# Kernel vs Notte (slim)

> Kernel scores 66.9 (B) to Notte's 59.7 (C) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kernel-vs-notte.md (~5,300 tokens) · this version ~3,130 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kernel-vs-notte.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kernel-vs-notte
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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Kernel scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against Notte's 59.7 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Notte leads on reliability. Both do browser automation.

- Kernel: B 66.9, rank #351 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kernel.min.md
- Notte: C 59.7, rank #680 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/notte.min.md
- Kernel, good for Agents that need hosted, logged-in browsers at scale with stealth and proxies. browserbase, steel, hyperbrowser and anchor-browser are the nearest listings. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 93 against 74; Agent ergonomics, 84 against 75; Security & auth, 81 against 56; Payments & pricing, 65 against 40; Maintenance & community, 90 against 83.
- Notte, good for Teams that want hosted browsers together with agents, vaults for logins, personas with mailboxes and scheduled browser functions behind one key. Ahead on Reliability, 70 against 53. Also Free to start without a card.

| Category | Kernel | Notte |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 53 | 70 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 93 | 74 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 84 | 75 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 81 | 56 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 65 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 90 | 83 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 61 | 62 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Kernel | Notte |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Kernel Technologies, Inc. | Notte Labs Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.onkernel.com/mcp` | `https://api.notte.cc` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Licence | none | Proprietary hosted service under Notte's terms of service. The core repository is SSPL-1.0 and the Node SDK is MIT |
| Tools exposed | 32 | 8 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `com.onkernel/kernel-mcp-server` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-01 | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-15 | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | none | 1.3k npm/wk, 5.1k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Security & auth, Kernel +25: Kernel 81 (Scoped API keys with resource and action policies, project scoping and expiry, and OAuth 2.1 for MCP with project-limited tokens (30). Least privilege through scoped keys, a payment cap for cards through the MCP server and vault writes that need their own action (16). Pages an agent browses are untrusted, and we found no prompt-injection guidance in the docs read (4). Audit log search and export on Start-Up and above (13). SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, PCI DSS and ISO 27001 on the security page and a HackerOne bounty (18). 30 + 16 + 4 + 13 + 18 = 81, before the deduction for the November 2026 incident.); Notte 56 (A Bearer API key from the console, or OAuth on the MCP server with one scope, `email`. No key scopes or rotation guidance found (18). The browser MCP endpoint leaves out administration tools, three of its tools are read-only, and vaults keep stored credentials away from the model. No read-only key or confirmation step found (9). Pages are untrusted content. The only guidance found is one line in the Claude managed agents guide about limiting where a credential may be sent (4). Session replays, a network log endpoint and usage logs give a per-session trail (11). A valid security.txt, a disclosure policy with safe harbour and a three-business-day acknowledgement, and a SOC 2 Type 2 report on the trust centre. The security page says there is no paid bounty (14).)
- Payments & pricing, Kernel +25: Kernel 65 (MPP on POST /mpp/browsers, a 402 challenge paid with a Stripe shared payment token through Link, covering one browser product only, not the API or MCP server (20). Per-second prices public without a login (20). The Developer plan is free with $5 of monthly credit, but whether signup needs a card wasn't stated on the pages read (10). Through MPP an agent gets a browser with no account or key, though a person approves each Link payment (15). 20 + 20 + 10 + 15 = 65.); Notte 40 (No x402, MPP or L402 on Notte's endpoints (0). Unit prices are published without login, re-read on 2 November, $0.01 an hour for browser sessions (listed at $0 on 8 October), $0.05 an hour for browser functions, $10 a GB for residential proxies, $0.20 a GB through your own proxy on Startup, and LLM tokens at the model's price (20). Free plan with $10 of credits and no card (20). A person has to sign up in the console to create a key or approve OAuth (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.)
- Schema & documentation, Kernel +19: Kernel 93 (OpenAPI at kernel.sh/openapi.json and per-endpoint Markdown reference (25). llms.txt with 423 entries and a Markdown twin for each page (10). Endpoint descriptions say when to use alternatives ("For interactive browsing, use GET /audit-logs", pools for bursty traffic) (17). Typed parameters with enums and limits such as memory sizes and timeout maximums (13). Code samples in TypeScript, Python and Go, and documented status codes such as 409 and 204 on pool acquire (13). A dated public changelog and SDK changelogs (15). 25 + 10 + 17 + 13 + 13 + 15 = 93.); Notte 74 (Graded on the REST API. OpenAPI 3.1.0 at api.notte.cc/openapi.json, version 1.10.3 on 2 November, with 110 paths and 137 operations (25). llms.txt on the site and in the docs, a Markdown twin of every docs page and a keyless documentation MCP server (10). Every operation has a summary, 383 of 1,620 schema properties carry a description, and the guides explain each product (12). 312 schemas with 77 enums and ranges such as `max_duration_minutes` up to 1,440. `chrome_args` and `extra_http_headers` are free-form (11). The errors page shows the body format and its statuses, but 131 of 137 operations document only 422 as an error (8). The spec version matches the release tags. No dated API changelog page was found; changes are visible through GitHub tags, the Node SDK's CHANGELOG.md, whose entries carry no dates, and a dated migration page for the observe deprecation (8). 25 + 10 + 12 + 11 + 8 + 8 = 74.)
