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Magnitude review

Magnitude is an open-source, vision-first browser agent in TypeScript that controls a browser with natural language for automation, data extraction, and testing.

Updated Nov 1, 2026. Review written Oct 22, 2026 from the project's own sources; usage data refreshed every Monday.

TL;DR

Magnitude is an open-source TypeScript browser agent that uses a visually grounded model to see pages and act on pixel coordinates instead of the DOM structure. Magnitude is for developers who automate web tasks, extract structured data, or test web apps. It includes a test runner with visual assertions and supports both granular actions and higher-level flows.

Magnitude at a glance

Category
Browser and computer use
Maintained by
Magnitude (organization, @magnitudedev on GitHub)
License
Apache 2.0
Language
TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML
Repository
github.com/magnitudedev/browser-agent
Website
magnitude.run
npm package
magnitude-core 0.3.1
Latest release
[email protected] on GitHub, Feb 8, 2026
First published
Mar 20, 2025

What Magnitude does

  • Magnitude navigates web interfaces by looking at them and planning actions with a vision model.
  • Magnitude executes mouse and keyboard actions, such as dragging an item into a column, from natural-language instructions.
  • Magnitude extracts structured data that matches a provided zod schema, including new insights like difficulty ratings.
  • Magnitude ships a test runner, magnitude-test, with visual assertions for testing web apps.
  • Magnitude handles both high-level tasks and low-level actions, and accepts optional data for the agent to use.
  • Magnitude supports custom actions and prompts at the agent and action level.
  • Magnitude offers a pause and resume API as of magnitude-core 0.3.1.

How it works

Magnitude runs as a TypeScript library. You call methods like agent.act and agent.extract. A visually grounded LLM looks at the page and specifies pixel coordinates for each action, so it does not depend on DOM structure. The project ships separate packages: magnitude-core, magnitude-test, magnitude-mcp, and create-magnitude-app.

How to install and start using Magnitude

New automation project

npx create-magnitude-app

Test runner in an existing web app

npm i --save-dev magnitude-test && npx magnitude init

Requirements

  • A large visually grounded LLM. The README recommends Claude Sonnet 4 and also names Qwen-2.5VL 72B as compatible.
  • Node.js tooling with npm and npx to run the install commands.

First steps

  1. Run npx create-magnitude-app to create a project, follow the setup steps, then run the generated example script.
  2. For testing, run the magnitude-test install and init command to create a tests/magnitude directory.
  3. Edit magnitude.config.ts for configuration and use example.mag.ts as a template for test files.
  4. Configure a large visually grounded model, such as Claude Sonnet 4 or Qwen-2.5VL 72B.

Who Magnitude is for

  • Developers automating web tasks or integrating between apps that have no APIs.
  • Teams writing end-to-end tests for web apps with visual assertions.
  • Developers extracting structured data from web pages into typed schemas.
  • Developers building their own browser agents on a TypeScript foundation.

Limitations to know

  • Magnitude needs a large visually grounded model, which rules out small text-only models.
  • Deterministic runs through the native caching system are still in progress, according to the README.
  • Magnitude dropped support for separated grounding in magnitude-core 0.3.0.

Is Magnitude growing? Usage data

Magnitude was not ranked on the Devtoolwatch Board in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026: it needs 25 or more new stars or 1,000 or more added downloads in a week to rank.

New GitHub stars per week for Magnitude12 weeks from Aug 9, 2026: 7, 5, 1, 8, 4, 2, 4, 5, 3, 2, 3, 5 new stars, an average of 4 a week.Aug 9week of Oct 25
New GitHub stars per week for the last 12 weeks, from GitHub's stargazer history (today's stargazers by the week they starred).
Show the weekly numbers
New GitHub stars per week for Magnitude
Week ofNew stars
Aug 9, 20267
Aug 16, 20265
Aug 23, 20261
Aug 30, 20268
Sep 6, 20264
Sep 13, 20262
Sep 20, 20264
Sep 27, 20265
Oct 4, 20263
Oct 11, 20262
Oct 18, 20263
Oct 25, 20265

The Board ranks tools by four signals each week: new stars, new stars for the repo's size, added downloads and download growth beyond the market. How the ranking works.

