Steel Review, Pricing & Alternatives (2026)

Steel describes itself as infrastructure, not an agent: developers build agents with the OpenAI Agents SDK, LangChain, CrewAI, Browser Use or their own code, then point them at Steel to get a real browser. The core project, Steel Browser, is open source on GitHub and can run on your own machines through Docker, while Steel Cloud is the hosted service with managed scaling, stealth and proxies. The company runs public launch weeks, and its third, in June 2026, shipped a Stealth Browser, Dedicated IPs, native Rust and Go SDKs, an open-source deep research framework called Atlas, and a new pricing model.

The Sessions API starts a browser in under a second, according to Steel, and returns a WebSocket URL that existing Playwright, Puppeteer or Selenium scripts can connect to with no agent code required. Sessions can be resumed with the same cookies, tabs and state, and persistent browser profiles keep signed-in workflows alive between runs. A live session viewer lets people watch or take over a running browser, which helps with logins and approvals. Other tools include a Files API for uploads and downloads inside sessions, a /scrape endpoint that returns page content in formats such as Markdown, screenshots and PDFs, and SDKs for Python, Node.js, Rust and Go.

Steel focuses on the hard parts of letting AI agents browse. On Steel Cloud, CAPTCHA solving detects and solves challenges as the agent browses, including Cloudflare Turnstile, PerimeterX press-and-hold and image CAPTCHAs, with a CAPTCHAs API that reports progress. Residential proxies and stealth settings reduce how often challenges appear. The Stealth Browser, a Chromium fork that loads a consistent fingerprint before page scripts run, is available to Enterprise customers. Dedicated IPs give an agent a stable network origin so it returns as the same visitor. Steel offers an MCP server and setup guides for Claude, Codex, Cursor and Gemini, so coding agents can configure it for you.

Pricing changed in June 2026 to metered usage on three plans. Launch has no monthly fee and includes $30 of one-time credits valid for 90 days, 10 concurrent sessions, sessions up to 15 minutes and up to three seats. Usage costs $0.10 per browser hour, $10 per GB of proxy bandwidth, $3 per 1,000 CAPTCHA solves and $5 per 1,000 /scrape calls. Scale costs $250 a month plus usage, includes $100 of credits each month, and lowers rates to $0.08 per browser hour, $6 per GB and $1 per 1,000 CAPTCHAs, with 100 concurrent sessions and one-hour sessions. Enterprise is custom, with 1,000-plus sessions and SLAs.

Steel's strengths are an open-source core you can self-host, transparent metered pricing, fast session starts and agent-friendly features such as human takeover and persistent profiles. Its weaknesses are that stealth browsing is Enterprise-only, the Launch plan caps sessions at 15 minutes, and proxy-heavy workloads can add up. Browserbase is the closest hosted rival, with its Stagehand framework. Browserless offers Puppeteer and Playwright compatibility with BrowserQL and a self-hosted image. Hyperbrowser and Anchor Browser target agent workloads, and Firecrawl suits teams that only need page content. Choose Steel if you want open-source browser infrastructure for agents with clear usage billing.