head to head · open source
stagehand vs brightdata-mcp
stagehand has 24,565 GitHub stars, 1,698 forks, 376 open issues and last shipped today. brightdata-mcp has 2,654 stars, 329 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. stagehand leads on adoption by 826% (24,565 vs 2,654 stars). stagehand is written in TypeScript under MIT; brightdata-mcp is written in JavaScript under MIT. stagehand has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, brightdata-mcp 12%. stagehand was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai-agents, browser-automation, data-extraction), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| stagehand | brightdata-mcp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 329 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick stagehand if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick brightdata-mcp if
- You want the brightdata-mcp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and brightdata-mcp fits your workflow better
About stagehand
Stagehand is the MIT licensed SDK for extracting data and interacting with any site on the web, available in TypeScript, Python, and Go, and aimed at developers building AI agents that need to drive a browser the way a person does rather than at engineers writing test suites.
read the full stagehand overview →
About brightdata-mcp
brightdata mcp is a Model Context Protocol server in JavaScript under the MIT license. It exposes web search, page scraping, structured data extraction, browser automation, LLM response collection, and package registry data to AI agents, coding agents, chat assistants, and other MCP compatible clients. It lives in the MCP ecosystem.
read the full brightdata-mcp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is stagehand or brightdata-mcp more popular?
stagehand has 24,565 GitHub stars and brightdata-mcp has 2,654. stagehand has the larger community by that measure.
Are stagehand and brightdata-mcp free?
Both are open source. stagehand is licensed under MIT and brightdata-mcp under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between stagehand and brightdata-mcp?
stagehand is written in TypeScript and brightdata-mcp in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, stagehand or brightdata-mcp?
Choose stagehand if you want the larger community (24,565 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose brightdata-mcp if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.