# Browserless vs Playwright MCP (slim)

> Browserless scores 70.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Playwright MCP's 67.6 (B), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Playwright MCP leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do browser automation. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent…

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-vs-playwright-mcp.md (~2,450 tokens) · this version ~830 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-vs-playwright-mcp.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-vs-playwright-mcp
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-08

Browserless scores 70.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Playwright MCP's 67.6 (B), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Playwright MCP leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do browser automation.

- Browserless: BB 70.4, rank #128 of 629 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/browserless.min.md
- Playwright MCP: B 67.6, rank #189 of 629 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/playwright-mcp.min.md
- Browserless, good for Agents that need a real browser in the cloud with stealth, proxies and CAPTCHA solving, and teams that want the option of running the same server themselves. Ahead on Reliability, 82 against 57; Schema & documentation, 89 against 70. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Free to start without a card.
- Playwright MCP, good for The default choice for an agent that drives web pages by structure rather than pixels. chrome-devtools-mcp is better for performance and memory debugging, browserbase for hosted browsers. Ahead on Agent ergonomics, 84 against 78; Payments & pricing, 60 against 40; Transparency & trust, 72 against 62. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.

| Category | Browserless | Playwright MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 82 | 57 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 89 | 70 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 78 | 84 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 53 | 57 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 82 | 84 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 62 | 72 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Browserless | Playwright MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | MCP server |
| Vendor | browserless.io, Inc. | Microsoft |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://production-sfo.browserless.io` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | SSPL 1.0 or a commercial licence for the core server and the MCP server. The BAP TypeScript SDK is MIT. BrowserQL, stealth and other cloud additions are proprietary | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 14 | 72 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.microsoft/playwright-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-05 | 2026-09-28 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 14k stars, 3.5k npm/wk | 37k stars, 5.3M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |