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cdpfleet vs Steel
The open-source browser API for agents against a browser fleet: per-minute Chromium with proxies, captcha solves and a 15-minute-to-24-hour session cap by plan, or thirteen real browsers metered per second with your own proxies. Prices, limits and features side by side.
Steel is the open-source browser API built for AI agents: a Chromium sandbox you reach over CDP with Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium, with rotating proxies, captcha solving, stealth configs, live session viewers and replays, Credentials for sign-ins, and a cookbook of agent integrations. The core (steel-browser, Apache 2.0) can be self-hosted; Steel Cloud is the hosted version, billed by the minute. cdpfleet is a fleet of thirteen real desktop browsers — Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Whale, Yandex, Chromium, Patchright, Rebrowser, CloakBrowser, Camoufox, Firefox and WebKit — launched with one HTTPS call and driven over the Playwright protocol from five languages, through proxies you bring. Both are "a browser in the cloud by the hour"; they differ on what the browser is, how long it may live, and what else comes in the box.
| cdpfleet | Steel | |
|---|---|---|
| Browsers | 13 — Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Naver Whale, Yandex Browser, Chromium, Patchright, Rebrowser, CloakBrowser, Camoufox, Firefox, WebKit. Chrome with stable, beta and dev channels and pinned previous majors; Camoufox with pinned versions. | Chromium. A "Stealth Browser" tier is an Enterprise feature. |
| How you connect | Playwright protocol only: chromium/firefox/webkit.connect(wsUrl) with the matching Playwright client (1.60; 1.52 for Rebrowser) — Node.js, Python, Java, C# and Go. | CDP WebSocket: Puppeteer, Playwright (Node and Python) via connectOverCDP, Selenium; Node and Python SDKs; REST tools for markdown, readability, screenshots and PDFs. |
| Session length | Up to 24 h per session on every plan (shared threads: also capped by your remaining daily minutes). Idle timeout 60 s by default, up to 24 h on dedicated threads. | 5 minutes by default; the hard cap is set at creation and can't be extended: 15 minutes (Launch), 1 hour (Scale), up to 24 hours (Enterprise). Optional inactivityTimeout releases idle sessions early. |
| Metering | Per second, as thread-seconds: headless browser = 1 thread, headful = 2. | Per minute, rounded up: $0.10/browser-hour (Launch), $0.08 (Scale), custom (Enterprise). |
| Plans | From $10.00/month (10 shared threads). Shared threads: 60–480 browser-minutes a day per thread; dedicated threads for 24/7 use at $5.00/thread/month. Pricing. | Launch: $0/month + usage, $30 one-time credits, 10 concurrent. Scale: $250/month + usage, $100 credits/month, 100 concurrent. Enterprise: custom, 1,000+ concurrent. |
| One browser-hour | Shared: $0.02–$0.03 at full use; dedicated $0.0069. A browser running 24/7 is one dedicated thread, $5.00/month. | $0.10 (Launch) or $0.08 (Scale) plus the plan fee. A browser running 24/7 would need a new session every 15–60 minutes and cost ≈ $58–$72/month in hours alone (Scale: + $250 plan fee). |
| Concurrency | The threads you buy: 10 to 10,000 (more on request); each session takes 1–4 threads by type. | 10 (Launch), 100 (Scale), 1,000+ (Enterprise); reserved browser pools on Enterprise. |
| Proxies | Bring your own HTTP, HTTPS or SOCKS5 proxies — single, pool, or per-host rules (proxy_rules) — swap a running session's proxy live, see traffic per destination host and rule. No per-GB fee. A proxy is required for every session. | Built-in rotating residential proxies at $10/GB (Launch) or $6/GB (Scale); custom proxies supported; dedicated IPs $5/month each on Scale. |
| Stealth | Real browsers by default (genuine Chrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox…), headful by default, and four stealth builds — Patchright, Rebrowser, CloakBrowser, Camoufox — on every plan. See headless tells. | Stealth configs on all plans; the dedicated Stealth Browser only on Enterprise. |
| Captcha solving | Not built in. Use any solver through Playwright. | Built in: $3 per 1,000 solves (Launch), $1 per 1,000 (Scale). |
| Watching a session | Playwright tracing and video recording over the connection — session replay without a vendor. Session list, usage and per-host traffic in the dashboard and Account API. | Live session viewer, replays and embeddable viewers; data retained 7 days (Launch) or 14 days (Scale). |
| Persistence and sign-in | Playwright storageState between sessions (case). No persistent profiles, no credential vault. | Session contexts reusable across runs; Credentials API for stored logins and automatic sign-in. |
| Agent tooling | None of its own: Playwright works with any agent framework or LLM. | A large cookbook: Claude, OpenAI and Gemini computer use, browser-use, Stagehand, LangChain, CrewAI, MCP servers, Temporal and more; Files API; Computer Use tools. |
| Self-hosting | No — a managed fleet. | Yes: steel-browser (Apache 2.0) runs in Docker locally or on your cloud. |
| Where the browser runs | Servers in the EU (Germany and Finland); your proxy decides where traffic exits. | Steel Cloud regions; not listed on the pages we checked. |
| Examples | 24 cases run on production in five languages, all on GitHub with their output. | steel-cookbook: ~90 examples across TypeScript, Python, Go and Rust, mostly agent-framework integrations. |
Steel facts from its public pricing page and documentation, checked on 6 October 2026; list prices in USD. Tell us if something is out of date.
Which one, when
Pick Steel if…
- You build agents and want proxies, captcha solving, Credentials and live view from one API with SDKs — or you want to self-host the same stack.
- You use Puppeteer, Selenium or raw CDP, or Playwright's
connectOverCDP. - Your sessions are short (minutes) and you prefer paying $0 up front plus usage.
Pick cdpfleet if…
- Your sessions run longer than Steel's cap for your plan — 15 minutes on Launch, an hour on Scale — or around the clock on dedicated threads.
- Your site must see a specific real browser or version: Chrome beta/dev or a pinned major, Edge, Brave, Firefox, Camoufox, a stealth build on every plan.
- You already pay for proxies and want per-host routing, live swaps and traffic accounting instead of per-GB fees.
- You want per-second metering and Playwright clients in Java, C# or Go as well as Node.js and Python.
Try it
The quickstart is one HTTPS call and five lines of Playwright; the code builder writes the launch for any browser and option set in your language.