BROWSER USE

- Browser Use Agents: give Browser Use a task and receive completed work. API V4 is current for new integrations.
- Browser Infrastructure: connect your agent or automation to managed browsers through SDK, REST, or CDP. Starts at $0.02/browser-hour.
- Developer tools: Open Source, Browser Harness, SDK, and MCP support the two products above.

[Developer Index](https://browser-use.com/index.md)
[Product Map](https://browser-use.com/llms.txt)
[Full Product Context](https://browser-use.com/llms-full.txt)
[Pricing](https://browser-use.com/pricing.md)
[Cloud Docs](https://docs.browser-use.com/cloud/quickstart)
[Open Source Docs](https://docs.browser-use.com/open-source/introduction)

---

# Steel alternatives

> 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).

[HTML page](https://browser-use.com/alternatives/steel) · [Stealth benchmark](https://browser-use.com/benchmarks/browsers) · [Pricing](https://browser-use.com/pricing.md)

## Stealth, price and speed, side by side

| Provider | Got through (Stealth Bench V2) | Price per browser-hour | Session lifecycle (BrowserArena median) | Lifecycle score (ComputeSDK) |
|---|---:|---|---:|---:|
| Browser Use Cloud | 90.5% | $0.02 | 493 ms | 95.2 |
| Anchor | 82% | $0.05 | 2,800 ms | Not tested |
| Kernel | 80.5% | $0.06 to $0.48 | 318 ms | 96.4 |
| Browserbase | 78.5% | $0.10 to $0.12 | 877 ms | 92.8 |
| Browserless | 77.5% | $0.18 to $0.24 | No result | Not tested |
| Steel | 74.5% | $0.08 to $0.10 | 3,509 ms | 77.2 |
| Hyperbrowser | 73.5% | $0.10 | 1,417 ms | 94.0 |

- Got through: share of 200 visits (100 bot-protected sites, 2 runs) where a judge model, shown the page without the provider name, confirmed the real site loaded within 60 seconds. Measured September 25, 2026. Every provider ran with its own proxy, stealth mode and CAPTCHA solver on. The sites were picked because Browser Use Cloud historically got through where stock Chrome with a US proxy did not, so they are hard on purpose and not a balanced sample of the web or of anti-bot vendors. An independent rerun put Steel at 74% and Browser Use Cloud at 90%. [Method, code and raw results](https://browser-use.com/benchmarks/browsers)
- Prices, checked October 15, 2026, from each provider's public page:
  - Browser Use Cloud: pay as you go, billed by the minute, no subscription; residential proxies $5/GB. [Pricing](https://browser-use.com/pricing.md)
  - Steel: $0.08 on the $250/month Scale plan; stealth browser on Enterprise; residential proxies $6 to $10/GB ($6 on the Scale plan). [Source](https://steel.dev/pricing)
  - Anchor: plus $0.01 per browser created; full stealth from the $2,000/month Growth plan. [Source](https://docs.anchorbrowser.io/pricing)
  - Kernel: headless to headful, billed per GB-second; plans $0 to $200/month. [Source](https://www.kernel.sh/docs/info/pricing)
  - Browserbase: after 100 or 500 hours included in $20 or $99/month plans; residential proxies $10 to $12/GB. [Source](https://www.browserbase.com/pricing)
  - Browserless: overage, billed in 30-second units; plans $25 to $350/month. [Source](https://www.browserless.io/pricing)
  - Hyperbrowser: credits from a subscription or a direct purchase. [Source](https://hyperbrowser.ai/docs/pricing)
- Session lifecycle: median time to create a session, connect over CDP, load a page and release it, over 100 sequential runs, BrowserArena run of October 14, 2026. Browserless: all 100 runs failed to connect (401), so there is no number. [BrowserArena](https://www.browserarena.ai/?percentile=median&sort=latency&date=2026-10-14)
- Lifecycle score: ComputeSDK composite of median and tail total latency plus create latency, times success rate, run of October 9, 2026. Higher is better. [ComputeSDK](https://www.computesdk.com/benchmarks/browsers/lifecycle)

## Best open-source alternative to Browserbase

It depends on which part you want to own. Browser Use is open source too; Steel opens the browser server, Browser Use opens the agent that drives it.

- [browser-use](https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use), the agent library: MIT. Runs agents on your own Chrome or on Browser Use Cloud, which got through on 90.5% of Stealth Bench V2 visits vs Steel 74.5% and Browserbase 78.5%. The cloud browsers themselves are a hosted service.
- [steel-browser](https://github.com/steel-dev/steel-browser): Apache-2.0, self-hosted with Docker. Self-hosting has no Steel bill, but you run the servers, proxies and CAPTCHA handling yourself.
- [kernel-images](https://github.com/kernel/kernel-images): Apache-2.0, runs as a Docker container.
- [browserless](https://github.com/browserless/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](https://browser-use.com/web-agents.md) when you want the task done, not just a browser. The [browser-use](https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use) agent library is open source (MIT).
- **Steel**: you want to run the browser server yourself. [steel-browser](https://github.com/steel-dev/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, 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.

## Move a Playwright script from Steel

Both are Chromium over CDP. 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. Call `client.browsers.stop(id)` where you called `client.sessions.release(id)`; closing the CDP connection does not stop billing. The Steel code follows [its Playwright docs](https://docs.steel.dev/integrations/playwright).

```ts
// Before: Steel
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}`,
);
// ...
await client.sessions.release(session.id);

// After: Browser Use Cloud
import { BrowserUse } from "browser-use-sdk/v4";
const client = new BrowserUse();
const session = await client.browsers.create();
const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(session.cdpUrl!);
// ...
await client.browsers.stop(session.id); // closing CDP does not stop billing
```

[Remote browser for Playwright](https://browser-use.com/playwright.md)

## Speed

On BrowserArena's October 14, 2026 run, the median session lifecycle 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.