head to head · open source
Steel vs trafilatura
Steel has 7,668 GitHub stars, 982 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. trafilatura has 6,840 stars, 431 forks, 60 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Steel leads on adoption by 12% (7,668 vs 6,840 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 6%. 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 | ★ 7.7K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 982 | ⑂ 431 |
| 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 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 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 trafilatura
Trafilatura is a Python package and command line tool that crawls the web and turns raw HTML into structured text and metadata, built for developers, researchers, and data teams assembling corpora, news feeds, or retrieval augmented generation datasets.
read the full trafilatura overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Steel or trafilatura more popular?
Steel has 7,668 GitHub stars and trafilatura has 6,840. 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 (7,668 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.