chromedp vs Steel
chromedp
github.comSteel
steel.devSide by side
| Figure | chromedp | Steel |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $250/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 5 |
| Spec score · Browser Automation Tools | 8.6 (#12) | 8.2 (#21) |
| Support | The project directs questions and feature suggestions to GitHub Discussions and Discord, and reserves the issue tracker for bugs. | Launch and Scale include email and community support, Scale includes a dedicated Slack channel, and Enterprise includes a 911 email and support and uptime SLAs. |
Plans
Steel
- LaunchFree
- Scale$250 a month
- LaunchFree
- Scale$250 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
chromedp
chromedp is a Go package for driving browsers that support the Chrome DevTools Protocol without an external driver. It runs Chrome headlessly by default and supports actions such as navigating, clicking, reading page text, running JavaScript, filling forms, and waiting for elements. Its examples also cover cookies, HTTP headers, proxy authentication, request interception, session restoration, and HAR recording. For output, it can capture screenshots, print pages to PDF, and save screencast frames as JPEG files. Separate browser contexts can support parallel work, but sharing one context between goroutines can cause races. A separate remote module connects to an already-running browser over WebSocket, and the project provides a headless-shell Docker image. By default, Chrome communicates over remote-debugging pipes and does not open a debugging port; switching to WebSocket uses one. The package is available under the MIT license at free. The README requires Go 1.27 or newer.