How do I install DLBrowser?

Copy the stdio config for Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or VS Code on this page. It uses the publisher's install, not a PlugMCP proxy.

Does DLBrowser need an API key?

The publisher lists these environment variables: DLBROWSER_API_KEY.

What transport does DLBrowser use?

DLBrowser runs locally over stdio.

When was DLBrowser last checked?

Last checked 2026-11-09. Self-healing web access for AI agents — recovers through bot blocks, captchas and JS pages.

DLBrowser MCP server

Power your agent

Add this server

The publisher's own command. Not a PlugMCP endpoint.

Add to Cursor Add to VS Code Run on PlugMCP

Host a copy with our keys and logs.

Local command

uvx dlbrowser==4.0.2

Credentials from the publisher

DLBROWSER_API_KEY — API key for the hosted gateway. Optional — DLBrowser runs fully local without it.

Claude Code has no install link for a local command. Copy the command below and run it in a terminal.

shClaude Code

1DLBROWSER_API_KEY=<secret> claude mcp add io.github.dekryptlabs-dlbrowser -- uvx dlbrowser==4.0.2

Run in a terminal.

jsonClaude Desktop

1{2  "mcpServers": {3    "io.github.dekryptlabs-dlbrowser": {4      "command": "uvx",5      "args": [6        "dlbrowser==4.0.2"7      ],8      "env": {9        "DLBROWSER_API_KEY": "<secret>"10      }11    }12  }13}

claude_desktop_config.json

Local · pypiPublisher installStep-by-step: add this in Claude

Remote URL or a command on your machine? How the two installs differ

Run on PlugMCP

Host a copy with our keys and logs.

A new server you create. It is not this listing's official endpoint. Use the publisher install when you want their URL and their credentials.

Launch

Server facts

Local

Transport: stdio
Version: 4.0.2
API key

Tools

No tool list yet. Remote servers get one after the first health check.

FAQ

Questions

DLBrowser

Your AI agent is blind to the half of the web that fights back.

Cloudflare, captchas, and JavaScript walls block the tools agents use to browse — silently. DLBrowser is the one that gets through. One line. Self-healing. Metered to the credit.

npx dlbrowser connect --key dlb_xxx

Wires DLBrowser into Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline & Codex in one command. Your agent gets 11 web tools that actually reach the page.

The 60-second try

pip install dlbrowser
dlbrowser fetch https://example.com

Every fetch tells you which backend got through and how long it took — because the engine picks the cheapest one that works and only escalates when a site fights back:

{ "success": true, "backend": "curl_cffi", "load_time": 0.03, "blocked": false }

And every run is metered against a plan, in the open — no surprise invoice:

{ "plan": "scout", "remaining_daily": 497, "remaining_monthly": 2497,
  "upgrade_url": "https://dekryptlabs.github.io/dlbrowser/pricing.html" }

That's a real response from the live gateway. Start free — 2,500 credits, no card.

Why your agent needs this

You wire web access into an agent. It works in the demo. Then it meets the real web:

One site loads with a 50ms HTTP request. The next is an empty React shell until JS runs.
Cloudflare and DataDome quietly serve your headless browser a challenge page.
Your agent's built-in fetch returns "" — not an error, an empty string — and keeps going.
You have no idea which sites failed, which backend would've worked, or what any of it cost.

DLBrowser is the capability layer that fixes this. Not a scraper. Not a crawler. Acquisition infrastructure for AI agents — reliable, observable, billable.

The engine: start cheap, escalate only when blocked

curl_cffi  →  tls_client  →  playwright  →  nodriver (CDP)  →  firecrawl
  ~50ms         ~200ms        full JS        max stealth       last resort
  HTTP-level, no browser       │            browser-level, real Chromium
                               └── auto-escalates when a block is detected

~70% of real fetches never need a browser. Starting with a 50ms request and climbing the ladder only on a detected block keeps you fast and cheap — while still getting through the sites that stop everything else. Five backends. Firecrawl has two. Crawl4AI has one.

