# Notte vs Selenium

> Selenium scores 73.6 (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-selenium
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/notte-vs-selenium.md (~2,550 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/notte-vs-selenium.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/notte-vs-selenium.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

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.

- 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
- Selenium: grade BB, 73.6/100, rank #90 of 1076. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/selenium.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/selenium.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 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)

Good 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

| Category | Weight | Notte | Selenium | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 58 | 90 | Selenium +32 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 89 | Selenium +15 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 70 | Notte +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 56 | 43 | Notte +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 60 | Selenium +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 94 | Selenium +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 74 | Selenium +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.2 · B** | **73.6 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Notte | Selenium |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Notte Labs Inc. | Selenium project (Software Freedom Conservancy) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.notte.cc` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | 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 | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-09 |
| 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 | 35k 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).


## For agents

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

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