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Head to head · Crawling · October 2026 research run

Apify MCP Server vs Olostep

Apify MCP Server has a score of 78.6 (A) against Olostep's 63.1 (B). Both do crawling. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 37 points. Apify MCP Server accepts x402. Olostep doesn't.

Apify MCP ServerApify · MCP server A78.6/100#11 of 452 OlostepOlostep Technologies, Inc. · HTTP API B63.1/100#210 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Apify MCP Server for

  • reliability (+5)
  • schema & documentation (+8)
  • agent ergonomics (+5)
  • security & auth (+34)
  • payments & pricing (+30)
  • maintenance & community (+37)
  • transparency & trust (+28)

Pick Olostep for

No category where it leads by five points or more.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApify MCP ServerOlostepEdge
Reliability16%206560Apify MCP Server +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29284Apify MCP Server +8
Agent ergonomics13%16.29287Apify MCP Server +5
Security & auth14%17.56228Apify MCP Server +34
Payments & pricing10%12.59565Apify MCP Server +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89558Apify MCP Server +37
Transparency & trust7%8.88860Apify MCP Server +28
Negative events≤15-30
Total78.6 · A63.1 · B

Facts side by side

FactApify MCP ServerOlostep
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorApifyOlostep Technologies, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.apify.comhttps://api.olostep.com
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402yes, from $1/callpayer tooling only
LicenceMITMIT
Tools exposed3511
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrycom.apify/apify-mcp-serverio.github.olostep/olostep-mcp-server
Last release2026-09-302026-07-15
Popularity8.6k stars, 15k npm/wk24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.4/5 (8)3.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

Apify MCP Server

x402 on Apify's own domains, a prepaid token from agi.apify.com for any Actor and per-run payment on mcp.apify.com for Pay Per Event Actors. API and Actor runs timed out for about 12 hours on 21 and 22 July 2026.

Olostep

OpenAPI 3.0.3 for every endpoint and a structured error body. The x402 challenge came back with no payment requirements in our probe.

Before you call either

Apify MCP Server

  1. Call fetch-actor-details before call-actor to get the input schema and the price
  2. Use apify--web-fetch for one known URL and apify--rag-web-browser for search and read
  3. Read results with get-dataset-items and set fields and limit. The default is 20 rows
  4. Buy an AGI token for anything that isn't a Pay Per Event Actor. Direct ?payment=x402 refuses the rest
  5. Ask for get-actor-run-log, not get-actor-log. The old name is ignored without an error

Olostep

  1. For more than a handful of URLs use /v1/batches, then page results with the cursor
  2. Pass storage.expires_in if you need results after about 7 days
  3. Don't ask for json output without a parser or an llm_extract schema
  4. Hosted MCP wants Authorization: Bearer, stdio wants OLOSTEP_API_KEY. Mixing them up shows 0 tools
  5. Check the 402 body before paying over x402. Our probe got an empty one

Other comparisons with Apify MCP Server or Olostep

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