# Browserbase: MCP server status, API access gate and what it does

> A hosted headless-browser service (sessions, proxies, stealth, session recording) with Stagehand, its... Official MCP, Free to start. Checked 2026-09-07.

*Markdown twin of the HTML page at the same path. Same content, no navigation, no styling, no scripts. Links below point at other twins. Site map for machines: [llms.txt](../llms.txt). The whole dataset: [directory.json](../data/directory.json).*

*Maintained by Andrew McGuire (https://andrewcmcguire.com), who also publishes https://gtmsignals.co and https://justsaid.ai.*

---
[Directory](../index.md) /
[Data & Enrichment](../categories/data-enrichment.md) /
Browserbase

# Browserbase

[Official MCP](../mcp/official.md)
[Free to start](../gates/free.md)
[Data & Enrichment](../categories/data-enrichment.md)
RESEARCHED
Checked 2026-09-07
CLI: bb9

> **RESEARCHED** Facts from public sources with URLs. No usage claims. Nobody has run this tool. The other tier is BENCH-TESTED, which means Andrew personally ran the tool on a stated date and cannot be bought at any price. Across the whole directory that count is 1.

Vendor: [browserbase.com](https://browserbase.com) · entry id 01-browserbase · source 01-data-enrichment.md line 930

**What it does**
A hosted headless-browser service (sessions, proxies, stealth, session recording) with Stagehand, its natural-language browser automation layer, so agents can navigate, act on and extract from web pages that plain HTTP fetching cannot reach.

**AI features, separated from automation with an AI label on it**
The browser hosting is infrastructure. Stagehand's act, observe and extract tools take natural-language instructions and use a model to pick page elements and pull data; the MCP setup docs expose a model flag ("The model to use for Stagehand"), so the AI is a configurable layer on top of the browser.

**RevOps role**
The browser layer under an enrichment or research agent for pages behind logins, JavaScript rendering or anti-bot walls; the step after Firecrawl or Tavily fail on a target site.

**MCP server**

- **Status bucket**: Official MCP

- **Auth**: api key passed as a browserbaseApiKey query parameter on the endpoint URL; the docs list it as "Required for tool calls". Six tools: navigate, act, observe, extract, start, end, each taking an optional sessionId.

- **Parsed URLs**: 2 found in the mcp_url field

- **Endpoint probe**: not probed yet

The vendor ships and maintains the server itself. A wrapper built by Zapier, Composio or a similar third party does not count as official. The status was established on 2026-09-07 and the MCP URL has not been probed live yet.

mcp_status, verbatim from the file:

official

mcp_url, verbatim from the file:

https://mcp.browserbase.com/mcp (docs: https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/mcp/setup)

- [https://mcp.browserbase.com/mcp](https://mcp.browserbase.com/mcp)
- [https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/mcp/setup](https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/mcp/setup)

**What this server exposes**

- **Tools named**: 6
- **Strongest evidence**: answered tools/list
- **Harvested**: 2026-09-27
- **Catalogue shape**: a fixed catalogue the vendor publishes

A tool below is one the server NAMES. Nobody has called it. That is the same two tier honesty rule the rest of the directory runs on: a named tool is research, and BENCH-TESTED stays the only claim that anybody ran anything.

- **act** Perform an action on the page evidence: answered tools/list · calling it reads · required: action

- **end** Close the current Browserbase session evidence: answered tools/list · calling it reads

- **extract** Extract data from the page evidence: answered tools/list · calling it reads

- **navigate** Navigate to a URL evidence: answered tools/list · calling it reads · required: url

- **observe** Observe actionable elements on the page evidence: answered tools/list · calling it reads · required: instruction

- **start** Create or reuse a Browserbase session evidence: answered tools/list · calling it writes

141 of the 741 entries that record an official or community MCP server carry a harvested tool list. The other 600 are unmeasured, which is not the same as empty. Harvest last run 2026-09-27. Every name across every server is on the [tools index](../tools-index.md).

**Command line**

- **Binary**: bb9
- **Status**: official CLI, first party
- **Strongest evidence**: vendor-docs
- **Harvested**: 2026-09-27

Install, as the source shows it:

```
npm install -g browse
```

quoted from [https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/skills/browse-cli](https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/skills/browse-cli) on 2026-09-27, via npm

```
npm install -g @browserbasehq/bb9
```

quoted from [https://www.npmjs.com/package/@browserbasehq/bb9](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@browserbasehq/bb9) on 2026-09-27, via npm

Login or key hint seen on the page:

export BROWSERBASE_API_KEY = "your_api_key"

13 subcommands seen with the binary in the docs or README:
expand to read them

back, click, cloud, fill, functions, open, screenshot, skills, snapshot, status, stop, topics, workflows

Packages seen, with the version on 2026-09-27:

- [npm: @browserbasehq/bb9 1.2.20](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@browserbasehq/bb9)
- [npm: @agentos-software/browserbase 0.3.3, third party](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@agentos-software/browserbase)

Where it was documented:

- [https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/skills/browse-cli](https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/skills/browse-cli) (the page that documented the CLI)

A CLI being listed means the harvest found an install command or a package on a stated date. Nobody has run it. Every command is quoted verbatim from the URL beneath it. Harvest date 2026-09-27.

