head to head · open source
Steel vs trafilatura
Steel has 7,916 GitHub stars, 1,004 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. trafilatura has 7,067 stars, 487 forks, 60 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Steel leads on adoption by 12% (7,916 vs 7,067 stars). Steel is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; trafilatura is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Steel has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, trafilatura 7%. Steel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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.
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Side by side
| Steel | trafilatura | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.9K | ★ 7.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 487 |
| 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 trafilatura if
- You want the trafilatura feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and trafilatura 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 trafilatura
Trafilatura: Discover Web Content, Extract Text and Metadata Introduction Trafilatura is a comprehensive Python package and command line tool designed to gather text from the Web and turn raw HTML into structured, meaningful data . It includes all necessary discovery and text processing components to perform web crawling, downloads, scraping, and extraction of main texts, metadata and comments. It aims at staying handy and modular : no database is required, the output can be converted to commonly used formats. Going from raw HTML to essential parts, it focuses on the actual content , avoids noise caused by…
read the full trafilatura overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Steel or trafilatura more popular?
Steel has 7,916 GitHub stars and trafilatura has 7,067. Steel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Steel and trafilatura free?
Both are open source. Steel is licensed under Apache-2.0 and trafilatura under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Steel and trafilatura?
Steel is written in TypeScript and trafilatura 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 trafilatura?
Choose Steel if you want the larger community (7,916 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose trafilatura if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.