# BrowserAct vs Olostep (slim)

> Olostep scores 66.9 (B) to BrowserAct's 44.4 (E) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-olostep.md (~4,900 tokens) · this version ~2,230 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-olostep.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-olostep
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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Olostep scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against BrowserAct's 44.4 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. BrowserAct leads on security & auth. Both do scraping.

- BrowserAct: E 44.4, rank #1204 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/browseract.min.md
- Olostep: B 66.9, rank #348 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/olostep.min.md
- BrowserAct, good for Teams that want no-code, prompt-built scrapers an agent can rerun on a schedule. Ahead on Security & auth, 41 against 33.
- Olostep, good for Bulk scraping on a budget and for batch jobs of thousands of URLs. Ahead on Reliability, 60 against 23; Schema & documentation, 88 against 76; Agent ergonomics, 87 against 49; Payments & pricing, 65 against 25; Maintenance & community, 83 against 61; Transparency & trust, 60 against 44. Also Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card.

| Category | BrowserAct | Olostep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 23 | 60 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 76 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 49 | 87 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 41 | 33 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 65 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 61 | 83 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 44 | 60 |

| Fact (where they differ) | BrowserAct | Olostep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Hongkong Ziniao Technology Co., Limited | Olostep Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.browseract.com/mcp/` | `https://api.olostep.com` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Price for scraping | not published | $0.495 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | none | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 11 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.olostep/olostep-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-28 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-05-15 | 2025-07-15 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-05-15 | 2025-07-15 |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Olostep +40: BrowserAct 25 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices and credit costs per bot build, run and workflow step are public, but there is no direct per-call price (15). A free plan with 200 credits; whether it needs a card isn't stated (10). A person signs up and creates the key in the dashboard (0). 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 25.); Olostep 65 (x402 documented on POST /v1/scrapes and /v1/maps at $0.01, /v1/answers at $0.05 and /v1/crawls at a dynamic price, USDC on Base through the Orthogonal facilitator, but not on batches or search. Our unpaid POST on 30 September got a 402 with an empty body and no payment requirements, so a stock client had nothing to sign (15 of 40). Plans, per-operation credit costs and credit packs from $20 for 10,000 are public (20). Trial of 500 successful requests with no card (20). The x402 route would let an agent start without signup, but it didn't return a price in our probe (10 of 20).)
- Agent ergonomics, Olostep +38: BrowserAct 49 (Graded on the API, since the MCP tool list isn't published. Task results come back whole, with no field selection found (10). Lists of bots, templates and tasks are paginated (15). Errors carry numeric codes with documented meanings for a few cases (12). No idempotency key on task creation; webhooks and a status endpoint avoid polling loops (5). No official SDK in two languages; the CLI is Python (7). 10 + 15 + 12 + 5 + 7 = 49.); Olostep 87 (11 MCP tools, and the API lets you choose formats and page results (20 of 25). Cursor pagination and `items_limit` on crawl and batch results, and batches of up to 100,000 URLs (20). Structured error objects with a code an agent can branch on (17 of 20). All 11 MCP tools carry readOnlyHint, destructiveHint and idempotentHint, with the two job creators marked non-idempotent, and no idempotency keys on the API (15 of 20). Python and Node SDKs and a CLI, one required field on a scrape (15).)
- Reliability, Olostep +37: BrowserAct 23 (Hosted reading. No status page found (0) and no readable incident history (5). The docs say there are no rate limits, and give concurrency by plan (2 free, up to 20 for paid API users) and a 7-hour task cap (8). No 429 or retry guidance, and no idempotency keys on task creation (0). No SLA (0). No beta label on the API or MCP server (10). 0 + 5 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 23.); Olostep 60 (Better Stack status page at status.olostep.com monitoring /scrapes, /batches, /crawls and /answers (20). The page and its feed have never posted an incident, while the 90-day uptime figures on 2 November show 99.935 to 99.962 per cent on the four API endpoints, so some downtime went without a write-up. A page that has never posted an incident scores 20 in this run (20 of 30). Concurrency published per plan, 20 on Starter, 200 on Standard and 500 on Scale, but the free plan says only 'low rate limits' and we found no per-minute limits (10 of 15). The scrapes OpenAPI documents 400, 402, 404, 500, 502 and 504 but no 429, Retry-After or backoff guidance (0). No SLA found (0). GA (10). 20 + 20 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 60.)
- Maintenance & community, Olostep +22: BrowserAct 61 (browser-act-cli 1.6.2 on 5 November 2026, read from PyPI's release feed (30). Six CLI releases from 15 October to 5 November (20). A closed service with a support address, but no public changelog or issue tracker found (8). No official SDKs and no entry in the official MCP registry (0). The CLI package carries no licence or repository in its metadata (3). 30 + 20 + 8 + 0 + 3 = 61.); Olostep 83 (MCP server 1.0.19 published to the official registry on 28 October 2026, after 1.0.18 on 25 October, which added the hosted OAuth endpoint (30). Four dated releases or changelog entries since 4 August, the two changelog entries of 26 October (POST /v1/feedbacks and singular path aliases) and the two MCP releases (20). The Node SDK's 2026-07-15 release and Python SDK 1.2.2 (22 June) are unchanged. MCP repository issue replies not read (8 of 25). Official Python and Node SDKs and a CLI (15). MCP pull requests run contract and golden-description checks (10). 30 + 20 + 8 + 15 + 10 = 83.)
- Transparency & trust, Olostep +16: BrowserAct 44 (Closed service with published terms naming the operating company and governing law (15). The privacy policy of 15 May 2025 states retention by category and that crawled data is kept per plan and deletable by the user (15). No deprecation policy or notices found (0). No sub-processors or data locations named (3). 15 + 15 + 0 + 3 = 33.); Olostep 60 (The API is closed with clear terms under Delaware law, and the MCP server and Python SDK are MIT (20 of 30). Results kept about 7 days by default with a storage parameter for 10 to 365 days or never, and a DPA is linked, but the privacy policy dates from 15 July 2025 and gives no retention periods (15 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices found (0 of 20). No subprocessor list or data locations, only a Standard Contractual Clauses statement (3 of 20).)
- Schema & documentation, Olostep +12: BrowserAct 76 (An OpenAPI 3.0.3 document behind the API reference (25). llms.txt on both the site and the docs, with Markdown pages (10). Endpoint descriptions explain the run flow (find a bot, read its input_schema, then run) and when to use the lighter status endpoint (14). Inputs are typed, but a run's input is an object shaped by each bot's own schema (10). Examples per endpoint and named error codes such as 10879 and 10127; no full error table found (10). The path carries v3, but no changelog was found (7). 25 + 10 + 14 + 10 + 10 + 7 = 76.); Olostep 88 (OpenAPI 3.0.3 published per endpoint under docs.olostep.com/openapi/ for scrapes, batches, crawls, maps, answers, search and more (25). llms.txt with 148 links and Markdown pages (10). MCP descriptions give usage rules, for example not to ask for json output without a parser or llm_extract schema, and create_crawl says to pair it with get_crawl_results (15 of 20). Enums for formats, transformer and screen type, `url_to_scrape` the only required field (13 of 15). Error body with type, code and message in the spec, and examples per endpoint (13 of 15). Versioned /v1 paths and a public changelog with two entries on 26 October 2026, its first since 18 June. The MCP repository's CHANGELOG still stops at 1.0.13 while the registry is at 1.0.19 (12 of 15, was 8 while the changelog had stood since June). 25 + 10 + 15 + 13 + 13 + 12 = 88.)