Steel | Open-source Headless Browser API

# Steel > Steel is an open-source cloud browser infrastructure platform for AI agents. It gives your agent a real browser that can navigate pages, fill forms, solve CAPTCHAs, persist auth, and extract content from modern websites. Steel is the fastest remote browser in independent benchmarks: 0.89s average lifecycle, 1.7x to 9x faster than alternatives. ## Who Steel is for - **AI agent builders** who need reliable, authenticated web access in production. - **Scraping and data extraction teams** who want managed browser infrastructure without running headless Chrome themselves. - **Automation engineers** migrating Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium scripts to the cloud. - **Teams that need persistent browser state**: login sessions, cookies, credentials, and extensions that survive across runs. ## For coding agents - [Install guide](https://setup.steel.dev/install.md): Install the Steel CLI, add the `steel-browser` skill, authenticate, and verify with `steel scrape`. - [Steel CLI + Skill](https://docs.steel.dev/overview/steel-cli): Learn the terminal workflow, `steel browser` commands, and agent skill setup. - [Steel Browser Skill Package](https://github.com/steel-dev/cli/tree/main/skills/steel-browser): Install the dedicated skill for coding agents. ## Why Steel - **Performance**: 0.89s avg browser lifecycle (p95: 1.09s). 25.6% control-plane tax, the lowest measured in independent testing. - **Open source**: Core browser runtime at [github.com/steel-dev/steel-browser](https://github.com/steel-dev/steel-browser). Benchmark code at [github.com/steel-dev/browserbench](https://github.com/steel-dev/browserbench). - **Self-hostable**: Run Steel in your own infrastructure with Docker or Railway one-click deploy. No vendor lock-in. - **Framework agnostic**: Works with Playwright, Puppeteer, and Selenium. Native Node and Python SDKs. - **Production ready**: Profiles for persistent auth, CAPTCHA solving, stealth/proxy tooling, agent logs, and live session debugging. #