The dynamics of spilling breakers in the presence of surfactants were studied experimentally. The spilling breakers were produced from Froude-scaled mechanically generated dispersively focused wave packets with average frequencies of 1.15, 1.26 and 1.42 Hz. Separate experiments were performed with the same wave-maker motions in clean water and in water with various bulk concentrations of the soluble surfactants sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and Triton X-100 (TX). For nearly all surfactant conditions, the surface-pressure isotherm, equilibrium surface elasticity and surface viscosity were measured in situ in order to characterize the dynamic properties of the free surface. In clean water, all the waves considered herein break without overturning of the free surface. This breaking process begins with the formation of a bulge on the forward face of the wave crest and capillary waves upstream of the leading edge of the bulge (called the toe). After a short time, the flow separates under the toe and a turbulent flow is developed while the toe moves rapidly down the wave face. During the toe motion, a train of ripples appears between the toe and the crest and this train of ripples is swept downstream. In the presence of surfactants, the bulge shape is modified and its size generally decreases with increasing surfactant concentration. The capillary waves found upstream of the toe in the clean-water case are dramatically reduced at even the lowest concentrations of surfactants. With surfactants, the start of the breaking process is still initiated when the toe begins to move down the forward face of the wave. The pattern of ripples generated between the toe and the crest of the wave during this phase of the breaking process varies with the concentration of surfactant. It was found that the temporal history of the vertical distance between the toe and the wave crest scales with the nominal length $(\sigma_0/\rho g)^{1/2}$ while the bulge length from toe to crest scales with the nominal length $(\mu_s/\rho \sqrt{g})^{2/5}$, where $\sigma_0$ and $\mu_s$ are the ambient surface tension and the surface viscosity, respectively.