What resets your expectations


🔁 Self-healing fallback	Five backends auto-escalate on block. Your agent stops getting an empty string.
💸 Per-run cost telemetry	Every run logs backend, credits, and estimated cost to a queryable ledger. No competitor exposes this. Your CFO can finally answer "what does our web data cost?"
🪙 Token-efficient	Returns clean markdown/extracted content, not raw HTML — ~4× fewer tokens into your agent's context on content pages (measured). Lower API cost, more window, better signal.
🎯 No JS multipliers	1 credit per page on any backend. Firecrawl & ScrapingBee charge 5–7× for JS rendering.
🔒 Atomic metering	Reservation-based — 0% overshoot, even under concurrency. You're never billed past your quota.
🧠 LLM extraction	Natural language → structured JSON. Runs against a local/free model — no cloud key required.
📦 MIT, self-hostable	Full feature parity self-hosted. Your data never leaves your infra. The hosted gateway just saves you running proxies + captcha infra.
🔌 MCP-native	11 tools with use-first descriptions, so your agent reaches for DLBrowser over its flaky built-in browser.

Fewer tokens, cleaner signal

Raw HTML pours tags, scripts, and boilerplate into your agent's context — you pay tokens for noise, and the model burns attention parsing <div class> soup. DLBrowser returns clean markdown or extracted content instead.

Real measurement through the live gateway — a Wikipedia article:

Mode	Tokens (approx)	vs raw HTML
Raw HTML	~57,000	—
Markdown	~13,000	~77% fewer
Article	~42,000	~27% fewer

~4× less context per fetch on a content page — lower API cost, more room in the window, and better signal for the model to reason over. Savings vary by page (a sparse link list saves little, and your agent picks the mode) — so measure your own:

import asyncio, tiktoken
from hermes_browser import fetch          # pip install dlbrowser
enc = tiktoken.get_encoding("cl100k_base")
raw = asyncio.run(fetch(url, mode="html"))["content"]["html"]
md  = asyncio.run(fetch(url, mode="markdown"))["content"]["markdown"]
print(len(enc.encode(raw)), "→", len(enc.encode(md)), "tokens")

One line, every host

npx dlbrowser connect --key dlb_xxx
# detects and configures: claude-code · claude-desktop · cursor · windsurf · cline · codex

Or point any MCP client at the free hosted demo gateway (try it with no local setup — some features are gated on the demo; self-host for the full engine):

claude mcp add dlbrowser --transport http \
  --url https://api.dekryptlabs.com \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer dlb_xxx"

Your agent immediately has: fetch · scrape · smart_extract · screenshot · markdown · crawl · search · serp · status · account · topup.

Can I trust it? (architecture)

Agent / CLI / Extension / MCP client
        │
   ┌────┴─────┐
   │ Gateway  │  Paywalled — 401 no key · 402 over quota · free: status/account
   └────┬─────┘
   ┌────┴─────┐
   │  Router  │  Adaptive per-domain scoring: success · latency · cost · freshness
   └────┬─────┘
   ┌────┴─────────────────────────────┐
   │  curl_cffi → tls → playwright →  │  self-healing cascade
   │  nodriver → firecrawl            │
   └────┬─────────────────────────────┘
   ┌────┴─────┐
   │  Ledger  │  per-run backend · credits · cost · trace_id (OpenTelemetry)
   └──────────┘

The router learns per-domain — more usage, better routing. Everything above the gateway is MIT and self-hostable. Read the code before you trust it; that's the point of open source.

Can it beat Cloudflare?

On many real sites, with no browser at all. We tested 5 Cloudflare-protected sites from a datacenter IP with no residential proxy (worst case):

Site	Result	How
nowsecure.nl (CF challenge test)	✅ pass	TLS impersonation
crunchbase.com	✅ pass	curl_cffi, 0.3s, no browser
nike.com	✅ pass	curl_cffi, 1.2s, no browser
g2.com	❌ 403	Cloudflare Enterprise — datacenter IP blocked by reputation
zillow.com	❌ 403	Enterprise + captcha — needs residential IP

3/5 passed on HTTP-level TLS impersonation alone. The two failures weren't fingerprint failures — they're IP-reputation blocks that need residential-proxy routing (supported, disabled in this test). No tool beats Cloudflare universally; DLBrowser's answer is layered escalation. Full methodology + "what beating Cloudflare actually means" → marketing/cloudflare.md.

