Do I need to change my existing Selenium code to use Steel?

Mostly no — your test logic stays plain Selenium 4. The change is in the connection: point webdriver.Remote at Steel's WebDriver endpoint and inject the steel-api-key and session-id headers on every request via a small RemoteConnection subclass.

How do I connect Selenium to a Steel browser session?

Steel runs a WebDriver endpoint at http://connect.steelbrowser.com/selenium. Create a session with client.sessions.create(is_selenium=True), then pass a RemoteConnection subclass that adds steel-api-key and session-id headers as the command_executor for webdriver.Remote.

Does Selenium work with Steel's proxies, stealth mode, and CAPTCHA solving?

Yes — those are set when you create the session (e.g. use_proxy, solve_captcha, stealth_config on sessions.create), so Selenium doesn't need to know about them. Your WebDriver commands run against the session however it was provisioned.

Why does my session need is_selenium=True?

Because Selenium speaks the W3C WebDriver protocol over HTTP, not CDP. is_selenium=True provisions a WebDriver-compatible node — without it you get a CDP browser that Selenium cannot drive.

Run Selenium in the Cloud on Steel

Run Selenium in the cloud with Steel instead of running your own grid. Stealth, rotating proxies, and CAPTCHA solving built in, over W3C WebDriver in Python.

Selenium speaks the W3C WebDriver protocol over HTTP, not CDP. Steel runs a WebDriver endpoint at http://connect.steelbrowser.com/selenium. Point webdriver.Remote at it, attach the Steel API key and session ID as headers on every request, and the rest is plain Selenium 4.

Sessions for Selenium need is_selenium=True on creation — that flag provisions a WebDriver-compatible node. Without it you get a CDP browser that Selenium cannot drive.

Requirements

Steel API Key: Active Steel subscription
Runtime: Python 3.10+
Package: selenium 4+

Connect Steel to Selenium

Subclass RemoteConnection to inject steel-api-key and session-id headers on every WebDriver request, then point webdriver.Remote at Steel's WebDriver endpoint:

Python

import os
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.remote.remote_connection import RemoteConnection
from steel import Steel

class SteelRemoteConnection(RemoteConnection):
    def __init__(self, remote_server_addr: str, session_id: str):
        super().__init__(remote_server_addr)
        self._session_id = session_id

    def get_remote_connection_headers(self, parsed_url, keep_alive=False):
        headers = super().get_remote_connection_headers(parsed_url, keep_alive)
        headers["steel-api-key"] = os.environ["STEEL_API_KEY"]
        headers["session-id"] = self._session_id
        return headers

client = Steel(steel_api_key=STEEL_API_KEY)
session = client.sessions.create(is_selenium=True)

driver = webdriver.Remote(
    command_executor=SteelRemoteConnection(
        remote_server_addr="http://connect.steelbrowser.com/selenium",
        session_id=session.id,
    ),
    options=webdriver.ChromeOptions(),
)

Each command is an HTTP round-trip, so prefer WebDriverWait with expected_conditions over blind time.sleep to avoid compounding latency.

Full runnable starter: Steel + Selenium recipe →

Steel drives Playwright and Puppeteer the same way.

FAQ

Resources

Selenium Python documentation – Official Python bindings reference
WebDriver protocol – W3C specification
Steel Sessions API reference – Technical details for managing Steel browser sessions
Steel Discord – Get help and share what you build