# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-olostep.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-olostep.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

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 Server: grade A, 78.6/100, rank #11 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/apify-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/apify-mcp.json
- Olostep: grade B, 63.1/100, rank #210 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/olostep.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/olostep.json

## 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 nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Apify MCP Server | Olostep | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 65 | 60 | Apify MCP Server +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 84 | Apify MCP Server +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 87 | Apify MCP Server +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 62 | 28 | Apify MCP Server +34 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 95 | 65 | Apify MCP Server +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 95 | 58 | Apify MCP Server +37 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 88 | 60 | Apify MCP Server +28 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **78.6 · A** | **63.1 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Apify MCP Server | Olostep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Apify | Olostep Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.apify.com` | `https://api.olostep.com` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | yes, from $1/call | payer tooling only |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 35 | 11 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `com.apify/apify-mcp-server` | `io.github.olostep/olostep-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-07-15 |
| Popularity | 8.6k stars, 15k npm/wk | 24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.4/5 (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

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