# Selenium vs Steel (slim)

> Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) to Steel's 70.4 (BB) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/selenium-vs-steel.md (~2,550 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/selenium-vs-steel.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/selenium-vs-steel
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-14

Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Steel's 70.4 (BB), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Steel leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do browser automation. Steel accepts x402. Selenium doesn't.

- Selenium: BB 73.6, rank #90 of 1076 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/selenium.min.md
- Steel: BB 70.4, rank #160 of 1076 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/steel.min.md
- Selenium, good for Agents that write test or automation scripts in any of five languages, and teams with a Grid. Ahead on Reliability, 90 against 58; Maintenance & community, 94 against 82; Transparency & trust, 74 against 64. 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 Agent ergonomics, 79 against 70; Security & auth, 56 against 43; Payments & pricing, 75 against 60. Also An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account; A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card.

| Category | Selenium | Steel |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 90 | 58 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 89 | 86 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 70 | 79 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 43 | 56 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 75 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 94 | 82 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 74 | 64 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Selenium | Steel |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Selenium project (Software Freedom Conservancy) | Nen Labs, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.steel.dev` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.01/call |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | 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 |
| Last release | 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2025-02-05 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 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 | 35k stars, 1.8M npm/wk, 6.9M PyPI/wk | 47k npm/wk, 63k PyPI/wk |