head to head · open source
Steel vs deepcrawl
Steel has 7,668 GitHub stars, 982 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. deepcrawl has 675 stars, 79 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 27 days ago. Steel leads on adoption by 1,036% (7,668 vs 675 stars). Steel is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; deepcrawl is written in TypeScript under MIT. Steel has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, deepcrawl 12%. Steel 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
| Steel | deepcrawl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.7K | ★ 675 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 982 | ⑂ 79 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Steel if
- You weight community size — 7.7K 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 deepcrawl if
- You want the deepcrawl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and deepcrawl fits your workflow better
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 →
About deepcrawl
Deepcrawl is a free, MIT licensed, agent oriented website data extraction platform that turns public pages into cleaned Markdown, a hierarchical links tree and LLM ready metadata, built for developers running AI agents who want to self host the whole stack on Cloudflare or Vercel rather than pay for Firecrawl.
read the full deepcrawl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Steel or deepcrawl more popular?
Steel has 7,668 GitHub stars and deepcrawl has 675. Steel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Steel and deepcrawl free?
Both are open source. Steel is licensed under Apache-2.0 and deepcrawl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Steel and deepcrawl?
Steel is written in TypeScript and deepcrawl 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, Steel or deepcrawl?
Choose Steel if you want the larger community (7,668 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose deepcrawl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.