Compare Apify vs. Steel.dev

Apify provides the infrastructure developers need to build, deploy, and monetize web automation tools. The platform centers on Apify Store, a marketplace featuring 10,000+ community-built Actors. These are serverless programs that scrape websites, automate browser tasks, and power AI agents. Developers create Actors using JavaScript, Python, or Crawlee (Apify's open-source crawling library), then publish them to the Store. When other users run your Actor, you earn money. Apify manages the infrastructure, handles payments, and processes monthly payouts to thousands of active developers. Apify Store offers ready-to-use solutions for common use cases: extracting data from Amazon, Google Maps, and social platforms; monitoring prices; generating leads; and much more. Under the hood, Actors automatically manage proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, JavaScript-heavy pages, and headless browser orchestration. The platform scales on demand with 99.95% uptime and maintains SOC2, GDPR, and CCPA compliance. For workflow automation, Apify connects to Zapier, Make, n8n, and LangChain. The platform also offers an MCP server, enabling AI assistants like Claude to discover and invoke Actors programmatically.

Steel is a versatile open-source browser API that enables the management of numerous cloud-based browsers. It simplifies browser automation for tasks ranging from extensive scraping operations to completely autonomous web agents, allowing users to initiate browser sessions on demand through straightforward API requests. With integrated CAPTCHA solving capabilities, Steel ensures uninterrupted automation processes. Its user-friendly controls help minimize the risk of being flagged as a bot. Typically, a session can commence in under one second if the client is located in the same region. Each session has the flexibility to run for as little as one minute or extend up to 24 hours. Users can easily save and inject cookies and local storage to seamlessly continue from where they left off. Additionally, Steel supports running Puppeteer, Playwright, or Selenium in the cloud with ease. The Session Viewer feature provides the ability to observe and troubleshoot both live and recorded sessions, enhancing the overall user experience. This comprehensive toolset makes it a valuable resource for developers looking to harness the power of browser automation in a cloud environment.