head to head · open source
Steel vs skills
Steel has 7,916 GitHub stars, 1,004 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. skills has 6,314 stars, 342 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Steel leads on adoption by 25% (7,916 vs 6,314 stars). Steel is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; skills is written in Python under MIT. Steel has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, skills 5%. skills was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), 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.
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Side by side
| Steel | skills | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.9K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 342 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Steel if
- You weight community size — 7.9K 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 skills if
- You want the skills feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and skills fits your workflow better
About Steel
Steel The open source browser API for AI agents & apps. The best way to build live web agents and browser automation tools. Get Started · Documentation · Website · Cookbook ✨ Highlights Steel.dev is an open source browser API that makes it easy to build AI apps and agents that interact with the web. Instead of building automation infrastructure from scratch, you can focus on your AI application while Steel handles the complexity. Under the hood, it manages sessions, pages, and browser processes, allowing you to perform complex browsing tasks programmatically without any of the headaches: Full Browser Control…
read the full Steel overview →
About skills
What can BrowserAct be used for? BrowserAct enables AI agents and teams to perform real browser automation, web data extraction, and account based workflows. It helps agents get past anti bot walls, hand off to humans across platforms when stuck, run parallel tasks without cross contamination, and isolate multiple accounts in independent browsers, backed by stealth fingerprints, TLS rotation, residential proxies, CAPTCHA solving, and stable fingerprint proxy setups for authenticated sessions. Two usage modes are available: fully cloud managed execution, or local browser control driven by your own agent workflow…
read the full skills overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Steel or skills more popular?
Steel has 7,916 GitHub stars and skills has 6,314. Steel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Steel and skills free?
Both are open source. Steel is licensed under Apache-2.0 and skills under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Steel and skills?
Steel is written in TypeScript and skills in Python. 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 skills?
Choose Steel if you want the larger community (7,916 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose skills if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.