Browserless MCP in Perplexity
Perplexity connects to the hosted Browserless MCP server as a custom remote connector, authenticated with your API token. Once it's connected, Perplexity can scrape, search, crawl, and drive a cloud browser with the Browserless MCP tools.
- A Browserless API token from your account dashboard
- A Perplexity account that can add custom connectors
Connect to the hosted server
The hosted server runs at https://mcp.browserless.io/mcp, so there's nothing to install.
Perplexity connects to hosted MCP servers through custom remote connectors. On organization accounts, an admin may need to turn on Allow members to add custom connectors first.
- Open Account settings → Connectors.
- Click + Custom connector, then select Remote.
- Enter
Browserlessas the name andhttps://mcp.browserless.io/mcpas the MCP server URL. - Under Authentication, select API Key and paste your Browserless API token.
- Under Transport, select Streamable HTTP.
- Acknowledge the custom connector warning and click Add.
- Click the new connector card to enable it.
Enable the Browserless connector for a thread before asking Perplexity to use its tools.
To use a region other than US West, add an x-browserless-api-url header, or a browserlessUrl query parameter on the server URL for clients that only take a URL. See regional endpoints.
Check the connection
Enable the Browserless connector for a new thread, then ask Perplexity to fetch a page with Browserless and check it calls a Browserless tool.
FAQ & Troubleshooting
I don't see the Custom connector option
On organization accounts, custom connectors are off for members by default. Ask your Perplexity admin to turn on Allow members to add custom connectors.
Can I sign in with OAuth instead of an API token?
Use the API key. Perplexity's OAuth callback URL isn't on the hosted server's list of allowed redirect URIs, so choosing OAuth fails when Perplexity registers the connector.
The server connects but every tool call returns 401 Unauthorized
The token is missing or wrong. Copy it again from your account dashboard and check the header reads Bearer followed by the token, with no quotes or trailing whitespace inside the value. If you used an environment variable, confirm it's set in the environment the client was launched from. GUI apps started from the dock or Start menu don't see variables exported in your shell profile.
The connection fails with an SSE error like Non-200 status code (400)
The hosted server speaks Streamable HTTP only and doesn't support the legacy SSE transport. Check the client entry is using its HTTP transport (see the config above), not an SSE one.