# Anchor Browser vs Lightpanda (slim)

> Anchor Browser scores 67.4 (B) to Lightpanda's 61.6 (C) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-lightpanda.md (~2,950 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-lightpanda.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-lightpanda
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-10-30
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Anchor Browser scores 67.4 (B) on agent readiness against Lightpanda's 61.6 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Lightpanda leads on maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do browser automation.

- Anchor Browser: B 67.4, rank #286 of 1239 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/anchor-browser.min.md
- Lightpanda: C 61.6, rank #542 of 1239 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lightpanda.min.md
- Anchor Browser, 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 65; Security & auth, 54 against 46; Payments & pricing, 60 against 40. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.
- Lightpanda, good for Agents and crawlers that read and fill many JavaScript pages in parallel on small machines, without needing pixel rendering. Ahead on Maintenance & community, 73 against 57; Transparency & trust, 65 against 53. Also No key needed to call it; Runs on your own machine; Open source.

| Category | Anchor Browser | Lightpanda |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 65 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 80 | 82 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 73 | 75 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 54 | 46 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 57 | 73 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 53 | 65 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Anchor Browser | Lightpanda |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | MCP server |
| Vendor | Anchor Forge Inc. | Selecy SAS (Lightpanda) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.anchorbrowser.io` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Licence | 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 | AGPL-3.0 for the browser. The npm wrapper @lightpanda/browser and the agent skill are Apache-2.0. Lightpanda Cloud is a closed service with no terms of service found |
| Tools exposed | none | 32 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-07-28 | 2026-10-23 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-02-24 | 2026-08-03 |
| Popularity | 43k npm/wk, 10k PyPI/wk | 9.3k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (4) | none |