Skyvern vs Steel
A side-by-side comparison of Skyvern and Steel, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | Skyvern | Steel |
|---|---|---|
| Category (differs) | Automation | Infra |
| Pricing | FREEMIUM | FREEMIUM |
| License | Open core | Open core |
| Deployment | Hybrid | Hybrid |
| Platforms (differs) | Web, API, CLI | Web, API |
| Model support (differs) | BYO key / model | Model-agnostic |
| Vendor (differs) | Skyvern | Nen Labs |
The honest brief
Skyvern
Drives sites with vision + LLMs instead of brittle selectors, so flows survive redesigns — and you can self-host the AGPL engine.
- Vision+LLM, no hand-written selectors
- Generalizes to unseen sites
- Self-hostable open-source core
- BYO model (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama)
- AGPL-3.0 limits commercial reuse
- Vision approach can be slower/costlier
- Newer, smaller ecosystem
Steel
Open-source, Docker-self-hostable browser sandbox unlike most closed agent-browser APIs — run local or in cloud.
- Self-host via Docker or use the cloud
- Handles sessions/proxies/CAPTCHAs
- Page-to-markdown/screenshot/PDF
- Framework- and model-agnostic
- Infrastructure, not a full agent
- Managed cloud is metered
- Younger than incumbent scrapers
- Needs an agent framework on top