Browserbase vs Steel
Browserbase and Steel both hand your agent a cloud Chrome over CDP, with proxies, CAPTCHA solving and saved logins. Browserbase is a wider platform with 6-hour sessions, four regions and its own search, fetch and agent APIs, while Steel is an open-source browser you can host yourself, with 1-hour sessions on Scale and browsers in us-east.
The companies and products
Browserbase
Browserbase calls itself the complete platform to build and deploy agents that browse and interact with the web like humans: browsers, search, fetch, functions, model access and identity behind one API key.
Its core product is a headless Chrome session you drive over CDP with Playwright, Puppeteer or its open source Stagehand SDK, with proxies, CAPTCHA solving, saved browser profiles (Contexts), live view and session replays. Around it sit Search and Fetch APIs, short TypeScript Functions that run next to the browser, a Model Gateway and hosted Agents that work from a plain language goal. It is a browser platform, not a general sandbox: you get a browser, not a shell or root on the machine, so this page compares where the two overlap, which is agents that browse.
Steel
Steel is an API that runs fleets of cloud browsers for AI agents: you create a session, connect Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium, and release it when done.
Each Steel session is a headful Chromium in a VM in Steel's cloud, driven over CDP or through a computer-use input API, with a live viewer you can embed. Around it Steel sells managed proxies, CAPTCHA solving, saved browser profiles, a credentials vault that signs in for the agent, a files API and readable traces. It is a different kind of product from boat: a managed browser, not a general sandbox, so this page compares where the two overlap, which is agents that use a browser.
Which use cases each one fits
For each use case, Battleships prices every sandbox provider on the same workload and sorts them from the cheapest monthly bill up. “24th cheapest of 367” means 23 of the other 366 providers run that workload, with every feature it needs, for less. “With limits” means the provider runs it but misses something, so it is listed after every full match. Open a use case for its whole ranking and what each provider misses.
| Use case and its workload | Browserbase: price rank | Steel: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Neither gives a shell, Docker or a disk, so installs, builds and tests need a machine like boat's. | 140th of 367, with limits $1,255 a month | 124th of 367, with limits $1,115 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that works all month runs into a session cap on both: 6 hours on Browserbase and 1 hour on Steel Scale, so it keeps restarting from a saved profile; boat has no session cap on paid plans. | 259th of 366, with limits $3,699 a month | 238th of 366, with limits $3,070 a month | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month | 270th of 345, with limits $382 a month | 264th of 345, with limits $333 a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month 300 sandboxes at once is more than the 100 browsers Browserbase Startup and Steel Scale allow, and each user gets a browser rather than a machine. | 250th of 361, with limits $1,099 a month | 244th of 361, with limits $990 a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 264th of 360, with limits $5,049 a month | 257th of 360, with limits $4,150 a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month | 349th of 364, with limits $449 a month | 348th of 364, with limits $400 a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month | 244th of 377, with limits $152 a month | 239th of 377, with limits $120 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box has to keep its files and processes, and both rebuild the browser for each session, so this fits boat. | 251st of 368, with limits $96 a month | 241st of 368, with limits $73 a month | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Steel has a computer-use input API and human takeover for its browser, Browserbase acts on pages through Stagehand, and boat streams a 60fps desktop where an agent can use any Linux app. | 159th of 369, with limits $416 a month | 148th of 369, with limits $367 a month | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month All three fit: Browserbase and Steel give a managed Chrome with proxies and CAPTCHA solving, and boat gives Chromium on a full VM where the same agent can also run code. | 24th cheapest of 367 $449 a month | 25th cheapest of 367 $470 a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month Both fit at startup scale; Browserbase also sells Search and Fetch APIs so some pages need no browser, and Steel sells scrape, screenshot and PDF tools per call. | 55th cheapest of 346 $537 a month | 56th cheapest of 346 $540 a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month Both are built for sites that block bots, with residential proxies and CAPTCHA solving; Browserbase adds Verified browsers on Scale and Steel a stealth browser on Enterprise, while boat uses datacenter IPs. | 13th of 338, with limits $9,799 a month | 9th of 338, with limits $7,950 a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 229th of 360, with limits $291 a month | 220th of 360, with limits $242 a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Browserbase | Steel | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | Managed headless Chrome, plus Search, Fetch, Functions, a Model Gateway and hosted browser Agents | A managed headful Chromium per session over CDP, with proxies, profiles, a credentials vault and a files API | A full Linux VM per sandbox, with a desktop and Chromium inside |
