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Show HN: Steel.dev – An open-source browser API for AI agents and apps

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Re: Show HN: Steel.dev – An open-source browser API for AI agents and apps

#11

Post by jedberg »

Very interesting. I worry that if I use your cloud, and a lot of other people do, all of your IP addresses will get banned by all the big players. It will definitely be a fun cat and mouse game!

Related story: Way back in the day, PayPal was just getting started, and decided eBay transactions would be their perfect customer. The only problem is that eBay didn't allow scraping. So they built an entire proxy infrastructure to go around eBay's rules and scrape them.

It worked. It worked so well, eBay bought PayPal.

The side effect of this is that I got control of the PayPal proxy infrastructure since I was on the security team for both eBay and PayPal after the acquisition.

We used that proxy farm to scrape the rest of the web looking for fake eBay sites (because they would block traffic from eBay's IPs) and we had the guys who built it help us build proxy defense for eBay and PayPal.

So this could work in your favor, if you manage to constantly scrape a large target who might want to buy you. :)

Re: Show HN: Steel.dev – An open-source browser API for AI agents and apps

#13

Post by ohthatsnas »

doritopope wrote: post #12

will definitely check this out. i saw the pricing model on the site, what's the motivation around being open-source here if you're providing the infra free of charge?

Yeah, good question! The reason we went open-source is really about transparency and flexibility. We want people to trust what they’re using and have the option to self-host if that’s what makes the most sense for them. Open-sourcing the browser API also lets us build a better product with input and contributions from the community—it’s a win-win.

As for the infra, it’s not totally free—our managed service is there for anyone who doesn’t want the hassle of hosting and scaling everything themselves (although it does have a generous free plan). Going open-source just gives people the choice: run it yourself if you want full control, or use our managed option for convenience and scale. It’s all about making browser automation more accessible without forcing people into one path.

Re: Show HN: Steel.dev – An open-source browser API for AI agents and apps

#14

Post by huss97 »

jedberg wrote: post #11

Very interesting. I worry that if I use your cloud, and a lot of other people do, all of your IP addresses will get banned by all the big players. It will definitely be a fun cat and mouse game! Related story: Way back in the day, PayPal was just getting started, and decided eBay transactions would be their perfect customer. The only problem is that eBay didn't allow scraping. So they built an entire proxy infrastruc…

That honestly sounds so fun! Who better to build your defences than your attackers ahaha

Tying into your concern, keeping IPs fresh and high quality will definitely be a balancing act as we get bigger. It'd be one today too if we were to try to offer super granular location controls because there's only so many proxies in X state, let alone X city. Currently, we get to aggregate & QA from multiple proxy providers, so our total pool is 300M+ IPs in the US and so far we've had a 99.95% rate of getting a fresh IP address in a session. So so far so good :)

As for that last point, I guess we'll see what the future has in store for us :P

Re: Show HN: Steel.dev – An open-source browser API for AI agents and apps

#16

Post by Oras »

huss97 wrote: post #3

Hello Hacker News! We’re Nas and Huss, co-founders of steel.dev ( http://steel.dev ). Steel is an open-source browser API for AI agents and apps. We make it easy for AI devs to build browser automation into their products without getting flagged as a bot or worrying about browser infra. over the last year or so, we’ve built quite a few AI apps that interact with the web and noticed - a. it was magical when you could…

If these instances are shared, how do you segregate login details, sessions cookies, …etc? Are you always running them in incognito?

Re: Show HN: Steel.dev – An open-source browser API for AI agents and apps

#17

Post by ohthatsnas »

Oras wrote: post #16
huss97 wrote: post #3

Hello Hacker News! We’re Nas and Huss, co-founders of steel.dev ( http://steel.dev ). Steel is an open-source browser API for AI agents and apps. We make it easy for AI devs to build browser automation into their products without getting flagged as a bot or worrying about browser infra. over the last year or so, we’ve built quite a few AI apps that interact with the web and noticed - a. it was magical when you could…

If these instances are shared, how do you segregate login details, sessions cookies, …etc? Are you always running them in incognito?

Instances are not shared. :) Everyone gets a dedicated session with dedicated resources. One session for every machine.

Re: Show HN: Steel.dev – An open-source browser API for AI agents and apps

#18

Post by huss97 »

Oras wrote: post #15

Looking interesting, will definitely give it a go. Btw, there is inconsistency between pricing page and pricing on docs. Pricing page for developers is $59 Pricing in docs for developers is $99

awesome - let us know how it goes!

great catch on pricing mismatch, just fixed, thank you :)

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