# fastCRW vs Olostep

> Olostep scores 66.9 (B) to fastCRW's 64.3 (B) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-olostep
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-olostep.md (~4,800 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Olostep scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against fastCRW's 64.3 (B), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. fastCRW leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do scraping.

- fastCRW: grade B, 64.3/100, rank #478 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crw.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crw.json
- Olostep: grade B, 66.9/100, rank #348 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/olostep.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/olostep.json
- Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/web-scrapers/index.md
- All 501 scrapers comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/web-scrapers/index.md

## Which one, for what

### fastCRW (B)

Good for: Agents that want Firecrawl-style scrape, crawl, map, search and extract at lower per-page cost, or a small self-hosted engine.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 40 against 33
- Maintenance & community, 93 against 83

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: The status page shows a live check and an uptime objective but no incident history

### Olostep (B)

Good for: Bulk scraping on a budget and for batch jobs of thousands of URLs.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 60 against 50
- Payments & pricing, 65 against 35

Watch for: The x402 challenge came back as an empty 402 with no payment requirements in our probes on 30 September and 2 November


## Why the edge

### Payments & pricing: Olostep +30

- fastCRW (35): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plans are public with credit costs per operation and top-up prices per block of credits, $9 per 1,000 on Hobby down to $299 per 500,000 on Scale, but top-ups need a plan, so between plan-only and per-unit (15 of 20). 500 one-off credits with no card, plus up to 500 from onboarding tasks (20). Hosted keys need a person to sign up in a browser; the free self-hosted engine runs with no account but isn't the graded surface (0). 0 + 15 + 20 + 0 = 35.
- 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).

### Reliability: Olostep +10

- fastCRW (50): Graded on the hosted lines, for the hosted API and MCP server an agent would call; the self-hosted engine would read higher on the local lines. fastcrw.com/status is a first-party page with a live health check and a 99.9% monthly uptime objective, but no components with history (10 of 20). It lists no incidents and keeps no history we could read (5). Concurrency per plan is published, 3 on Free to 150 on Scale, while the request-rate guard above it is deliberately unpublished (12 of 15). The rate-limits page documents Retry-After and X-RateLimit headers, gives exponential backoff code, and separates 429 (retry) from 402 (stop). No idempotency keys for crawl, extract or monitor starts (13 of 15). Pricing mentions an SLA only as 'Premier + SLA' on Enterprise, with no terms, and the terms promise no uptime (0). The hosted service is sold on paid plans with no beta label, though the engine is at 0.41.0 (10). 10 + 5 + 12 + 13 + 0 + 10 = 50.
- 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: fastCRW +10

- fastCRW (93): v0.41.0 on 4 November 2026, matching the registry and npm (30). 16 dated releases in the 90 days from 8 August, from 0.37.0 to 0.41.0 (20). Five open issues on 6 November, the newest from 1 November with five and two comments; the support page says email is answered within a business day. Reply authors weren't read (18 of 25). In the official MCP registry as io.github.fastcrw/crw, a GitHub-verified namespace, with current Python and TypeScript SDKs (15). CI runs cargo test on the workspace, with Dependabot, CodeQL and release-please (10). 30 + 20 + 18 + 15 + 10 = 93.
- 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.

### Security & auth: fastCRW +7

- fastCRW (40): The hosted MCP server publishes RFC 9728 metadata naming its own authorisation server, with PKCE S256, dynamic client registration and one scope, `mcp:tools`, and the API takes revocable Bearer keys from the dashboard. No key scopes or second scope found (22). The authentication page documents fastcrw.com/mcp/<API_KEY> as a way in, a key in the URL path, so less 10 (12 of 30). Tools mostly read, and data-source calls check approvals, but there is no read-only key or confirmation step for monitors (8 of 20). Managed LLM extraction, summaries and answers wrap scraped text in a nonce fence (crates/crw-extract/src/untrusted.rs), and the hardening guide treats pages as untrusted, but the MCP docs give agents no guidance on scraped content (7 of 15). Each response reports `creditsUsed`; no per-call log in the docs (5 of 15). SECURITY.md names security@fastcrw.com and GitHub private reporting with a 48-hour acknowledgement, and CI runs CodeQL and OpenSSF Scorecard. security.txt answers 404, and no bounty or certification found (8 of 20). 12 + 8 + 7 + 5 + 8 = 40.
- 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.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | fastCRW | Olostep | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 60 | Olostep +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 88 | fastCRW +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 87 | fastCRW +4 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 40 | 33 | fastCRW +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 65 | Olostep +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 93 | 83 | fastCRW +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **64.3 · B** | **66.9 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | fastCRW | Olostep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Nanofy OÜ | Olostep Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://fastcrw.com/mcp` | `https://api.olostep.com` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price for scraping | not published | $0.495 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 11 | 11 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.fastcrw/crw` | `io.github.olostep/olostep-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-28 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-04-04 | 2025-07-15 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2025-07-15 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 1.2k stars, 881 npm/wk | 24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### fastCRW

No score change since it was listed.

