browser-tools-mcp vs chrome-devtools-mcp
browser-tools-mcp: BrowserTools MCP empowers AI applications to monitor and interact with browsers through a Chrome extension and Anthropic's Model Context Protocol. It offers a suite of tools for web development audits, including accessibility, performance, and SEO analysis, enhancing AI's capability to understand and improve web pages.; chrome-devtools-mcp: chrome-devtools-mcp enables AI coding assistants like Gemini, Claude, and Copilot to interact with a live Chrome browser via the Model-Context-Protocol (MCP). It grants AI full access to Chrome DevTools for reliable automation, deep debugging, and detailed performance insights.
Chrome DevTools MCP now covers similar ground (performance traces, network and console inspection, screenshots) from the Chrome team, with fewer moving parts. Browser Tools MCP's distinguishing points are its Lighthouse audit tools and its use of your already-open browser through an extension.
TL;DR
- You use Cursor or a similar IDE agent and want it to read console logs, network activity, screenshots and the currently selected DOM element from your own Chrome.
- You want Lighthouse-based audits for accessibility, performance, SEO and best practices from within the agent.
- You want browser logs kept local: the README says logs are stored on your machine and never sent to a third-party service.
- You want the agent to click through and drive pages; this tool is aimed at monitoring and auditing, not full automation.
- You do not want to install a Chrome extension and run a separate local Node server alongside the MCP server.
- You want the most actively developed option: the latest release in the data we checked was v2.0.2 on 2026-08-12.
- You want an agent to record a Chrome performance trace and get insights from it; the README lists performance_start_trace, performance_stop_trace and performance_analyze_insight.
- You need to inspect network requests, console messages and screenshots of a page while debugging it.
- You want the agent to attach to a Chrome you already have running, using --browser-url, --ws-endpoint or --autoConnect (Chrome 144+).
- You need Firefox or Safari: the project is built on Chrome DevTools and targets Chrome.
- You want a general-purpose automation or test runner across browsers; Playwright MCP is the closer fit.
- You cannot run Node.js 20.19 or newer, which the README lists as a requirement.
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