selenium +21 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 89 | Selenium +13 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 70 | Selenium +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 46 | 43 | Airtop +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 60 | Selenium +35 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 24 | 94 | Selenium +70 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 74 | Selenium +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.3 · C** | **73.6 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Airtop | Selenium |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Switchboard Visual Technologies, Inc. (dba Airtop) | Selenium project (Software Freedom Conservancy) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.airtop.ai/api` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary cloud service under Airtop's terms of use. The Node and Python SDKs are MIT per npm and PyPI | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-07-01 | 2026-10-09 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-07-29 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-09-02 | no document linked |
| 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 | 35k stars, 1.8M npm/wk, 6.9M 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.

**Selenium.** Selenium is stable, Apache-2.0 software on 4.51.0 with bindings in five languages, CI passing on trunk, an llms.txt and an agent guide added in September 2026. It has no MCP server of its own, Selenium Manager sends usage statistics by default, and Grid accepts unauthenticated sessions unless a username and password are set.

## 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

### Selenium

1. Install with `pip install selenium` (Python 3.10 or later) and let Selenium Manager fetch drivers. Do not set driver paths
2. Use `WebDriverWait` with expected conditions, never fixed sleeps, and do not mix implicit and explicit waits
3. Set `SE_AVOID_STATS=true` to stop Selenium Manager sending usage statistics
4. Point coding agents at https://www.selenium.dev/llms.txt. Most Selenium 2 and 3 era examples use removed APIs
5. Set `--username` and `--password` before exposing a Grid beyond localhost. Check `http://localhost:4444/status` before creating sessions

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Airtop or Selenium?

Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Airtop's 55.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

### Can an agent call Airtop and Selenium without installing anything?

Airtop has a hosted endpoint at https://api.airtop.ai/api. No hosted endpoint is listed for Selenium.

### Are Airtop and Selenium open source?

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


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Airtop or Selenium

- [agent-browser vs Airtop](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-airtop.md)
- [agent-browser vs Selenium](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-selenium.md)
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