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Head to head · Browser automation · October 2026 research run

Notte vs Selenium

Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Notte's 63.2 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Notte leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do browser automation.

Best browser automation tools for AI agents · All 120 browser comparisons

NotteNotte Labs Inc. · HTTP API B63.2/100#429 of 1076 SeleniumSelenium project (Software Freedom Conservancy) · SDK + MCP BB73.6/100#90 of 1076

Which one, for what

Notte B

Best 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 70
  • Security & auth, 56 against 43

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

Selenium BB

Best for Agents that write test or automation scripts in any of five languages, and teams with a Grid.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 90 against 58
  • Schema & documentation, 89 against 74
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 94 against 83
  • Transparency & trust, 74 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 from the project. The docs point to community servers and say they are third-party

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNotteSeleniumEdge
Reliability16%205890Selenium +32
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27489Selenium +15
Agent ergonomics13%16.27570Notte +5
Security & auth14%17.55643Notte +13
Payments & pricing10%12.54060Selenium +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88394Selenium +11
Transparency & trust7%8.86174Selenium +13
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 63.2/100BB 73.6/100

Facts side by side

FactNotteSelenium
KindHTTP APISDK + MCP
VendorNotte Labs Inc.Selenium project (Software Freedom Conservancy)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.notte.ccno (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary hosted service under Notte's terms of service. The core repository is SSPL-1.0 and the Node SDK is MITApache-2.0
Tools exposed8none
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-072026-10-09
Terms last updatedcouldn't be readno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedcouldn't be readno document linked
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Popularity1.3k npm/wk, 5.1k PyPI/wk35k stars, 1.8M npm/wk, 6.9M PyPI/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.

Selenium

Selenium is stable, Apache-2.0 software on 4.51.0 with bindings in five languages, CI passing on trunk, an llms.txt and an agent guide added in September 2026. It has no MCP server of its own, Selenium Manager sends usage statistics by default, and Grid accepts unauthenticated sessions unless a username and password are set.

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

Selenium

  1. Install with pip install selenium (Python 3.10 or later) and let Selenium Manager fetch drivers. Do not set driver paths
  2. Use WebDriverWait with expected conditions, never fixed sleeps, and do not mix implicit and explicit waits
  3. Set SE_AVOID_STATS=true to stop Selenium Manager sending usage statistics
  4. Point coding agents at https://www.selenium.dev/llms.txt. Most Selenium 2 and 3 era examples use removed APIs
  5. Set --username and --password before exposing a Grid beyond localhost. Check http://localhost:4444/status before creating sessions

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Notte or Selenium?

Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Notte's 63.2 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Notte leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth.

Can an agent call Notte and Selenium without installing anything?

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

Are Notte and Selenium open source?

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

Other comparisons with Notte or Selenium

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