Why screenshot MCPs cost 170x less than Playwright MCP (and when that matters)

Why screenshot MCPs cost 170x less than Playwright MCP (and when that matters) You're building an AI agent. You need it to interact with web pages. Two MCP approaches: Accessibility tree MCPs (like Playwright MCP) — Claude gets full DOM tree, can click buttons, fill forms Screenshot MCPs (like PageBolt MCP) — Claude sees a visual screenshot, can reason about layout Which is cheaper to run? Screenshot MCPs cost ~170x less per page. $0.09 vs $15.30 for the same task. But there's a tradeoff. Each approach wins in different scenarios. The token cost difference: accessibility trees vs screenshots Accessibility tree (Playwright MCP) When your agent needs to interact with a page, Playwright MCP provides an accessibility tree: { "nodes" : [ { "id" : 1 , "role" : "button" , "text" : "Add to Cart" , "selector" : "button.add-to-cart" , "children" : [] }, { "id" : 2 , "role" : "textbox" , "name" : "email" , "value" : "" , "children" : [] }, ... // 500 + nodes for a typical e-commerce page ] } A ty