# Skyvern vs Steel (slim)

> Steel scores 70.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Skyvern's 63.1 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Skyvern leads on transparency & trust. Both do browser automation. Steel accepts x402. Skyvern doesn't. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/skyvern-vs-steel.md (~2,500 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/skyvern-vs-steel.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/skyvern-vs-steel
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-08

Steel scores 70.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Skyvern's 63.1 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Skyvern leads on transparency & trust. Both do browser automation. Steel accepts x402. Skyvern doesn't.

- Skyvern: B 63.1, rank #288 of 629 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/skyvern.min.md
- Steel: BB 70.4, rank #129 of 629 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/steel.min.md
- Skyvern, good for Agents that must finish a multi-step job on sites with logins, 2FA and forms, where stored credentials, saved workflows and cached scripts matter more than raw browser time. Ahead on Transparency & trust, 72 against 64.
- 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 Payments & pricing, 75 against 32. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account; No incidents deducted, where Skyvern loses 3 points for them.

| Category | Skyvern | Steel |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 57 | 58 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 88 | 86 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 76 | 79 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 59 | 56 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 32 | 75 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 82 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 72 | 64 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Skyvern | Steel |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Ikonomos Inc. (Skyvern) | Nen Labs, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.skyvern.com/v1` | `https://api.steel.dev` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.01/call |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 for the open-source server, SDKs and MCP server. Skyvern Cloud is a proprietary service under Skyvern's terms, and its anti-bot measures aren't in the repository | 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 | 114 | none |
| MCP registry | `io.github.Skyvern-AI/skyvern` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-02-27 | 2025-02-05 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-01 | 2026-02-05 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 23k stars, 3.2k npm/wk, 1.6k PyPI/wk | 47k npm/wk, 63k PyPI/wk |