Magnitude alternatives

Other browser and computer-use agents on the Board in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, by momentum:

Browser and computer use ranked by momentum, the week of Oct 25–31, 2026
RankToolStarsDownloads/wk
#1ego liteego lite is a Chromium-based browser that lets AI agents like Claude Code or Codex run browser automation using your logged-in browser…21k–
#2MoliMoli is an open-source headless browser for AI agents, built in Rust, that fetches, extracts, and automates web pages through CLI, CDP,…21.9k–
#3CuaCua is open-source infrastructure that gives AI agents full desktops, with desktop automation drivers, local VMs, sandboxes, and…31.4k–
#4Browser HarnessBrowser Harness is an open-source Python tool that lets Claude Code, Codex or Cursor control your real Chrome browser, logged in as you.18.8k3.3M
#5Jev UltrafastJev Ultrafast is an open-source Python browser agent that picks an operation and an indexed page element per step, using TypeSafe's Jev.24k–
#6StagehandStagehand is an SDK for building browser agents that automate and extract data from websites using natural language, in TypeScript,…25.9k3M

All browser and computer-use agents, ranked

Recent Magnitude releases

Magnitude FAQ

Is Magnitude free and open source?

Yes. Magnitude's source code is on GitHub (magnitudedev/browser-agent) under the Apache 2.0 license, so you can use it for free.

How do I install Magnitude?

Run npx create-magnitude-app. The install section above has the other options from the project's README.

Is Magnitude still maintained?

Activity has slowed: the magnitudedev/browser-agent repository was last updated on Feb 8, 2026, and the latest release, [email protected] on GitHub, came out on Feb 8, 2026.

How popular is Magnitude?

Magnitude has 4.1k GitHub stars as of Nov 1, 2026. It gained 5 new stars in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, against a 12-week average of 4 a week.

What are the best alternatives to Magnitude?

Other browser and computer-use agents on the Devtoolwatch Board in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, by momentum: ego lite (#1), Moli (#2), Cua (#3), Browser Harness (#4), Jev Ultrafast (#5). The alternatives table above has their numbers.

How is Magnitude different from DOM-based browser agents?

Magnitude is vision-first. A visually grounded LLM specifies pixel coordinates instead of drawing numbered boxes around DOM elements. The README says this generalizes better on complex modern sites and can extend to desktop apps and VMs.

Which models does Magnitude work with?

Magnitude needs a large visually grounded model. The README recommends Claude Sonnet 4 and lists Qwen-2.5VL 72B as compatible. In release 0.3.1, the default model changed to Haiku 4.5.

Can Magnitude run tests in CI/CD?

Yes. Magnitude includes the magnitude-test runner, and its docs explain how to run tests and integrate them into CI/CD.

Does Magnitude have an MCP server?

Yes. Magnitude publishes a magnitude-mcp package. Version 0.1.3 added a stability wait after MCP action sets.

How does Magnitude extract data?

Magnitude uses agent.extract with an instruction and a zod schema. It returns data that matches the schema and can add derived fields, such as a difficulty rating.

Sources

  1. magnitudedev/browser-agent on GitHub
  2. Magnitude README
  3. magnitude-core on npm
  4. Magnitude website
  5. Release [email protected] (Feb 8, 2026)
  6. Release [email protected] (Feb 8, 2026)
  7. Release [email protected] (Feb 8, 2026)
  8. Devtoolwatch Board, the week of Oct 25–31, 2026

Magnitude README badge

Maintainers can show the tool's weekly Board rank in their README:

Devtoolwatch badge for Magnitude

[![Devtoolwatch](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/badge/magnitude.svg)](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/tools/magnitude/)

How this page is made: Devtoolwatch writes each review from the project's README, releases, package metadata and website, with an AI model, then checks every claim against the source it cites and drops what the sources don't support. The numbers come from Devtoolwatch's daily GitHub snapshots, GitHub's stargazer history, and the npm and PyPI download APIs. Spotted an error? Email [email protected].