# Playwright MCP vs Puppeteer (slim)

> Puppeteer scores 70.6 (BB) to Playwright MCP's 67.6 (B) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/playwright-mcp-vs-puppeteer.md (~2,500 tokens) · this version ~580 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/playwright-mcp-vs-puppeteer.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/playwright-mcp-vs-puppeteer
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-14

Puppeteer scores 70.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Playwright MCP's 67.6 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Playwright MCP leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do browser automation.

- Playwright MCP: B 67.6, rank #259 of 1076 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/playwright-mcp.min.md
- Puppeteer: BB 70.6, rank #154 of 1076 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/puppeteer.min.md
- 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 67; Security & auth, 57 against 52. Also Runs on your own machine.
- Puppeteer, good for Agents that write and run Node.js scripts against Chrome or Firefox. Ahead on Reliability, 80 against 57; Schema & documentation, 81 against 70; Maintenance & community, 89 against 84. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better.

| Category | Playwright MCP | Puppeteer |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 57 | 80 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 70 | 81 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 84 | 67 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 57 | 52 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 84 | 89 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 72 | 70 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Playwright MCP | Puppeteer |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Microsoft | Google |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) |  |
| Tools exposed | 72 | none |
| MCP registry | `io.github.microsoft/playwright-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-08 |
| Popularity | 37k stars, 5.3M npm/wk | 96k stars, 11.5M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |