# Lightpanda vs Playwright MCP (slim)

> Playwright MCP scores 67.7 (B) to Lightpanda's 61.6 (C) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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Playwright MCP scores 67.7 (B) on agent readiness against Lightpanda's 61.6 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lightpanda leads on reliability and schema & documentation. Both do browser automation.

- Lightpanda: C 61.6, rank #542 of 1239 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lightpanda.min.md
- Playwright MCP: B 67.7, rank #279 of 1239 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/playwright-mcp.min.md
- Lightpanda, good for Agents and crawlers that read and fill many JavaScript pages in parallel on small machines, without needing pixel rendering. Ahead on Reliability, 65 against 57; Schema & documentation, 82 against 70. Also 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 75; Security & auth, 57 against 46; Payments & pricing, 60 against 40; Maintenance & community, 84 against 73; Transparency & trust, 74 against 65.

| Category | Lightpanda | Playwright MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 65 | 57 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 82 | 70 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 75 | 84 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 46 | 57 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 73 | 84 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 65 | 74 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Lightpanda | Playwright MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Selecy SAS (Lightpanda) | Microsoft |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | 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 | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 32 | 72 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.microsoft/playwright-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-23 | 2026-09-28 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-08-03 | no document linked |
| Popularity | 9.3k npm/wk | 37k stars, 5.3M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |