Pick Chrome DevTools MCP if
front-end engineers whose coding agent should debug the Chrome tab they already have open.
Read the Chrome DevTools MCP pageChrome DevTools MCP vs Playwright
Our take
Pick Chrome DevTools MCP if you're front-end engineers whose coding agent should debug the Chrome tab they already have open. Pick Playwright if you're on a team who will stay on the OSS runner at $0 while they open a first Trace Viewer — then add their own CI, not Cypress Cloud Team $67 first unless they want Cypress’s hosted dashboard. Skip Chrome DevTools MCP if you're on a team that need Firefox/WebKit E2E or
Best for
Chrome DevTools MCP Network, console, and performance traces on a live Chrome tab
Playwright A trace you start at a public $
Free plan
Chrome DevTools MCP $0 · apache-2.0. npx -y chrome-devtools-mcp@latest. You bring Chrome and an MCP client
Playwright No free plan
Lowest paid
Chrome DevTools MCP Not published by the vendor
Playwright Not published by the vendor
Coding agent
Chrome DevTools MCP Claude Code
Playwright
Runs where
Chrome DevTools MCP
Playwright Hosted
Watch out
Chrome DevTools MCP Chrome only
Playwright No hosted cloud runner in core
Last checked
Chrome DevTools MCP 2026-11-01 · github.com/ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp
Playwright 2026-10-23 · playwright.dev
Which one, then?
Pick Playwright if
teams who will stay on the OSS runner at $0 while they open a first Trace Viewer — then add their own CI, not Cypress Cloud Team $67 first unless they want Cypress’s hosted dashboard.
Read the Playwright page