- Reliability, Notte +17: Kernel 53 (Hosted reading. status.kernel.sh on incident.io with a public incident feed (20). In the 90 days from 8 August it lists browser connection failures on 10 September (54 minutes, major), frozen popups on 1 October (71 minutes, major), elevated API errors on 19 October (4 minutes, critical), proxy failures on 23 October (65 minutes, major) and browser creation errors on 4 November (29 minutes, major), plus minor ones. Several majors, two of them an hour or more (0). Rate limits are per organisation with headers on every response, and concurrency is published per plan, but the create-rate numbers aren't (8). 429 with Retry-After, SDK retries with a typed error, safe retry with the same MPP credential and 409 on concurrent pool changes (15). The terms mention service levels in an order form but no public SLA was found (0). The API and MCP server carry no beta label (10). 20 + 0 + 8 + 15 + 0 + 10 = 53.); Notte 70 (Graded as a hosted API. status.notte.cc on Better Stack publishes a status feed with component events (20). The feed, read on 2 November, runs from 23 July to 27 October 2026. In the 90 days from 4 August the Scrape API (`/scrape`) was down for about 32 hours over 14 days, the longest from 20:14 UTC on 23 October to 16:31 UTC on 24 October (20 hours 17 minutes) and from 04:11 UTC on 23 October for 6 hours 5 minutes. CAPTCHA solving and proxies were down for long stretches, and the Session API for 36 minutes in three short outages. On 17 and 28 August the Session API went down with the Scrape API and CAPTCHA solving (and proxies on 17 August) for under 20 minutes, while the page's API reachability check and the Functions, Vaults and Managed Auth APIs read 100 per cent uptime on 2 November. No outage of the API itself or the whole platform appears. Each outage hit one component or a few for part of the service, which this run reads as partial and minor whatever its length, so minor only (20, was 10). The 8 October reading of the page's JSON data file is set aside, since that file is the page's own data endpoint. Concurrency is published per plan (5, 25, 100), and the rate-limit page, re-read on 2 November, lists per-minute, per-hour and per-day windows on session start, agent start and the prompt helpers without the numbers (8). The docs say to retry 429s with bounded exponential backoff and jitter, that 429s carry no `Retry-After` or `X-RateLimit` headers while 529 does, and to retry only an operation known to be safe to repeat. The SDK retries selected transient failures, and only the payment endpoint takes an idempotency key. Safe-retry guidance without keys (12, was 10). SLAs are listed for Enterprise without published terms (0). The API answered healthy at version 1.10.3 on 2 November (10). 20 + 20 + 8 + 12 + 0 + 10 = 70.)
- Agent ergonomics, Kernel +9: Kernel 84 (Graded mainly on the API, with the MCP server noted. Responses are scoped per resource and the MCP server groups actions into about 32 tools (18). List endpoints page with limit and offset and filter by status (18). Typed SDK errors and documented 409 on concurrent changes, 204 on a pool timeout and 429 (17). Retrying an MPP purchase with the same credential returns the same browser, and the MCP tools carry readOnlyHint where read-only (16). SDKs in TypeScript, Python and Go plus a CLI, with defaults such as a 60-second timeout (15). 18 + 18 + 17 + 16 + 15 = 84.); Notte 75 (The browser MCP endpoint has eight compact tools, and scrape accepts selectors and a structured output schema (22). List endpoints take `page` and `page_size` up to 100, and sessions filter by `only_active` (15). Errors are a `message` and `detail` with six documented statuses and an `x-error-class` header on execution failures (11). An `idempotency-key` header is required on session payments only, stopping a session is documented as safe to repeat, and the MCP docs mark three tools read-only and five as write. We could not list the tools to confirm the annotations (12). Session start has no required fields, and Python and Node SDKs and a CLI are official (15).)
- Maintenance & community, Kernel +7: Kernel 90 (The changelog's latest entry is 16 October 2026 and the MCP server repository has commits on 6 November (30). More than three dated changes in 90 days, scoped keys, memory tiers, GPU tier and card payments among them (20). A closed service with a public changelog, Discord, email support and an open-source MCP server with 210 commits since 8 August (15). Official SDKs in three languages, and the MCP server in the registry as com.onkernel/kernel-mcp-server 1.1.0 (15). CI and tests in the MCP repository (10). 30 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 10 = 90.); Notte 83 (Version 1.10.2 was tagged on 29 October 2026, read from a clone, and the API answered at 1.10.3 on 2 November (30). 25 tags in the 90 days from 4 August, v1.8.29 on 5 August to v1.10.2 (20). The repository had commits on 2 November and the vendor runs a Slack community, but GitHub's pages answered 403, so issue reply times are unread (10 of 25). Current official SDKs in Python and Node. The hosted MCP server was not found in the official MCP registry on 2 November, so we scored the SDK line for an API (15). CI runs tests, coverage thresholds, nightly examples, documentation tests and a dependency-health job. The 8 October note that the notte-mcp package lagged at 1.8.28 came from PyPI's JSON path, which pypi.org's robots.txt disallows, so it is set aside, and that package's current release is unread (8). 30 + 20 + 10 + 15 + 8 = 83.)