Compare Puppeteer and Steel free tiers side by side. Pricing, limits, change history, and risk assessment for developers.

Puppeteer vs Steel

Side-by-side free tier comparison. Catalogue dates here run to 2026-09-27.

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Verdict

Steel has no ongoing free tier; what it offers is a credit grant that runs out ("Free Credits"). We are not publishing a free-tier verdict for Puppeteer. The page we cite for Puppeteer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-09. We are not comparing the two pricing histories.

A verdict here is not a fixed property of the vendor. A one-off pricing event demotes a vendor while its recorded date falls in the last 180 days and then lapses on its own, with nothing about the vendor having changed; a standing condition — a free tier withdrawn and not restored, a product retired — does not lapse with time. A badge carrying a date states the record it rests on; a badge with no date rests on no record in force.

Puppeteer

Risk
CategoryBrowser Automation
TierFree OSS
Verified2026-07-28
Last read2026-10-09
Changes0 recorded
Free OSS (Apache 2.0). Google-backed Chrome/Chromium automation library. Headless and headful modes, PDF generation, screenshots, network interception. Firefox support via WebDriver BiDiThe page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-09, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

Steel

Riskstable
CategoryBrowser Automation
TierFree Credits
Verified2026-09-27
Last read2026-11-13
Changes0 recorded
Cloud browser API for AI agents. The Launch plan is $0 a month plus usage and comes with a one-time $30 credit, valid for 90 days, which Steel puts at about 300 browser hours at $0.10 an hour. Launch allows 10 concurrent sessions, 15-minute sessions, 60 requests a minute and 7-day data retention; CAPTCHA solving and Steel's proxies need a $10 deposit first. Scale is $250 a month plus usage, with $100 of credit each month.

Pricing Change History

Puppeteer

No recorded pricing changes for Puppeteer.

Steel

No recorded pricing changes for Steel.

Watch Both Vendors for Pricing Changes

We do not push notifications. Every change we record is readable the moment it lands, and the JSON answer carries an ETag — send it back as If-None-Match and an unchanged answer costs one 304.

curl https://agentdeals.dev/api/changes?vendor=Puppeteer curl https://agentdeals.dev/pricing-changes/feed.xml?vendor=Puppeteer curl https://agentdeals.dev/api/changes?vendor=Steel curl https://agentdeals.dev/pricing-changes/feed.xml?vendor=Steel

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