Steel vs Browserless
Both rent you cloud browsers that your agent drives over CDP. Steel runs each headful Chrome session in its own VM in us-east and bills by the minute, while Browserless runs headless Chrome, Firefox and WebKit in Docker containers in the US and Europe and bills in 30-second units.
The companies and products
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.
Browserless
Browserless calls itself a cloud browser automation platform: managed headless browsers you connect to with one line of code.
You point existing Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium code at a Browserless WebSocket URL, or use BrowserQL, its GraphQL language with stealth and CAPTCHA solving, REST endpoints for screenshots, PDFs and scraping, and an MCP server. Sessions are short (2 to 60 minutes by plan), and only the browser profile can be kept between them. It is a browser product, 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.
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. “25th cheapest of 367” means 24 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 | Steel: price rank | Browserless: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A coding agent needs a shell, Docker and a disk, and neither Steel nor Browserless gives one, so installs, builds and tests need a machine like boat's. | 124th of 367, with limits $1,115 a month | 170th of 367, with limits $1,771 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 hits a 1 hour session cap on both Scale plans and must reload its browser profile each time; boat has no session cap on paid plans. | 238th of 366, with limits $3,070 a month | 297th of 366, with limits $6,170 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 | 264th of 345, with limits $333 a month | 267th of 345, with limits $350 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 both Scale plans allow, and each user gets a browser rather than a machine. | 244th of 361, with limits $990 a month | 264th of 361, with limits $1,490 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 | 257th of 360, with limits $4,150 a month | 279th of 360, with limits $8,600 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 | 348th of 364, with limits $400 a month | 247th of 364, with limits $350 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 | 239th of 377, with limits $120 a month | 241st of 377, with limits $140 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 products start a new browser for each session, so this fits boat. | 241st of 368, with limits $73 a month | 336th of 368, with limits $350 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 and Browserless let an agent act on web pages only, with a person able to take over; boat streams a 60fps Linux desktop where the agent can use any app. | 148th of 369, with limits $367 a month | 141st of 369, with limits $350 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: Browserless ranks 19th and Steel ranks 25th, and boat ranks 7th because the same agent also gets a shell and Docker next to its Chromium. | 25th cheapest of 367 $470 a month | 19th cheapest of 367 $350 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; Steel adds dedicated IPs on Scale, Browserless adds REST endpoints for screenshots and PDFs, and boat runs the scraper and its database on one VM. | 56th cheapest of 346 $540 a month | 47th cheapest of 346 $478 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 Steel ranks 9th and Browserless ranks 20th for scraping sites that block bots, both with residential proxies and CAPTCHA solving; boat uses datacenter IPs and solves no CAPTCHAs. | 9th of 338, with limits $7,950 a month | 20th of 338, with limits $17,150 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 | 220th of 360, with limits $242 a month | 247th of 360, with limits $350 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 | Steel | Browserless | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | A managed headful Chromium per session, driven over CDP or a computer-use input API | Managed headless Chrome, Firefox and WebKit, plus BrowserQL, REST APIs and an MCP server | A full Linux VM per sandbox, with a desktop and Chromium inside |
| Isolation | Each session is a Chromium in a VM, per the docs; VM type not named | Browsers in Docker containers that share the host kernel | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Browsers | Chromium, headful | Chrome, Firefox and WebKit, headless | Chromium on a 60fps desktop |
| Machine size | Not published; billed per browser hour | Not published; billed in 30-second units | 4 vCPU / 8 GB by default, up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB by plan |
| Shell, Docker and nested virtualization | No shell; you reach the browser through CDP and the REST API | No shell or SSH; the browser over CDP, BrowserQL or REST | SSH, root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Session length | 15 minutes on Launch, 1 hour on Scale, up to 24 hours on Enterprise | 2 minutes on Free, 15 on Prototyping, 30 on Starter, 60 on Scale; custom on Enterprise | No session cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| What stays after a session | Profiles keep cookies and logins (300 MB, deleted after 30 days unused); a Files API keeps session files | Persisted sessions keep cookies, localStorage and cache for 1 to 90 days by plan; a new browser process starts on reconnect | The whole disk, with snapshots every minute and on stop; fork a running sandbox into a copy |
| Computer use and human takeover | Computer-use input API, embeddable live view with human takeover, mobile mode and traces | Live URLs that hand a session to a person, and computer-use integrations | 60fps desktop, computer use on any app, embeddable stream |
| Bot detection | Residential proxies, CAPTCHA solving and dedicated IPs; a stealth browser on Enterprise | BrowserQL stealth with fingerprint mitigations, CAPTCHA solving, residential and datacenter proxies | Datacenter IPs and Chromium; no CAPTCHA solving |
| Reaching the machine | No inbound ports; a CDP websocket and a live view URL | Fixed regional WebSocket and HTTPS endpoints and short-lived live URLs; no ports to host on | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Agents | A CLI, skills and an MCP server give your coding agent a Steel browser; the agent runs elsewhere | Its own managed browser agent (Agent Run API, beta), up to 15 minutes and 60 steps per turn | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Secrets | Credentials API (beta) stores web logins and signs in without showing the agent the password | 1Password integration fills logins into the page without the value reaching your code | AI credentials proxy: real API keys stay outside the sandbox, for model providers and any HTTPS API you register |
| Self-hosting and license | Open-source steel-browser (Apache-2.0) in Docker, and Steel Outpost inside your own network | Open source core under SSPL-1.0; commercial self-hosting needs a paid license | Managed cloud only |
| Regions | us-east only; proxy location sets the visible IP | San Francisco, London and Amsterdam; New York on private fleets | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Steel | Browserless | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | No | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | No | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | No | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | No | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | No | No | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | No | Not published | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | No | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | No | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | No | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | No | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Yes | No |
| Open source | Yes | Yes | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | No | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | No | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either. Steel and Browserless were not in StarSling's public CPU benchmark, and neither publishes the vCPU or RAM behind a browser 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. Steel and Browserless 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 | Steel, a month | Browserless, 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 | $250 · Scale · with limits | $350 · Scale annual · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $250 · Scale · with limits | $350 · Scale annual · 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 | $784 · Scale · with limits | $1,026 · Scale annual · 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 | $510 · Scale · with limits | $410 · Scale annual · 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 | $950 · Scale · with limits | $1,400 · Scale annual · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Steel: Steel bills browser hours by the minute, rounded up: $0.10 an hour on the free Launch plan and $0.08 on Scale, which costs $250 a month and includes $100 of usage. Proxy bandwidth, CAPTCHA solves and browser tools are billed on top.
