# Browserless vs Selenium (slim)

> Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) to Browserless's 70.4 (BB) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-vs-selenium.md (~2,600 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-vs-selenium.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-vs-selenium
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-14

Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Browserless's 70.4 (BB), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Browserless leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do browser automation.

- Browserless: BB 70.4, rank #158 of 1076 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/browserless.min.md
- Selenium: BB 73.6, rank #90 of 1076 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/selenium.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 Agent ergonomics, 78 against 70; Security & auth, 53 against 43. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card.
- Selenium, good for Agents that write test or automation scripts in any of five languages, and teams with a Grid. Ahead on Reliability, 90 against 82; Payments & pricing, 60 against 40; Maintenance & community, 94 against 82; Transparency & trust, 74 against 62. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.

| Category | Browserless | Selenium |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 82 | 90 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 89 | 89 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 78 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 53 | 43 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 82 | 94 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 62 | 74 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Browserless | Selenium |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | browserless.io, Inc. | Selenium project (Software Freedom Conservancy) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://production-sfo.browserless.io` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| 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 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-05 | 2026-10-09 |
| 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 | 35k stars, 1.8M npm/wk, 6.9M PyPI/wk |