Steel is a lightweight alternative to Anchor by Regolith Labs. The pitch: Anchor's ergonomics, native Solana's performance.
The problem Steel solves
Anchor is great until your program's binary gets big and your CU budget gets tight. Steel rebuilds the developer-ergonomics part (account validation, instruction dispatch, error handling) on top of native Solana primitives, with smaller compiled output.
What you get
- Smaller binaries. Programs compile down to 30–50% smaller than the equivalent Anchor program.
- Lower CU usage. Less generated code means fewer cycles spent on framework overhead.
- Native compatibility. Steel programs interop with native Solana programs cleanly.
Trade-offs
- Smaller community. Far fewer Stack Overflow answers, blog posts, examples.
- No IDL generation parity yet. Anchor's TypeScript client generation is mature; Steel's tooling is still building.
- Steeper learning curve. If you're new to Solana programs, learn Anchor first.
When to use Steel
- Programs where CU budget matters (high-frequency trading, MEV, DEX inner loops)
- Teams that already understand Solana's account model deeply
- You're rewriting a hot path of an Anchor program for performance