Steel · FinOps Profile

Steel Dev Finops

FinOps view of Steel Cloud spend. Steel bills a recurring subscription per tier with included browser-hour, proxy-bandwidth, and CAPTCHA-solve allotments; the dominant usage meter is browser hours (wall-clock time a cloud browser session is live). Proxy bandwidth and CAPTCHA solves are secondary metered dimensions. Steel is open source (Apache-2.0), so self-hosting shifts cost from Steel Cloud subscription to the operator's own compute, proxy, and CAPTCHA infrastructure.

Steel Dev Finops is the FinOps profile for Steel on the APIs.io network, aligned with the FinOps Foundation Framework.

It defines 5 billable meters, billed in USD, on a monthly cycle, and pricing category subscription-based with metered usage.

The profile maps 8 FOCUS columns for cost-allocation reporting.

Tagged areas include Browser, Web Automation, Scraping, AI Agents, and Open Source.

Category: Web Automation and Browser Infrastructure Pricing: Subscription-Based with Metered Usage Billing: Monthly FOCUS v1.3
BrowserWeb AutomationScrapingAI AgentsOpen SourceFinOpsCost ManagementFOCUS

Framework Alignment

Framework
FinOps Foundation Framework
Data Spec
FOCUS v1.3

Charge Categories

UsagePurchaseAdjustment

FOCUS Columns

BillingCurrency
USD
ChargeCategory
Usage
InvoiceIssuerName
Steel
PricingCategory
Subscription-Based with Metered Usage
ProviderName
Steel
PublisherName
Steel
ServiceCategory
Web Automation and Browser Infrastructure
ServiceName
Steel Cloud

Meters

browser_hours
Unit: hours
Wall-clock hours a cloud browser session is live, the primary usage meter, drawn against the tier allotment.
proxy_bandwidth
Unit: gigabytes
Bytes routed through Steel-managed proxies, billed in GB against the tier allotment.
captcha_solves
Unit: solves
CAPTCHA challenges solved, counted against the tier allotment.
subscription
Unit: subscription
Recurring monthly (or discounted annual) tier subscription fee.
quick_actions
Unit: requests
Stateless scrape / screenshot / pdf / search requests, which also consume browser time.

Sources