| Isolation | 1 browser per VM in its own subnet; the VM is destroyed after each session | Each session is a Chromium in a VM, per the docs; the VM type is not named | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Machine size | Not published; billed per browser hour | Not published; billed per browser hour | 4 vCPU / 8 GB by default, up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB by plan |
| Shell, Docker and nested virtualization | No shell on the browser VM; hosted Agents and Functions get a shell in a short TypeScript runtime | No shell; you reach the browser through CDP and the REST API | SSH, root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Session length | 15 minutes on Free, 6 hours on Developer and Startup, 6+ hours on Scale | 15 minutes on Launch, 1 hour on Scale, up to 24 hours on Enterprise | No session cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| Files after a session | Contexts keep the browser profile (cookies, localStorage, IndexedDB), encrypted at rest | Files API keeps session files; profiles keep cookies and logins (300 MB, deleted after 30 days unused) | The disk persists, with snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Browser and computer use | Chrome with live view, session replay and logs; Stagehand act, extract and observe | Headful Chrome, a computer-use input API, an embeddable live view with human takeover, mobile mode and traces | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use on any app, embeddable stream |
| Bot detection | Residential proxies in 200+ countries, CAPTCHA solving on paid plans, Verified browsers on Scale | Residential proxies, CAPTCHA solving and dedicated IPs on paid plans; a stealth browser on Enterprise | Datacenter IPs and Chromium; no CAPTCHA solving |
| Web APIs beyond the browser | Search and Fetch APIs, Functions that run next to the browser, a Model Gateway and hosted Agents | Browser tools for scrape, screenshot and PDF, billed per 1,000 calls | No hosted search or fetch API; your own code and tools run on the VM |
| Logins and secrets | Contexts keep logins; agent variables hide values from the model; Model Gateway reaches OpenAI, Anthropic and Google | Credentials API (beta) signs in for the agent without showing it the password | AI credentials proxy keeps real keys outside the sandbox, for model providers and any HTTPS API you register |
| Reaching the machine | CDP connect URL and live view links only; no ports to host on | No inbound ports; a CDP websocket and an unauthenticated live view URL | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Coding agents | Its own hosted browser Agent from a plain language goal, with built-in tools only | A CLI, skills and an MCP server give your coding agent a Steel browser; the agent runs elsewhere | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Open source and self-hosting | Managed cloud only; the Stagehand SDK is open source under MIT | Open-source steel-browser (Apache-2.0) in Docker, and Steel Outpost inside your own network | Managed cloud only |
| Regions | Oregon, Virginia, Frankfurt and Singapore, picked per session | us-east only; proxy location sets the visible IP | EU only: Germany, Finland and France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Browserbase | Steel | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | No | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | No | No | Yes |
| Systemd | No | No | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | No | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | No | No | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | Yes | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | No | No | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | No | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | No | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | Yes | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Not published | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | No | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either. Browserbase and Steel were not in StarSling's public CPU benchmark and do not publish the vCPU or RAM behind a session, so there is no number to set against boat's 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Steel says a session starts in under a second.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Browserbase and Steel have no published run in this suite yet, so there is no like-for-like number to compare.
Pricing in five scenarios
Each bill is priced from the providers' public price lists by the open Battleships engine, with the cheapest plan that runs the scenario.
| Scenario | Browserbase, a month | Steel, a month | boat, a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, files kept between days | $99 · Startup · with limits | $250 · Scale · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $122 · Startup · with limits | $250 · Scale · with limits | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $841 · Startup · with limits | $784 · Scale · with limits | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $499 · Startup · with limits | $510 · Scale · with limits | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $1,049 · Startup · with limits | $950 · Scale · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Browserbase: Plans include browser hours: 100 on Developer ($20 a month) and 500 on Startup ($99 a month), then $0.12 or $0.10 per browser hour, billed by the minute with a one-minute minimum. Proxy data is extra after 1 GB or 5 GB ($12 or $10 per GB), and Search, Fetch and Agents have their own allowances.
Steel: Steel bills browser hours by the minute, rounded up: $0.10 an hour on the free Launch plan, which comes with a one-time $30 credit, and $0.08 on Scale, which costs $250 a month and includes $100 of usage each month. Proxy bandwidth ($10 or $6 per GB) and CAPTCHA solves are billed on top.
