Overview
Steel.dev provides an open-source browser API and a managed cloud service to run headless browsers (Puppeteer, Playwright, Selenium) for AI agents and web automation. Users access a cloud API to launch and control browsers, with fast session starts, and the service handles scaling, pooling, and reliability behind the scenes. It differentiates itself by offering an open API alongside a fully managed platform focused on AI agents, with regional performance and usage-based pricing. Its goal is to let clients focus on building products rather than maintaining browser fleets by providing scalable, dependable browser infrastructure for automation and data extraction.
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Simplify's take
What believers are saying
- July 2026 Stripe Projects integration validates enterprise workflow adoption and product credibility.
- June 2026 pricing simplification should improve conversion for usage-heavy agent teams.
- Steel's managed proxies failed 0.4% versus 9% customer proxies, strengthening reliability claims.
What critics are saying
- OpenAI, Browserbase, and similar providers can compress Steel's browser-API pricing in 2027.
- Customer-supplied proxy failures at 9% still create support debt and blamed outages.
- A Hermes integration pending upstream shows adoption depends on outside maintainers.
What makes Steel unique
- Open-source Steel Browser pairs with cloud fleets, Rust, Go, and Playwright support.
- June 2026 Stealth Browser and Dedicated IPs target agent reliability, not generic scraping.
- Steel embeds directly into Stripe Projects and Hermes Agent, widening distribution.
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