# Notte vs Puppeteer

> Puppeteer scores 70.6 (BB) to Notte's 63.2 (B) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/notte-vs-puppeteer
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/notte-vs-puppeteer.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/notte-vs-puppeteer.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/notte-vs-puppeteer.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-14

Puppeteer scores 70.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Notte's 63.2 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Notte leads on agent ergonomics. Both do browser automation.

- Notte: grade B, 63.2/100, rank #429 of 1076. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/notte.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/notte.json
- Puppeteer: grade BB, 70.6/100, rank #154 of 1076. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/puppeteer.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/puppeteer.json
- Best browser automation tools for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/browser/index.md
- All 120 browser comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browser/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Notte (B)

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:
- Agent ergonomics, 75 against 67

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: status.notte.cc shows the Scrape API down on 15 of 90 days (about 6 hours in total) and CAPTCHA solving at 88.9 per cent availability

### Puppeteer (BB)

Good for: Agents that write and run Node.js scripts against Chrome or Firefox.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 58
- Schema & documentation, 81 against 74
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 89 against 83
- Transparency & trust, 70 against 61

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: No MCP server, CLI or llms.txt of its own. The docs point agents to the separate chrome-devtools-mcp project


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Notte | Puppeteer | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 58 | 80 | Puppeteer +22 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 81 | Puppeteer +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 67 | Notte +8 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 56 | 52 | Notte +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 60 | Puppeteer +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 89 | Puppeteer +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 70 | Puppeteer +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.2 · B** | **70.6 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Notte | Puppeteer |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Notte Labs Inc. | Google |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.notte.cc` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under Notte's terms of service. The core repository is SSPL-1.0 and the Node SDK is MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 8 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-08 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read |  |
| Popularity | 1.3k npm/wk, 5.1k PyPI/wk | 96k stars, 11.5M npm/wk |

## Verdicts

**Notte.** Notte publishes an OpenAPI 3.1 contract for 100 operations, a hosted MCP server with eight tools and OAuth, and a free plan with $10 of credits and no card. Its status page records about six hours of Scrape API downtime in 90 days, and a bot check blocked our read of the terms and privacy policy.

**Puppeteer.** Puppeteer is a stable, Apache-2.0 library on 25.13.0, with ten releases since 27 July 2026, typed APIs, locators that wait and retry, and accessibility snapshots an agent can read. It has no MCP server or llms.txt of its own, and 10 of the 20 most recent CI runs on main failed between 7 and 13 October 2026.

## Before you call either

### Notte

1. Send `Authorization: Bearer $NOTTE_API_KEY` to https://api.notte.cc. A person creates the key in the console at console.notte.cc first
2. Stop every session when the task ends. Sessions close after 3 idle minutes or 15 minutes in total by default, and the Free plan caps a session at 15 minutes
3. Use https://api.notte.cc/mcp for browser work. Function and agent administration tools are only on https://api.notte.cc/mcp/full
4. Back off on 429 and on 529, which means the cluster has too many sessions. The SDKs do not retry rate limits for you
5. Download session replays within 24 hours. The recordings page says they are deleted after that

### Puppeteer

1. Install with `npm i puppeteer`, which downloads a matching Chrome for Testing. Use `puppeteer-core` to bring your own browser
2. Prefer `page.locator()` over `page.$()`. Locators wait for the element to be visible and stable before acting
3. Read pages with `page.accessibility.snapshot({interestingOnly: true})` rather than full HTML to keep output short
4. Catch `TimeoutError` separately from `TargetCloseError`. The first can be retried, the second needs a new page or browser
5. Packages are ESM only since 25.0.0. Use `import puppeteer from 'puppeteer'` rather than `require`

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Notte or Puppeteer?

Puppeteer scores 70.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Notte's 63.2 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Notte leads on agent ergonomics.

### Can an agent call Notte and Puppeteer without installing anything?

Notte has a hosted endpoint at https://api.notte.cc. No hosted endpoint is listed for Puppeteer.

### Are Notte and Puppeteer open source?

No open-source release is listed for Notte. Puppeteer is open source (Apache-2.0).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/notte-vs-puppeteer.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/notte-vs-puppeteer.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "notte", "b": "puppeteer"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare notte puppeteer`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/notte.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/puppeteer.json

## Other comparisons with Notte or Puppeteer

- [agent-browser vs Notte](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-notte.md)
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