# Crawl4AI vs Olostep (slim)

> Olostep scores 66.9 (B) to Crawl4AI's 43.9 (E) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-olostep.md (~5,550 tokens) · this version ~2,880 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-olostep.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-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
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Olostep scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against Crawl4AI's 43.9 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Crawl4AI leads on security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do scraping.

- Crawl4AI: E 43.9, rank #1224 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crawl4ai.min.md
- Olostep: B 66.9, rank #348 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/olostep.min.md
- Crawl4AI, good for Agents that need cheap page-to-Markdown at volume, Google results and search in one key, or a free self-hosted Python crawler. Ahead on Security & auth, 46 against 33; Transparency & trust, 70 against 60. Also Open source.
- Olostep, good for Bulk scraping on a budget and for batch jobs of thousands of URLs. Ahead on Reliability, 60 against 35; Schema & documentation, 88 against 55; Agent ergonomics, 87 against 67; Payments & pricing, 65 against 45. Also Runs on your own machine; No incidents deducted, where Crawl4AI loses 10 points for them.

| Category | Crawl4AI | Olostep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 35 | 60 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 55 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 87 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 46 | 33 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 45 | 65 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 83 | 83 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 70 | 60 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Crawl4AI | Olostep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | CONTEXT4AI PTE LTD | Olostep Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.crawl4ai.com/mcp` | `https://api.olostep.com` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Price for scraping | $0.50 per 1,000 pages | $0.495 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 16 | 11 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.olostep/olostep-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-28 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-15 | 2025-07-15 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-15 | 2025-07-15 |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 87k stars, 368k PyPI/wk | 24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Schema & documentation, Olostep +33: Crawl4AI 55 (No OpenAPI or similar contract for the cloud API, and the MCP tool schemas are only in the live tools/list, which needs a key. /v1/prices is machine-readable but covers prices, not calls (0). llms.txt of 304 lines written for agents (10). Each endpoint says what it is for and when to choose another, such as trying without a proxy first, using `browser` only when `auto` misses content and /scrape/jobs for slow lists (16 of 20). Parameters are listed with types, defaults, allowed values (`format` both, md or html; `proxy` none, isp or residential) and limits, in prose (10 of 15). Curl examples per endpoint and documented error strings per status with whether each is charged (14 of 15). No changelog for the cloud API, only dated notes such as /serp 'added 8 Oct 2026'. The library has a dated CHANGELOG (5 of 15). 0 + 10 + 16 + 10 + 14 + 5 = 55.); 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.)
- Reliability, Olostep +25: Crawl4AI 35 (Graded on the hosted lines, for Crawl4AI Cloud, which the README and llms.txt now lead with and which an agent calls through its MCP server; the library would read on the local lines. No status page is linked, and status.crawl4ai.com fails TLS (0). No incident history readable (5). Per-plan limits are published with numbers in /v1/prices, from 10 requests a minute and 2 at a time on Free to 1,500 and 50 on Scale (15). 429 carries X-RateLimit headers and a message, 503 busy says to resend after a few seconds, and MCP job submissions take an idempotency key, but no Retry-After or backoff guidance (10 of 15). No SLA found in the terms or pricing (0). Prices and the free credit are a soft launch, /serp is beta and /answer experimental, while scrape, extract and search carry no beta label (5 of 10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 10 + 0 + 5 = 35.); 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.)
- Agent ergonomics, Olostep +20: Crawl4AI 67 (16 MCP tools, six of them for billing and support (15 of 25). `format` md or html, `parse` opt-in blocks, batch limits and job results paged 500 at a time over HTTP and 50 over MCP (16 of 20). String error codes an agent can branch on (blocked, login-wall, no-answer, busy, no_credit, plan_cap, spend_cap), each with whether it is charged (18 of 20). Failed and cancelled calls aren't charged and `jobs_submit` takes an idempotency key, but no tool annotations are documented and two tools can charge the saved card (10 of 20). Only `url` or `q` is required. There is no official SDK for the cloud API; the docs give curl and standard-library Python and Node examples (8 of 15). 15 + 16 + 18 + 10 + 8 = 67.); 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).)
- Payments & pricing, Olostep +20: Crawl4AI 45 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-endpoint credit costs, effort multipliers and plan rates are public at /v1/prices without a login, with 1 credit = $0.001 (20). 1,000 free credits a month, no card (20). A 7-day pass key comes from a click on api.crawl4ai.com without an account, which is still a person in a browser, and a permanent key needs email verification (5 of 20). 0 + 20 + 20 + 5 = 45.); 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).)
- Security & auth, Crawl4AI +13: Crawl4AI 46 (Bearer keys, shown once and regenerable, with 3 to 30 keys per plan. claude.ai and ChatGPT sign in through a flow that advertises one scope, `mcp`, and each app shows as a revocable key. No per-key scopes, and the docs don't offer the key in a URL (22 of 30). A key can call billing routes, and the MCP `topup` and `recharge` tools charge the saved card, though llms.txt tells agents to ask first and accounts can set a spend cap. No read-only key (6 of 20). Scraped pages are untrusted text and no prompt-injection guidance was found in llms.txt or the API docs (0). Per-call cost, balance and fetch path in response headers and fields, no access log documented (6 of 15). The security page (4 October 2026) gives a disclosure process with fix targets and says SOC 2 is in progress, and the library publishes GitHub advisories with reporter credits. security.txt redirects to a 404, and no bounty found (12 of 20). 22 + 6 + 0 + 6 + 12 = 46.); Olostep 33 (Bearer API keys. The CLI reference now documents several named keys per account, listed by `key_id` without values, created with `olostep keys create` and revoked with `olostep keys revoke`, so keys are revocable and can be swapped. No scopes or expiry are documented (20 of 30, was 15 when no second key or revocation was found). The hosted MCP server also takes OAuth sign-in with the Olostep account. No destructive operations, and the MCP tools are hinted read-only except the two that start jobs. No way to limit a key found (10 of 20). Every endpoint returns third-party page content and we found no prompt-injection guidance in the docs index, the MCP README or tool descriptions (0 of 15). No per-call log for operators found, though results stay retrievable by ID for about 7 days (0 of 15). security.txt answers 404 and the docs index has no security or compliance page. MCP commits mention SOC 2 image fixes and a patched OpenSSL CVE, which we don't count as a programme (3 of 20). 20 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 3 = 33.)
- Transparency & trust, Crawl4AI +10: Crawl4AI 70 (The library is Apache-2.0 and the cloud is closed under terms that name CONTEXT4AI PTE LTD (22 of 30). The privacy policy gives retention periods (account plus 90 days, usage records 13 months, logs 90 days), but none for crawled content, and llms.txt says repeated URLs are served from a shared archive while the security page says fetched pages are used only to answer the request (18 of 30). The legacy cloud API closed on 6 November 2026 with a migration guide but no dated notice found, and the terms promise notice of material changes only 'where reasonable' (8 of 20). Subprocessors named with their locations on the security page, with EU storage of account records (18 of 20). 22 + 18 + 8 + 18 = 66.); 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).)