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Legba vs Steel

A Steel alternative that runs headful.

Steel is open-source, headless-first browser infrastructure for automation. Legba is the other shape: a real headful Chromium on a fresh residential IP, destroyed the moment the session closes.

If you do not want to run browsers, manage proxies, or let a credential outlive a single job, the difference is the whole product.

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Side by side.

Real headful Chromium and fresh residential IPs, hosted, against open-source headless-first infrastructure you run yourself.

Compare
Legba
Steel
Rendering
Real headful Chromium per session
Headless-first browser infrastructure
IP type
Fresh residential IP per session
Datacenter by default, proxy support to bring your own
Session model
Disposable, burned on close
Persistent sessions you start and stop
What you buy
Isolation: credentials destroyed with the session
Open-source browser API you run or self-host
Deployment
Hosted engine, no infrastructure to run
Self-host the open-source core, or use the hosted cloud
Detection posture
Real fingerprint on a residential exit
Headless fingerprint, anti-detect and proxies are your job
Agent access
First-class MCP server, API, and SDK
API and SDKs, Puppeteer and Playwright compatible
Best for
Credentialed, risky, or agent work that must leave no trail
Self-hosted, headless automation with full control of the stack

Last verified 2026-06-12 · reviewed by the Legba engineering team

When Steel is the better pick

Steel is a strong pick when you want to own the stack. It is open-source, you can self-host, and you keep full control of the browser, the proxies, and the anti-detection layer. If running your own infrastructure is a feature, not a cost, that control is a real advantage Legba does not try to match.

Questions people ask.

Is Legba a drop-in replacement for Steel?
For agent and automation work, yes. Legba exposes an MCP server, an API, and a Playwright-compatible interface, so most orchestration redirects with little change. The difference is the engine: a real headful browser on a fresh residential IP, destroyed on close, instead of a headless-first browser you wire up yourself.
Steel is open-source. Why pick a hosted engine?
Steel lets you self-host and own the stack. That control is real, and so is the work: you run the browsers, manage proxies, and bolt on anti-detection. Legba is the opposite trade. The engine is hosted, residential exits and disposal are the product, and there is no infrastructure to operate.
Why does headful rendering matter?
Legba runs real headful Chromium, so a vision model sees the page the way a person would. Headless rendering can drop or reflow content that a vision agent then misreads. Steel is headless-first, so that gap is yours to close.
What happens to credentials after a run?
They live inside the session container and are destroyed when it closes. Nothing persists unless you ask for an encrypted state blob under your key. A prompt injection or a leaked token has nowhere to go after close.

Access anything.
Expose nothing.

Legba is a disposable real browser: it spawns a clean session, does the work, and destroys itself on close.

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Read the docs

chromium / real fingerprint · residential ip · burn on close

Real browser. Real IP. Real page. Spawn a session. Do the work. Destroy it. Off your device. Off your stack. Gone on close.