Browserless: Browserless bills in units: one unit is up to 30 seconds of a connected browser, and a reconnect starts a new block. Plans include 20,000, 180,000 or 500,000 units a month; proxy traffic and CAPTCHA solves use the same units, and annual billing is 30% lower.
Browserless: 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
Neither Steel nor Browserless fits any scenario in the table, because each sells a browser session with no published size, no shell and no disk that keeps installed state. Both top self-serve plans stop a session after 1 hour, which rules out the workday agent, the always-on agent and the 50-agent fleet. Both also cap you at 100 browsers at once on Scale, so 300 sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once need Enterprise. On boat, the 1,000-job burst is the one that does not fit: bursts above 90 starts a minute are queued, and it needs more starts per day than the top plan allows.
| Scenario | Steel | Browserless | 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 Steel when
you want each browser in its own VM, an Apache-2.0 runtime you can host yourself, sessions up to 24 hours on Enterprise, or ready-made logins, takeover and traces in the US.
- A VM behind every browser. Useful if you want each session kept apart: Steel runs every headful Chromium in its own VM, not a shared container.
- Truly open source, and self-hosted. Useful if you will run browsers yourself: steel-browser is Apache-2.0, and Steel Outpost runs inside your own network.
- Longer sessions and agent tooling. Useful for long browser runs: Enterprise sessions last up to 24 hours, with a login vault, computer-use API and traces.
Use Browserless when
you need Firefox or WebKit as well as Chrome, browsers in Europe or San Francisco, one-call REST screenshots and PDFs, or BrowserQL stealth for sites that block bots.
- Three browser engines. Useful if you test or scrape beyond Chrome: Browserless serves Chrome, Firefox and WebKit from the same API.
- Browsers in Europe as well as the US. Useful if your traffic should start near Europe: the shared fleet runs in London and Amsterdam as well as San Francisco.
- Jobs with no script. Useful for one-call tasks: REST endpoints return screenshots, PDFs and scraped content, and BrowserQL adds stealth and CAPTCHA solving.
Where boat fits
Steel and Browserless are both browsers, not general sandboxes. If what you are really running is agents that browse and then also install, build, run Docker or keep files, look at boat: each agent gets a full Linux VM with Chromium on a desktop inside it. If the job is only scraping sites that block bots, Steel or Browserless will serve you better.
A whole machine, not only a browser
Neither Steel nor Browserless gives a shell, Docker or a published machine size. An agent that reads a page and then clones a repo or starts a dev server needs a second provider, and you move files between the two.
No session cap, and a disk that stays
Both Scale plans stop a session after 1 hour, and only a browser profile carries over. On boat a paid sandbox runs as long as the task, keeps its disk with snapshots every minute, and can be forked while running.
Coding agents and keys kept outside
With Steel you host the agent yourself, and Browserless's beta agent stops at 15 minutes and 60 steps a turn. boat ships Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode you drive from outside, and its credentials proxy keeps real API keys out of the sandbox.
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 Steel and boat vs Browserless.
Questions people ask
Is Steel cheaper than Browserless?
Mostly, in the table. One coding agent on workdays comes to $250 a month on Steel against $350 on Browserless, and 50 agents in parallel to $784 against $1,026. Browserless is lower for sandboxes for your users, $410 against $510, and none of these setups fits either product.
Which is faster, Steel or Browserless?
There is no comparable number. 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 Steel or Browserless run Docker?
No. A hosted session on either is a browser you reach over CDP and an API, with no shell. Both let you run their browser image in Docker on your own servers, and every boat sandbox has root, SSH, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
How long can a session run on Steel and Browserless?
Steel allows 15 minutes on Launch, 1 hour on Scale and 24 hours on Enterprise. Browserless allows 2 minutes on Free up to 60 minutes on Scale, with custom limits on Enterprise. boat has no session cap on paid plans.
Which one is open source?
Both publish their core. Steel's steel-browser is under Apache-2.0, so you can run it freely. Browserless is under SSPL-1.0 and free for non-commercial use, and commercial use needs a paid license.
Can I run browsers in Europe?
Browserless's shared fleet runs in London and Amsterdam as well as San Francisco. Steel's hosted browsers run in us-east only, and proxies change only the visible IP. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
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