In-depth architectural comparison of the Browserless MCP and Scrapeunblocker MCP MCP servers. Compare execution transports, security boundaries, tool capabilities, quality scores, and ready-to-paste client installation snippets for Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, and VS Code.
At a Glance & Executive Verdict
Browserless MCP
Browser Automation · Local stdio
Quality: 52/100 (Good) | Auth: API Key required
Scrapeunblocker MCP
Browser Automation · Local stdio
Quality: 63/100 (Good) | Auth: API Key required
Verdict Summary: Choose Browserless MCP if you need specialized Browser Automation tools running via a local process. Choose Scrapeunblocker MCP if your workspace requires Browser Automation integration with local subprocess execution. Both servers can be configured concurrently in your client's mcpServers manifest.
Which MCP Server Should You Choose?
Choose Browserless MCP when:
You need dedicated capabilities in the Browser Automation domain.
You prefer local stdio subprocess transport architecture.
Your security boundary fits: API Key required (Freemium).
Headless browser automation and web scraping infrastructure. Exposes the Browserless smart scraper API to LLM clients over MCP.
Fetch any web page's HTML (or AI-parsed JSON, or Google results) through the ScrapeUnblocker anti-bot API (Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX, Akamai, Shape), using your own API key. Three tools: fetchhtml, fetchparsed, googlesearch. Install: npx -y scrapeunblocker-mcp.
Category & Scope
Tools & Capabilities Breakdown
Browserless MCP Tools (14)
browserless_smartscraper
Scrape a single webpage and return its content as markdown or HTML. Handles JavaScript-heavy pages and anti-bot measures automatically. For content across multiple pages, use `browserless_crawl`; to list a site's URLs, use `browserless_map`.
browserless_search
Search the web using Browserless and optionally scrape each result. Supports web, news, and image search with geo-targeting and time filters.
browserless_map
Discover and map all URLs on a website. Scans via sitemaps and link extraction. Returns URLs with optional titles and descriptions. Useful for site audits and content discovery.
browserless_crawl
Crawl a website and scrape every discovered page. Supports depth control, path filtering, sitemap strategies, and configurable scrape options. Returns scraped content and metadata for each page.
browserless_performance
Ready-to-Paste Client Configurations
Paste either (or both) of these JSON server blocks into your client config file (e.g. claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json).
Browserless MCP is categorized under Browser Automation and uses a local stdio subprocess. In contrast, Scrapeunblocker MCP belongs to Browser Automation using local stdio subprocess. Select Browserless MCP when you need capabilities focused on browser automation and Scrapeunblocker MCP when you require tools for browser automation.
Run Lighthouse audits on any URL. Returns scores and metrics for accessibility, best practices, performance, PWA, and SEO. Optionally filter by category or supply performance budgets.
browserless_function
Execute custom Puppeteer JavaScript on the Browserless cloud. The function receives a `page` object and optional `context`; return `{ data, type }` to control the payload and Content-Type.
browserless_export
Export a webpage via the Browserless `/export` API. Fetches the URL and returns its native content (HTML, PDF, image, etc.) with automatic content-type detection.
browserless_agent
Drive a persistent browser session via a ReAct loop: snapshot the page, plan, batch interactions (click, type, scroll, evaluate, etc.), and re-snapshot. Uses ref-based selectors derived from snapshots, supports multi-tab workflows, screenshots, captcha solving, live URLs, and file upload/download (…
browserless_skill
Load an on-demand recipe for a non-trivial page mechanic (shadow DOM, cookie consent, modals, captchas, dynamic content, snapshot misses, screenshots, tabs). Companion to `browserless_agent`.
browserless_profiles
List the authentication profiles saved for the current token, with cookie and origin counts. Pass a profile's name as `profile` to another tool to reuse its logged-in state.
browserless_account
Read the account behind the current token: plan, unit balance, billing period, and API key names. Never returns API token values.
browserless_usage
Read request and unit consumption: successes, errors, timeouts, queueing, peak concurrency, captchas, proxy bytes and units. Optionally scoped to specific API keys.
+2 more tools listed on main page
Scrapeunblocker MCP Tools (4)
fetch_html
Fetch the fully rendered HTML of any web page through ScrapeUnblocker, bypassing anti-bot protection (Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX, Akamai, Shape). Use this when a normal fetch is blocked (403/429, captcha, 'access denied') or when the page needs a real browser to render. Returns the raw HTML as text.
For pages that need interaction (accept a cookie banner, click a tab, type into a search box, scroll to trigger lazy loading) pass `steps`: an ordered list of browser actions run in a real browser AFTER the page loads, then the resulting HTML is returned. Workflow: first call the `list_elements` tool to discover the real selectors on the page, then build `steps` against them. Steps are NOT idempotent - they run once per call. If a step fails, this tool returns which step failed, why, and the page HTML at that moment so you can fix the selector and retry.
list_elements
Load a page through ScrapeUnblocker and return a JSON list of its notable elements (links, inputs, buttons, selects, etc.) with a ready-to-use `selector` for each, plus tag, text and useful attributes (name, id, type, placeholder, aria_label, href, ...). Read-only and does not interact with the page. This is the discovery half of interactive scraping: call `list_elements` to find the selectors you need, then pass matching `steps` to `fetch_html` to click/type/select and capture the resulting HTML.
fetch_parsed
Fetch a web page through ScrapeUnblocker and return AI-parsed structured JSON instead of raw HTML (e.g. product details, article content). Best for extracting fields from product, listing or article pages without writing your own HTML parsing.
google_search
Run a Google search through ScrapeUnblocker and return the organic results as structured JSON. Use this to discover URLs before fetching them.