We have not published broad head-to-head benchmarks vs Firecrawl/Crawl4AI yet — those are next, with the methodology published alongside. We don't print numbers we made up. Don't trust our table — run it on your own hardest sites:

pip install "dlbrowser[full]" && python3 -m playwright install chromium
dlbrowser fetch <a-url-that-blocks-your-current-tool>   # see the backend that got through

Pricing

Plan	Price	Credits	Daily cap	Backends	Captcha	Proxy	LLM	Keys
Scout	Free	2,500 one-time	500	curl_cffi	—	—	—	1
Analyst	$29/mo	100,000/mo	5,000	+ tls_client	—	—	50k	3
Operator	$85/mo	500,000/mo	25,000	+ playwright	✓	—	200k	10
Command	$299/mo	2,000,000/mo	100,000	all + nodriver	✓	✓	1M	50
Enterprise	from $999/mo	10M–100M+/mo	—	all + dedicated	✓	✓	∞	∞

1 credit = 1 page, any backend. Annual 20% off. Self-hosting is free forever. Full pricing → PRICING.md · hosted: dekryptlabs.github.io/dlbrowser/pricing.html

Will my company approve it?

Multi-tenant — organizations, teams, seats, roles
API keys — create, revoke, rotate, scope, expire (SHA-256 hashed)
Audit logs — immutable event ledger: who did what, when, at what cost
Webhooks — HMAC-SHA256 signed, with a dead-letter queue
SLA monitoring — scheduled page diffing with noise-tolerant change detection
Self-hosted — Docker one-liner, full feature parity, data stays in your network

Enterprise plans publish real prices (from $999/mo) — no "call us" black box. [email protected]

When not to use DLBrowser

You need pre-built datasets → Bright Data / Apify
You need a visual scraping IDE → Octoparse
You need screenshot-as-a-service → Urlbox

DLBrowser is for teams running AI agents that need reliable, observable, cost-controlled web access at scale.

Docs

Resource	Link
Getting Started	GETTING_STARTED.md
Integrations (LangChain / LlamaIndex)	INTEGRATION_QUICKSTART.md
Self-Hosted Deploy	DEPLOYMENT.md
Comparison vs Firecrawl / Crawl4AI	COMPARISON.md

💜 Sponsor DLBrowser

DLBrowser is MIT and free forever, and we keep a free hosted demo gateway running for everyone. Sponsoring funds new backends, published benchmarks, site-specific scrapers, and keeps the free tier free. If it saves your agents from getting blocked — or saves you tokens — please consider it.

Become a sponsor → · tiers from $10/mo to $1,000/mo. Full perks in SPONSORS.md. $25/mo and up puts your name (or logo, at $100+) in the banner below — seen by everyone who visits the repo, the PyPI page, and the npm page.

Our sponsors

Give your agent the whole web.

npx dlbrowser connect --key dlb_xxx

Built by Dekrypt Labs · MIT License · [email protected]

mcp-name: io.github.DekryptLabs/dlbrowser

Add this server

Host a copy with our keys and logs.

Server facts

Tools

Questions

How do I install DLBrowser?

Does DLBrowser need an API key?

What transport does DLBrowser use?

When was DLBrowser last checked?

Documentation

DLBrowser

Your AI agent is blind to the half of the web that fights back.

The 60-second try

Why your agent needs this

The engine: start cheap, escalate only when blocked

What resets your expectations

Fewer tokens, cleaner signal

One line, every host

Can I trust it? (architecture)

Can it beat Cloudflare?

Pricing

Will my company approve it?

When not to use DLBrowser

Docs

💜 Sponsor DLBrowser

Our sponsors