### Olostep

- +3.8 on 2 November 2026: product, new evidence
- no change on 28 October 2026: new evidence
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**fastCRW.** Agents get 11 compact, annotated MCP tools with bounded output, a public OpenAPI spec, refunds on failed pages and a free self-hosted engine. The hosted service has no status history, publishes no SLA terms, names its operator only on the support page, and documents an MCP address with the API key in the URL path.

**Olostep.** OpenAPI 3.0.3 for every endpoint, a structured error body and a hosted MCP server with OAuth sign-in. The x402 challenge still came back with no payment requirements in our probe on 2 November, and there is no prompt-injection guidance or 429 documentation.

## Before you call either

### fastCRW

1. Connect to https://fastcrw.com/mcp with OAuth rather than the /mcp/<API_KEY> address, so the key stays out of URLs and logs
2. Branch on `errorCode`. Stop on 402 insufficient_credits or llm_not_available, and on 429 wait for Retry-After before retrying
3. Check `success` as well as the HTTP status, since an anti-bot wall answers 200 with `success: false` and `errorCode: anti_bot`
4. Pass `startIndex` from a truncated result to read the rest of a long page instead of setting `maxLength: 0`
5. Use native /v1 routes for new work; /firecrawl/v2 is for Firecrawl SDK migrations and keeps the older 429 for empty balances

### 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. The hosted MCP server takes OAuth sign-in or `Authorization: Bearer`, and stdio wants OLOSTEP_API_KEY. Mixing them up shows 0 tools
5. Check the 402 body before paying over x402. Our probes on 30 September and 2 November got an empty one

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, fastCRW or Olostep?

Olostep scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against fastCRW's 64.3 (B), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. fastCRW leads on security & auth and maintenance & community.

### Do fastCRW and Olostep need an API key?

fastCRW takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Olostep needs an API key.

### Can an agent call fastCRW and Olostep without installing anything?

Yes. fastCRW has a hosted endpoint at https://fastcrw.com/mcp and Olostep at https://api.olostep.com.

### Are fastCRW and Olostep open source?

fastCRW is open source (AGPL-3.0). No open-source release is listed for Olostep.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-olostep.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-olostep.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "crw", "b": "olostep"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare crw olostep`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crw.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/olostep.json

## Other comparisons with fastCRW or Olostep

- [Bright Data vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-crw.md)
- [Bright Data vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-olostep.md)
- [BrowserAct vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-crw.md)
- [BrowserAct vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-olostep.md)
- [Context.dev vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-crw.md)
- [Context.dev vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-olostep.md)
- [Crawl4AI vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-crw.md)
- [Crawl4AI vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-olostep.md)
- [fastCRW vs Decodo Web Data API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-decodo.md)
- [fastCRW vs Diffbot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-diffbot.md)
- [fastCRW vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [fastCRW vs Jina Reader](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-jina-reader.md)
- [fastCRW vs Microlink](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-microlink.md)
- [fastCRW vs Outcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-outcrawl.md)
- [fastCRW vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrape.do](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrape-do.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapeless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapeless.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapeOps Proxy API Aggregator](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapeops.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scraperapi.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapewise.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [fastCRW vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [fastCRW vs WebScraping.AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-webscraping-ai.md)
- [fastCRW vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-zenrows.md)
- [fastCRW vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-zyte.md)
- [Decodo Web Data API vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decodo-vs-olostep.md)
- [Jina Reader vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-olostep.md)
- [Microlink vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microlink-vs-olostep.md)
- [Olostep vs Outcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-outcrawl.md)
- [Olostep vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper.md)
- [Olostep vs Scrape.do](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrape-do.md)
- [Olostep vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [Olostep vs Scrapeless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapeless.md)
- [Olostep vs ScrapeOps Proxy API Aggregator](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapeops.md)
- [Olostep vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scraperapi.md)
- [Olostep vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapewise.md)
- [Olostep vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Olostep vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [Olostep vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [Olostep vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [Olostep vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Olostep vs WebScraping.AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-webscraping-ai.md)
- [Olostep vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Olostep vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zyte.md)
- [fastCRW vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-olostep.md)
- [fastCRW vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-qovia.md)
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- [fastCRW vs SoldFetch](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-soldfetch.md)
- [Diffbot vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-olostep.md)
- [Olostep vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-qovia.md)
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- [Olostep vs SoldFetch](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-soldfetch.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-crw.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-olostep.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-olostep.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp