head to head · open source
Steel vs OpenSERP
Steel has 7,668 GitHub stars, 982 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. OpenSERP has 1,402 stars, 160 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Steel leads on adoption by 447% (7,668 vs 1,402 stars). Steel is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; OpenSERP is written in Go under MIT. Steel has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, OpenSERP 11%. Steel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, llm), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Steel | OpenSERP | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.7K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-07-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 982 | ⑂ 160 |
| 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 OpenSERP if
- You want the OpenSERP feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and OpenSERP 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 OpenSERP
OpenSERP is a self hosted search engine results page API and command line tool written in Go. It returns live, structured results from Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia through one JSON schema, and it can extract clean markdown from target pages. The project lives in the open source data extraction and web scraping ecosystem, with topics such as AI, API, CLI, LLM, and search.
read the full OpenSERP overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Steel or OpenSERP more popular?
Steel has 7,668 GitHub stars and OpenSERP has 1,402. Steel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Steel and OpenSERP free?
Both are open source. Steel is licensed under Apache-2.0 and OpenSERP under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Steel and OpenSERP?
Steel is written in TypeScript and OpenSERP in Go. 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 OpenSERP?
Choose Steel if you want the larger community (7,668 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose OpenSERP if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.