Steel: You pick a monthly plan from $20, and all of it becomes usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
None of the scenarios fit either one, because each prices a browser session with no published size and no disk that stays, not a 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine. Session caps bite first: 6 hours on Browserbase and 1 hour on Steel Scale, which is also why one workday agent comes to $99 a month on Browserbase and $250 a month on Steel, whose 15-minute Launch cap forces the Scale plan. Both cap Startup and Scale at 100 browsers at once, so 300 sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once need a sales plan. On boat the 1,000-job burst is the one that does not fit: bursts above 90 starts a minute are queued.
| Scenario | Browserbase | Steel | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel |
|
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Browserbase when
your agent only needs the web and runs for hours: 6-hour sessions on self-serve plans, Search and Fetch APIs, browsers in the US, Europe or Singapore, and Verified browsers for strict bot walls.
- Longer sessions on self-serve plans. Useful for long browsing jobs: sessions run up to 6 hours on Developer and Startup, where Steel Scale stops at 1 hour.
- More than a browser. Useful when lookups need no browser: Search and Fetch APIs, Functions next to the browser, a Model Gateway and hosted Agents.
- Four regions. Useful if your users or target sites are spread out: browsers run in Oregon, Virginia, Frankfurt or Singapore.
Use Steel when
you want an open-source browser you can host yourself, human takeover and a computer-use API for the browser, a vault that signs in for the agent, and browsers in us-east.
- Open source and self-hosted. Useful if browsers must run on your own machines: steel-browser is Apache-2.0, and Steel Outpost runs inside your network.
- Human takeover and computer use. Useful when a person must step in: an embeddable live view with takeover, a computer-use input API, mobile mode and traces.
- A vault that signs in. Useful for agents that log in to sites: the Credentials API signs in without showing the agent the password.
Where boat fits
Browserbase and Steel both sell a browser, not a machine. If what you are really running is agents that browse and then also code, build or serve, a boat sandbox puts Chromium on a full VM next to a shell, Docker and a disk that stays. You can still open a Browserbase or Steel session from boat for sites that block bots.
A whole machine next to the browser
On Browserbase and Steel the agent gets Chrome over CDP and no shell, so cloning a repo or running Docker needs a second machine and files moved between the two. boat has root, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
No session cap, a disk that stays, and fork
Browserbase stops a session at 6 hours and Steel Scale at 1 hour, and only the browser profile carries over. boat has no cap on paid plans, snapshots the disk every minute and can fork a running sandbox.
Agents and keys on one machine
Browserbase's Agent has fixed built-in tools, and Steel's CLI needs your agent hosted elsewhere. boat ships Claude Code and Codex you drive from outside, a key proxy for any HTTPS API, and HTTPS on 50 ports.
Use boat when your agent browses and also works: installs, builds, Docker and dev servers on a full VM with no session cap, a disk that stays, a 60fps desktop and coding agents built in. Compare it one to one: boat vs Browserbase and boat vs Steel.
Questions people ask
Is Browserbase cheaper than Steel?
It depends on the job. One coding agent on workdays comes to $99 on Browserbase against $250 on Steel, because Steel needs its Scale plan for sessions over 15 minutes. 50 agents in parallel come to $841 on Browserbase against $784 on Steel, and 1,000 short jobs at once to $1,049 against $950, though neither fits those scenarios.
Which is faster, Browserbase or Steel?
There is no comparable measurement. Neither was in StarSling's public CPU benchmark, and neither publishes the vCPU or RAM behind a session. Steel says a session starts in under a second.
Can Browserbase or Steel run Docker?
No. Both give you a browser over CDP, not a shell on the VM. Browserbase's hosted Agents and Functions can run shell commands in a short TypeScript runtime with no persistent storage. Every boat sandbox has root, SSH, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
How long can a session run on Browserbase and Steel?
Browserbase allows 15 minutes on Free, 6 hours on Developer and Startup and 6+ hours on Scale. Steel allows 15 minutes on Launch, 1 hour on Scale and 24 hours on Enterprise. boat has no session cap on paid plans.
Is Steel open source? Can I self-host Browserbase?
The steel-browser runtime is open source under Apache-2.0 and runs in Docker, and Steel Outpost runs Steel inside your own network. Browserbase is a managed cloud, though its Stagehand SDK is open source under MIT.
Which handles bot detection better?
Both have residential proxies and CAPTCHA solving on paid plans. Browserbase lists proxies in 200+ countries and Verified browsers on Scale, while Steel sells dedicated IPs on Scale and a stealth browser on Enterprise. boat uses datacenter IPs and solves no CAPTCHAs.
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