Comparison

Steel alternatives, measured.

The main Steel alternatives are Browser Use Cloud, Anchor, Kernel, Browserbase, Browserless and Hyperbrowser. On Stealth Bench V2 (100 bot-protected sites), Browser Use Cloud got through on 90.5% of visits vs Steel 74.5%, at $0.02 per browser-hour vs $0.08 to $0.10. Steel's browser, steel-browser (Apache-2.0), can be self-hosted; Browser Use Cloud is hosted only, and its agent library, browser-use, is open source (MIT).

Create a browser How we measured

Browser Use Cloud: 90.5% got through. 8.5 points ahead of Anchor, the next best.

Browser Use Cloud90.5%
Anchor82%
Kernel80.5%
Browserbase78.5%
Browserless77.5%
Steel74.5%
Hyperbrowser73.5%

Got through · longer is better · scale 0–100%

Stealth Bench V2 · updated 2026-09-25 · all benchmarks

The 100 sites were picked because Browser Use Cloud historically got through where stock Chrome with a US proxy did not. They are hard on purpose and not a balanced sample of the web or of anti-bot vendors. Method and raw results.

90.5%
got through on 100 bot-protected sites; Steel 74.5%: $0.02 / hour
pay as you go; Steel $0.08 to $0.10, $0.08 on the $250/month Scale plan: 493 ms
median session lifecycle on BrowserArena; Steel 3,509 ms

Stealth, price and speed, side by side.

Stealth is our benchmark, with code and raw results public. Prices are from each provider's own page. Session times are from two benchmarks we do not run.

Steel and its alternatives compared on stealth, price and session latency
Provider	Got through Stealth Bench V2	Price per browser-hour	Session lifecycle BrowserArena median	Lifecycle score ComputeSDK
Browser Use Cloud	90.5%	$0.02pay as you go, billed by the minute, no subscription · pricing	493 ms	95.2
Anchor	82%	$0.05plus $0.01 per browser created; full stealth from the $2,000/month Growth plan · source	2,800 ms	Not tested
Kernel	80.5%	$0.06 to $0.48headless to headful, billed per GB-second; plans $0 to $200/month · source	318 ms	96.4
Browserbase	78.5%	$0.10 to $0.12after 100 or 500 hours included in $20 or $99/month plans · source	877 ms	92.8
Browserless	77.5%	$0.18 to $0.24overage, billed in 30-second units; plans $25 to $350/month · source	No result	Not tested
Steel	74.5%	$0.08 to $0.10$0.08 on the $250/month Scale plan; stealth browser on Enterprise · source	3,509 ms	77.2
Hyperbrowser	73.5%	$0.10credits from a subscription or a direct purchase · source	1,417 ms	94.0

Browser Use Cloud
Got through
90.5%
Per browser-hour
$0.02
BrowserArena median
493 ms
ComputeSDK score
95.2
pay as you go, billed by the minute, no subscription · pricing
Anchor
Got through
82%
Per browser-hour
$0.05
BrowserArena median
2,800 ms
ComputeSDK score
Not tested
plus $0.01 per browser created; full stealth from the $2,000/month Growth plan · source
Kernel
Got through
80.5%
Per browser-hour
$0.06 to $0.48
BrowserArena median
318 ms
ComputeSDK score
96.4
headless to headful, billed per GB-second; plans $0 to $200/month · source
Browserbase
Got through
78.5%
Per browser-hour
$0.10 to $0.12
BrowserArena median
877 ms
ComputeSDK score
92.8
after 100 or 500 hours included in $20 or $99/month plans · source
Browserless
Got through
77.5%
Per browser-hour
$0.18 to $0.24
BrowserArena median
No result
ComputeSDK score
Not tested
overage, billed in 30-second units; plans $25 to $350/month · source
Steel
Got through
74.5%
Per browser-hour
$0.08 to $0.10
BrowserArena median
3,509 ms
ComputeSDK score
77.2
$0.08 on the $250/month Scale plan; stealth browser on Enterprise · source
Hyperbrowser
Got through
73.5%
Per browser-hour
$0.10
BrowserArena median
1,417 ms
ComputeSDK score
94.0
credits from a subscription or a direct purchase · source

Got through: share of 200 visits (100 bot-protected sites, 2 runs) where a blind judge confirmed the real site loaded, measured September 25, 2026. Every provider ran with its own proxy, stealth mode and CAPTCHA solver on; Browserbase on its standard mode, since Verified needs an Enterprise plan. Method and raw results.
Prices: each provider's public pricing page, checked October 15, 2026.
Session lifecycle: Median time to create a session, connect over CDP, load a page and release it, over 100 sequential runs. Lower is better. Run of October 14, 2026. Browserless: all 100 runs failed to connect (401), so there is no number. BrowserArena.
Lifecycle score: Composite lifecycle score from median and tail total latency plus create latency, times success rate. Higher is better. Run of October 9, 2026. ComputeSDK.

Moving a Playwright script takes one connect URL.

Both are Chromium over CDP, so selectors, waits and screenshots carry over. You swap one SDK for the other, and browsers.stop() replaces sessions.release(). Stealth, CAPTCHA solving and residential proxies are on by default. The Steel code follows its Playwright docs. Full Playwright guide.

import { chromium } from "playwright-core";import Steel from "steel-sdk"; const STEEL_API_KEY = process.env.STEEL_API_KEY;const client = new Steel({ steelAPIKey: STEEL_API_KEY });const session = await client.sessions.create(); const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(  `${session.websocketUrl}&apiKey=${STEEL_API_KEY}`,);const page = browser.contexts()[0].pages()[0];await page.goto("https://example.com"); await client.sessions.release(session.id);

before.ts·Playwright over CDP

Open source, and what you can run yourself.

Browser Use is open source too. The difference is which half: Steel opens the browser server, Browser Use opens the agent that drives it.

browser-use, the agent library: MIT. Runs agents on your own Chrome or on Browser Use Cloud. The cloud browsers themselves are a hosted service.
steel-browser: Apache-2.0, self-hosted with Docker.
kernel-images: Apache-2.0, runs as a Docker container.
browserless: SSPL-1.0 or a commercial license. Its README says closed-source commercial use needs the commercial license.

When to pick which

Browser Use Cloud: Most sites let you in, lowest price per hour, no subscription. Also a hosted agent when you want the task done, not just a browser. The browser-use agent library is open source (MIT).
Steel: You want to run the browser server yourself. steel-browser is Apache-2.0 and starts with one Docker command, with a hosted cloud on the same API when you do not.
Anchor: Second on Stealth Bench V2 at 82%, with managed logins for agents that sign in to third-party apps.
Kernel: Session start time matters most. Fastest of this group on both third-party lifecycle benchmarks.
Browserbase: Stagehand is central to your stack, you run Selenium, or you want Search, Fetch and Functions from the same vendor.
Browserless: You want to self-host with Docker or Kubernetes, or need Firefox and WebKit next to Chrome.
Hyperbrowser: You want scraping and crawl APIs and sandboxes from the same vendor.

Questions people ask

What are the main Steel alternatives?

Browser Use Cloud, Anchor, Kernel, Browserbase, Browserless and Hyperbrowser. On Stealth Bench V2, 100 sites that block bots, they got through on 90.5%, 82%, 80.5%, 78.5%, 77.5%, 73.5% of visits respectively; Steel got through on 74.5%.

What is the best open-source alternative to Browserbase?

It depends on which part you want to own. To self-host the browser server, Steel's steel-browser (Apache-2.0) runs in Docker. Kernel publishes its browser images, kernel-images (Apache-2.0), which run as Docker containers; its hosted service stays managed. Browserless is SSPL-1.0 or a commercial license. For the agent that drives the browser, browser-use is MIT and runs on your own Chrome or on Browser Use Cloud, which got through on 90.5% of visits on Stealth Bench V2 vs Steel 74.5% and Browserbase 78.5%.

Is Browser Use Cloud cheaper than Steel?

Per hour, yes. Browser Use Cloud is $0.02 per browser-hour, pay as you go, billed by the minute, with residential proxies at $5/GB. Steel is $0.08 to $0.10 per browser-hour: $0.08 on the $250/month Scale plan; stealth browser on Enterprise, with residential proxies at $6 to $10/GB ($6 on the Scale plan), per its pricing page. Self-hosting steel-browser has no Steel bill, but you run the servers, proxies and CAPTCHA handling yourself.

Is Steel faster than Browser Use Cloud?

No. On BrowserArena's October 14, 2026 run, the median time to create, connect, load and release a session was 493 ms for Browser Use Cloud and 3,509 ms for Steel. ComputeSDK's October 9, 2026 lifecycle scores: Browser Use Cloud 95.2, Steel 77.2. Kernel was fastest in this table (318 ms); Tilion, which is not in the stealth benchmark, was fastest on both.

How do I move Playwright code from Steel?

Swap steel-sdk for browser-use-sdk: client.browsers.create() returns a cdpUrl, which goes to connectOverCDP where you passed session.websocketUrl with your API key. Stop it with client.browsers.stop(id) where you called client.sessions.release(id); closing the CDP connection does not stop billing.

How was stealth measured, and was it fair to Steel?

Share of 200 scheduled visits (100 sites × 2 runs) where a judge model, shown the page without the provider name, confirmed the real site loaded within 60 seconds. Every provider ran with its own proxy, stealth mode and CAPTCHA solver on. An independent rerun put Steel at 74% and Browser Use Cloud at 90%. The 100 sites were picked because Browser Use Cloud historically got through where stock Chrome with a US proxy did not. They are hard on purpose and not a balanced sample of the web or of anti-bot vendors. Runner, encrypted site list and raw results are public.