Airtop vs Steel
Steel scores higher on the AgentReady, 90/100 against 88/100. They differ on 8 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.
What each one is
Airtop. Airtop is a platform for building and deploying AI agents that can perform repetitive tasks on your behalf, all running in the cloud.
Steel. Steel is an open source browser API that lets you control fleets of browsers in the cloud.
Where Airtop is ahead
Airtop passes authentication documented and limits / constraints documented, and Steel does not. That is understand, whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it.
It also holds operate: idempotency support and rate-limit behavior predictable. Steel misses those.
Where Steel is ahead
Steel passes mcp discoverable, and Airtop does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.
It also holds adopt: agent-compatible signup flow, cli available and mcp integration available. Airtop misses those.
What neither does
Both fail retry behavior documented. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.
Score, pillar by pillar
The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.
Discover. Steel leads 100 to 87. Airtop misses mcp discoverable; Steel misses nothing.
Understand. Airtop leads 100 to 85. Airtop misses nothing; Steel misses authentication documented, limits / constraints documented.
Adopt is whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop. Steel leads 100 to 70. Airtop misses agent-compatible signup flow, cli available, mcp integration available; Steel misses nothing.
Operate. Airtop leads 94 to 76. Airtop misses retry behavior documented; Steel misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable.
Pricing
Airtop starts at $0/mo and has a free tier. Steel does not publish one and has a free tier.
| Airtop plans | Steel plans |
|---|---|
| Free $0/mo | - |
| Starter $29/mo | - |
| Professional $189/mo | - |
| Enterprise $558/mo | - |
| Custom Custom | - |
Signal by signal
| Signal | Airtop | Steel |
|---|---|---|
| AgentReady | 88 | 90 |
| Discovery | 87 | 100 |
| Understanding | 100 | 85 |
| Adoption | 70 | 100 |
| Operability | 94 | 76 |
| Public API | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| OpenAPI spec | Yes | Yes |
| CLI | Unknown | Yes |
| llms.txt | Yes | Yes |
| Self-serve signup | Yes | Yes |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
Which to pick
Signal counts are level here, so fit and price decide it. Full profiles: Airtop and Steel. Alternatives to each: Airtop, Steel.
An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["airtop", "steel"]}