**Access gate**

- **Gate bucket**: Free to start

- **Can a solo operator reach it**: Yes, without talking to anyone

api_gate, verbatim from the file:

free - the pricing page lists Free at $0/mo with "1 browser hour", 3 concurrent browsers, "15 minutes /session", "1,000 Search calls" and "1,000 Fetch calls"; Developer $20/mo ("100 browser hours then $0.12/browser hr"), Startup $99/mo ("500 browser hours then $0.10/browser hr"), Scale custom.

**API documentation**

No documentation URL recorded.

727 of 1252 entries are in the same position. Blank is legal and it is published as blank.

**GitHub health**

Not measured. github_url, github_stars, github_last_commit and github_archived are null on every entry in this build.

The refresh rail specced in SPEC section 7.2 has not been run. An unstamped star count is a lie, so nothing is shown rather than something stale.

A github.com URL already appears somewhere in this entry, which is a seed for that rail and not a measurement of repo health:

- [https://github.com/browserbase/mcp-server-browserbase](https://github.com/browserbase/mcp-server-browserbase)

**On GitHub**

[github.com/browserbase](https://github.com/browserbase) tied to the vendor by rule 3, account website https://www.browserbase.com has the vendor's domain, confidence strong

- **Public repositories**: 60, forks excluded, as read on 2026-09-08
- **Mention MCP**: 1 of them
- **Look like CLIs**: 2 of them
- **Latest push**: 2026-09-08

The five most recently pushed, on 2026-09-08:

| Repository | Kind | Description | Stars | Pushed | Latest release |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [stagehand](https://github.com/browserbase/stagehand) | SDK | The SDK For Browser Agents | 24,174 | 2026-09-08 | stagehand-server-v3/v3.7.6 |
| [sdk-python](https://github.com/browserbase/sdk-python) | SDK | Python SDK for Browserbase | 92 | 2026-09-03 | v1.18.1 |
| [sdk-node](https://github.com/browserbase/sdk-node) | SDK | Node.js SDK for Browserbase | 64 | 2026-09-03 | v2.19.1 |
| [skills](https://github.com/browserbase/skills) | other | Browserbase's official collection of agent skills to access the web. | 3,715 | 2026-09-02 | |
| [sdk-functions-node](https://github.com/browserbase/sdk-functions-node) | SDK | The Browserbase Functions SDK lets you define, develop, and deploy serverless browser automation functions on... | 4 | 2026-08-28 | |

Kind is a heuristic guessed from the repository name, topics and description, not a fact the vendor stated. A repository count is activity, not a verdict. Read 2026-09-08.

**Jobs it can do**

No job tag on this entry.

981 of 1,252 entries are untagged. An empty list here means nobody has tagged this, not that the tool does nothing. The vocabulary is closed, so a tool whose job is genuinely not in it stays blank rather than being forced into the nearest tag.

**Sources**

- [https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/mcp/setup](https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/mcp/setup)
- [https://www.browserbase.com/pricing](https://www.browserbase.com/pricing)
- [https://mcp.browserbase.com/mcp](https://mcp.browserbase.com/mcp)
- [https://github.com/browserbase/mcp-server-browserbase](https://github.com/browserbase/mcp-server-browserbase)

4 source URLs. Raw sources field, verbatim:

https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/mcp/setup, https://www.browserbase.com/pricing, https://mcp.browserbase.com/mcp, https://github.com/browserbase/mcp-server-browserbase

**Notes, verbatim from the file**
Verified 2026-09-07: POST of an MCP initialize to https://mcp.browserbase.com/mcp with no key returned HTTP 200 with a JSON-RPC result, serverInfo name "stagehand-api" (protocolVersion 2025-03-26); the control POST to /zzz-not-a-route returned 404. Initialize succeeds keyless and, per the docs, the key is enforced at tool-call time. The candidate row's proposed alternative category was mcp-infrastructure; it lands here because its GTM use is data collection, the same reasoning as Bright Data. One browser hour a month on Free is a demo allowance, not a working allowance. 2026-09-07: https://mcp.browserbase.com/mcp returned 200 with a JSON-RPC initialize result to an MCP initialize POST (https://mcp.browserbase.com/mcp). 2026-09-09 (P6-04 repo sweep): first-party server source recorded at https://github.com/browserbase/mcp-server-browserbase, 3,404 stars. GitHub reports the repository ARCHIVED with its last push on 2026-07-20, so the source is readable but frozen; the hosted endpoint in mcp_url is the live surface. Evidence that it is Browserbase's own: the official MCP registry entry io.github.browserbase/mcp-server-browserbase carries that repository URL, npm @browserbasehq/mcp declares the same repository, and the org browserbase lists browserbase.com as its site.

**Provenance**

- **Entry id**: 01-browserbase

- **Source file**: 01-data-enrichment.md

- **Source line**: 930

- **Tier**: RESEARCHED

- **last_checked**: 2026-09-07

- **Data baked**: 2026-09-27

Every field above is rendered from directory.json exactly as the build produced it. Nothing is summarised and nothing is dropped. The one change made at render time is typographic and it is disclosed on the [methodology page](../methodology.md).