Do I need a Steel account before I run stripe projects add?

No. The command links your Stripe account to a Steel account, creating one when needed. The Steel project and STEEL_API_KEY land in a Steel account you own.

Where do my provisioned resources live?

In your own Steel account. stripe projects add steel/browser provisions a Steel project plus a project-scoped API key inside the Steel organization tied to your Stripe account.

Can I link an existing Steel project to a Stripe Project?

Not today. Steel provisions a fresh project for each Stripe Project rather than attaching an existing Steel project.

Do the provisioned credentials work with the Steel SDK and CLI?

Yes. Provisioning writes a standard STEEL_API_KEY, so the official SDKs, the REST API, and the Steel CLI can use it from the environment.

Stripe Projects

Provision a Steel project and STEEL_API_KEY from the Stripe CLI with `stripe projects add steel/browser`. Credentials sync into .env so your agents can start cloud browser sessions.

Steel is available through Stripe Projects, a Stripe CLI workflow for provisioning third-party services and syncing credentials into your project. Add Steel with stripe projects add steel/browser to create a Steel project and project-scoped STEEL_API_KEY for cloud browser sessions.

Overview

Stripe Projects provisions provider resources from the terminal and writes credentials into your active environment file. For Steel, the provisioned resource is a Steel project plus an API key scoped to that project.

Command	What it does
`stripe projects init`	Initializes a Stripe Projects workspace in your app directory.
`stripe projects add steel/browser`	Provisions a Steel project and syncs credentials into `.env`.

After provisioning, your app uses the standard Steel API, SDKs, and authentication model. See authentication and the Steel CLI.

Prerequisites

Install the Stripe CLI, then install the Projects plugin:

Terminal

stripe plugin install projects

Provision Steel

Initialize Stripe Projects in your app directory, then add Steel:

Terminal

stripe projects init my-app
stripe projects add steel/browser

The add command links your Stripe account to a Steel account, creating one when needed, then provisions a Steel project and API key inside the Steel account you own. Stripe Projects syncs the returned credentials into your active environment output file, .env by default.

What lands in `.env`

Steel returns a project-scoped API key plus resource metadata to Stripe Projects. The key your app uses directly is:

.env

1STEEL_API_KEY=ste-...

Use stripe projects env to list synced variable names with values redacted:

Terminal

stripe projects env

Keep .env out of version control. stripe projects init adds credential files to .gitignore, but review your repository before committing.

Use the credentials

The Steel SDK reads STEEL_API_KEY from the environment automatically:

1import Steel from 'steel-sdk';
2
3const client = new Steel();
4
5const session = await client.sessions.create();

Plans and pricing

Steel is available through Stripe Projects on Launch and Scale plans. Current plan limits, included credits, billing requirements, and metered rates live on pricing and limits.

Upgrade between available Steel plan tiers from the Stripe CLI:

Terminal

stripe projects upgrade steel/browser

Pull credentials on another machine

If you cloned the repo or a teammate provisioned Steel, pull the current credentials into your local environment file:

Terminal

stripe projects env --pull

Limits and self-hosting

The steel-browser runtime is open source under Apache-2.0, so teams can inspect the code and run it locally or self-hosted when they need a local path. Managed Steel Cloud features still require Steel Cloud.

Ships with the open-source runtime	Steel Cloud only
Browser automation core	Managed residential proxies
Session lifecycle and tracing	Credentials API
Local and self-hosted deployment	Higher concurrency and managed anti-bot features

For plan limits such as concurrent sessions, session length, requests per minute, and data retention, see pricing and limits.