Steel
by Steel · Open-source cloud browser API for AI agents
BenchRank score
Screenshots of Steel
Homepage
Overview
Steel is an open-source browser API for running fleets of browsers in the cloud, aimed at AI agents and web automation. The Sessions API creates sessions on demand, and existing Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium scripts connect with a one-line change. Sessions run up to 24 hours, and cookies and local storage can be saved and reinjected across runs.
- Best for
- Developers running Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium browser automation for AI agents in the cloud
- Pricing
- Launch is $0/month with $30 of one-off credits, Scale is $250/month with $100 of credits each month, and Enterprise is custom priced; all plans add usage charges on top, and the usage rates are not shown.
- Runs on
- WebSelf-hostedCLI
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- Open source; self-hostable with a Docker container
- Existing Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium code needs a 1-line change
- Built-in CAPTCHA solving, proxy and fingerprint controls
- Session Viewer for debugging live or recorded sessions
Trade-offs
- Every plan charges usage on top of the monthly fee; rates are on another page
- Large gap between the $0 Launch tier and the $250/month Scale tier
- Sessions are capped at 24 hours
- 1,000+ concurrent sessions and reserved browser pools need Enterprise
How Steel markets itself
A structured read of the promise, proof and page design on Steel’s captured homepage.
Homepage capture
“Browser Infrastructure for AI Agents”
- Angle: AI-native
- Hero: Illustration
Pricing
Published plans and prices from Steel’s own pricing page.
How this score is made up
Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.
MCP support
Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.
API quality
Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.
Documentation
Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.
Agent friendliness
How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.
Pricing transparency
Whether real prices are published, self-serve signup exists, and usage costs are knowable without a sales call.
Changelog
A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.
Marketing site structure
Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.
Page speed
How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.
Operational trust
Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.
Measured, but not part of the score
Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.
Openness
Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.
Maintenance
Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.
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Where this comes from
The Steel pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.
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