head to head · open source
crawlee vs Steel
crawlee has 25,841 GitHub stars, 1,673 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Steel has 7,668 stars, 982 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. crawlee leads on adoption by 237% (25,841 vs 7,668 stars). crawlee is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; Steel is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. crawlee has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Steel 13%. crawlee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| crawlee | Steel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 7.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 982 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick crawlee if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Steel if
- You want the Steel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Steel fits your workflow better
About crawlee
Crawlee is a web scraping and browser automation library for Node.js, written in TypeScript and published on npm as the crawlee package. It lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem, and it covers crawling and scraping end to end: fetching pages, following links, extracting data, and storing the results to disk or to the cloud. The project also has a Python counterpart, Crawlee for Python, maintained alongside it by Apify.
read the full crawlee overview →
About Steel
Steel is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed browser API written in TypeScript that gives AI agents and applications cloud browser sessions, so teams can automate the web without building browser infrastructure from scratch.
read the full Steel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is crawlee or Steel more popular?
crawlee has 25,841 GitHub stars and Steel has 7,668. crawlee has the larger community by that measure.
Are crawlee and Steel free?
Both are open source. crawlee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Steel under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between crawlee and Steel?
crawlee is written in TypeScript and Steel in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, crawlee or Steel?
Choose crawlee if you want the larger community (25,841 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Steel if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.