Browserless vs Steel

Browserless

An OpenAPI document, llms.txt and a 14-tool MCP server with annotations on every tool make the service easy for an agent to read, and the free plan needs no card. The API token travels in the URL query string by default, cloud tokens carry no scopes, and no machine payment route exists.

Steel

The hosted API has a public OpenAPI document, per-unit prices, $30 of starting credit and x402 payment for scrape, screenshot and PDF calls. The status page records three API or session-creation incidents of more than an hour in 90 days, and the documented CDP connection puts the API key in the URL.

Browserless

1. Send the token as Authorization: Bearer to the MCP server. On REST and WebSocket routes it goes in ?token=, so keep those URLs out of logs
2. Close sessions as soon as the work is done. Browser time bills one unit per 30 seconds, rounded up, idle or not
3. For multi-step work with browserless_agent, set keepSessionAlive: true on the first call and pass the returned sessionId after that. Sessions are one-shot by default since server 1.33.0
4. On 429, back off and retry. It means the plan's concurrency limit or queue is full, usually from sessions left open
5. Match the path to the protocol. Use /chromium for CDP clients and /chromium/playwright only for playwright.connect()

Steel

1. Use POST /v1/scrape for pages you only need to read. It starts no session and costs $5 per 1,000 calls, or $0.01 a call by x402
2. Release every session with POST /v1/sessions/{id}/release and set inactivityTimeout. Browser time bills by the minute, rounded up
3. Build the CDP URL as wss://connect.steel.dev?apiKey=<key>&sessionId=<id> and keep it out of logs, because it carries the key
4. Launch sessions end after 15 minutes at most, and timeout cannot be changed on a live session
5. CAPTCHA solving and Steel's managed proxies on Launch need $10 of paid balance. Free credit does not count