Browser & Computer-Use Agentsfreemium

Steel.dev

Open-source browser API for fleets of cloud browsers

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What Steel.dev does

  • Open-source browser API for fleets of cloud browsers
  • Free launch tier with one-time starting credits, no card required
  • Built-in auto-CAPTCHA solving and proxy management, sessions up to 24h

Steel.dev — straight answers

What is Steel.dev?

Steel.dev is listed under Browser & Computer-Use Agents, in the AI Agents & Automation category on Flocci AI Tools. Open-source browser API for fleets of cloud browsers. It is freemium — a usable free tier with paid plans above it, and it lives at steel.dev.

Is Steel.dev free?

Steel.dev is freemium: there is a free tier you can work in and paid plans above it. It is one of 404 freemium tools in the catalog, all labelled the same way so you are never surprised by a paywall.

What can Steel.dev do?

Steel.dev does 3 things the catalog singles out: Open-source browser api for fleets of cloud browsers; free launch tier with one-time starting credits, no card required; built-in auto-captcha solving and proxy management, sessions up to 24h.

What is the best free alternative to Steel.dev?

Alibaba Page Agent is the closest free alternative: it sits in the same Browser & Computer-Use Agents sub-category and is free. Amazon Nova Act SDK, BrowserOS and MagenticLite also start free. The full list is on the alternatives page.

See the full list →

Steel.dev alternatives

Compare all alternatives →

Browser Use

Browser & Computer-Use Agents
freemium
  • Open-source library to run browser agents locally for free
  • Hosted agent API billed per token + browser-hour
  • Managed browser infrastructure for scaling agents
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Browserbase

Browser & Computer-Use Agents
freemium
  • Free tier: 1 browser-hour/month, 3 concurrent browsers, 3 agent runs
  • Creator of Stagehand, an AI-native browser automation framework
  • Agent identity management for logging into restricted sites
Visit

Skyvern

Browser & Computer-Use Agents
freemium
  • Vision+LLM based automation that survives UI/DOM changes (no brittle selectors)
  • 22,700+ GitHub stars, self-hostable via Docker
  • Used by 500+ enterprises for workflow automation on arbitrary sites
Visit

Firecrawl

Browser & Computer-Use Agents
freemium
  • Converts any site into clean LLM-ready markdown/structured data
  • Free tier: 1,000 credits/month, no card required
  • Crawl, scrape, map and search endpoints purpose-built for RAG/agent pipelines
Visit

Playwright MCP

Browser & Computer-Use Agents
free
  • Official Microsoft MCP server exposing Playwright browser control to any MCP client
  • Uses accessibility snapshots instead of screenshots/vision, faster and more deterministic
  • 36k+ GitHub stars, Apache-2.0 licensed
Visit

Simular

Browser & Computer-Use Agents
freemium
  • Sai: always-on computer-use agent operating a private cloud virtual desktop
  • 72.6% success on computer-use benchmarks, above reported human baseline
  • Works across desktop GUI, APIs, terminals, and code, not just browser tasks
Visit

Head-to-head comparisons

Steel.dev vs Browser UseSteel.dev vs BrowserbaseSteel.dev vs SkyvernSteel.dev vs FirecrawlSteel.dev vs Playwright MCPSteel.dev vs Simular