# Lightpanda vs Steel (slim)

> Steel scores 70.5 (BB) to Lightpanda's 61.6 (C) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lightpanda-vs-steel.md (~2,850 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lightpanda-vs-steel.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lightpanda-vs-steel
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-10-30
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Steel scores 70.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Lightpanda's 61.6 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lightpanda leads on reliability. Both do browser automation. Steel accepts x402. Lightpanda doesn't.

- Lightpanda: C 61.6, rank #542 of 1239 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lightpanda.min.md
- Steel: BB 70.5, rank #171 of 1239 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/steel.min.md
- Lightpanda, good for Agents and crawlers that read and fill many JavaScript pages in parallel on small machines, without needing pixel rendering. Ahead on Reliability, 65 against 58. Also No key needed to call it.
- Steel, good for Agents that need a real cloud browser with persistent profiles, stored logins, CAPTCHA solving and a human takeover path, and teams that want an open-source runtime they can also self-host. Ahead on Security & auth, 56 against 46; Payments & pricing, 75 against 40; Maintenance & community, 82 against 73. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account; A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.

| Category | Lightpanda | Steel |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 65 | 58 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 82 | 86 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 75 | 79 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 46 | 56 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 75 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 73 | 82 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 65 | 65 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Lightpanda | Steel |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Selecy SAS (Lightpanda) | Nen Labs, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.steel.dev` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | None | API key |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.01/call |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 for the browser. The npm wrapper @lightpanda/browser and the agent skill are Apache-2.0. Lightpanda Cloud is a closed service with no terms of service found | Proprietary cloud service under Steel's terms. steel-browser and the Node and Python SDKs are Apache-2.0. The MCP server and the CLI are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 32 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-23 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2025-02-05 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-08-03 | 2026-02-05 |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | yes |
| Popularity | 9.3k npm/wk | 47k npm/wk, 63k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (4) |