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Apify vs Steel

Steel scores higher on the AgentReady, 90/100 against 74/100. They differ on 20 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Apify. Apify is the largest marketplace of trusted tools for AI.

Steel. Steel is an open source browser API that lets you control fleets of browsers in the cloud.

Where Steel is ahead

Steel passes search discoverable and public docs discoverable, and Apify does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided and errors and status codes documented. Apify misses those.

And on adopt, self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, official typescript sdk and official python sdk. Apify misses those.

Finally, on operate, canonical workflow succeeds, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, observable execution and agent compatibility verified. Apify misses those.

What neither does

Both fail authentication documented, limits / constraints documented, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable. 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. Both sit at 100/100 here. Apify misses search discoverable, public docs discoverable; Steel misses nothing.

Understand. Steel leads 85 to 67. Apify misses openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; 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 63. Apify misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, official typescript sdk, official python sdk; Steel misses nothing.

Operate. Steel leads 76 to 67. Apify misses canonical workflow succeeds, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, observable execution, agent compatibility verified; Steel misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable.

Pricing

Apify does not publish a machine-readable starting price. Steel does not publish one and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

Steel clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Apify and Steel. Alternatives to each: Apify, Steel.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["apify", "steel"]}