Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Decodo Web Data API vs Olostep

Olostep scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against Decodo Web Data API's 61.8 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Decodo Web Data API leads on security & auth. Both do scraping.

Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents · All 501 scrapers comparisons

Which one, for what

Decodo Web Data API C

Best for Agents that need pages, Google results and e-commerce or social templates through one key with published per-1,000 prices and a free plan.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 45 against 33

Watch for

No SLA, and the License Agreement lets Decodo change or discontinue the service without notice

Olostep B

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

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 67
  • Agent ergonomics, 87 against 82
  • Payments & pricing, 65 against 40

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

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Payments & pricing Olostep +25

Decodo Web Data API 40

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-1,000 rates for every endpoint, pool and plan are public in the billing docs (20). Free plan of 10,000 requests a month with no card (20). A person signs up in the dashboard; the MCP OAuth flow also needs a dashboard approval (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.

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).

Schema & documentation Olostep +21

Decodo Web Data API 67

No OpenAPI or similar contract for the Web Data API; the two published specs cover the proxy account API and dashboard statistics. The MCP server types every input with zod (12 of 25). llms.txt indexes 401 guide pages, each served as Markdown (10). Tool descriptions state purpose and when to use a tool, such as scrape_as_markdown 'when no site-specific tool fits', and link the docs page (14 of 20). Parameters are tabled with defaults, with enumerated proxy_pool, headless and device_type, but headers is a free object and POST bodies are base64 strings (10 of 15). Curl examples on every page, a response code table with fixes and billing, and parser status codes (14 of 15). Paths are versioned at /v1 and the MCP server's releases are tagged by semantic-release, but no API changelog was found (7 of 15). 12 + 10 + 14 + 10 + 14 + 7 = 67.

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.

Security & auth Decodo Web Data API +12

Decodo Web Data API 45

One Bearer API key per Web Data API subscription with no scopes, and no rotation or revocation steps found in the reviewed docs. The hosted MCP server adds OAuth 2.1 with PKCE and dynamic registration, but its metadata advertises no scopes. No query-string credential is documented (20 of 30). Scraping only reads, and the MCP tools are annotated read-only, but http_method: POST sends requests to target sites and there is no read-only key (8 of 20). No guidance on treating scraped content as untrusted was found in the docs or the MCP README (0 of 15). The dashboard statistics API reports traffic by target, and each response carries an x-task-id. No per-call audit log (7 of 15). ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for proxies and the Scraping API, a SafeBase trust centre and KYC at signup. security.txt answers 404 and no disclosure policy or bug bounty was found (10 of 20). 20 + 8 + 0 + 7 + 10 = 45.

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.

Agent ergonomics Olostep +5

Decodo Web Data API 82

The hosted MCP server lists 24 tools, with a toolsets parameter to load only web, search, ecommerce, social_media or ai, and tokenLimit caps page text at 45,000 characters by default with a truncation notice (20 of 25). Markdown output, parsing for templates, crawl limit, path filters and cursor paging, search paging, map limits and batch tasks (18 of 20). Documented status codes with a solution for each, status_code and parse_status_code in bodies, but 429 covers both the plan rate and a domain throttled for a low success rate (15 of 20). Every tool carries readOnlyHint true and destructiveHint false, server-side failures aren't billed and async results can be re-read for 24 hours. No idempotency key (16 of 20). Only url or query is required, though the default premium pool costs about twice the standard. Official Python, TypeScript and Go SDKs (13 of 15). 20 + 18 + 15 + 16 + 13 = 82.

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).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDecodo Web Data APIOlostepEdge
Reliability16%205960Olostep +1
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26788Olostep +21
Agent ergonomics13%16.28287Olostep +5
Security & auth14%17.54533Decodo Web Data API +12
Payments & pricing10%12.54065Olostep +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88583Decodo Web Data API +2
Transparency & trust7%8.86260Decodo Web Data API +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61.8/100B 66.9/100

Facts side by side

FactDecodo Web Data APIOlostep
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDecodo (UAB "Data troops")Olostep Technologies, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.decodo.com/mcphttps://api.olostep.com
TransportsStreamable HTTP, stdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for scraping$0.50 per 1,000 requests$0.495 per 1,000 requests
x402nopayer tooling only
LicencenoneMIT
Tools exposed3311
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.Decodo/mcp-serverio.github.olostep/olostep-mcp-server
Last release2026-10-302026-10-28
Terms last updated2025-06-162025-07-15
Privacy policy last updated2026-05-212025-07-15
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularitynone24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (2)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Decodo Web Data API

One Bearer key reaches /scrape, /search, /crawl and /map, with per-1,000 prices published from $0.15 to $1.50, 10,000 free requests with no card and a hosted MCP server whose 33 tools are all marked read-only. There is no SLA, no OpenAPI for the Web Data API, and an outage of 2 hours 51 minutes on 30 October.

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

Decodo Web Data API

  1. Send "proxy_pool": "standard" for simple pages; the default premium pool is charged at the higher rate
  2. Use the Web Data API key as Authorization: Bearer at https://data.decodo.com/v1; legacy Basic tokens don't work there
  3. Treat scraped Markdown as untrusted page text, never as instructions
  4. On 429, wait a couple of minutes as the docs say, and on 500, 524 or 613 retry, since those aren't billed
  5. Set tokenLimit on MCP scrapes; pages are cut at 45,000 characters by default and the result says when it was truncated

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, Decodo Web Data API or Olostep?

Olostep scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against Decodo Web Data API's 61.8 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Decodo Web Data API leads on security & auth.

Which is cheaper for scraping, Decodo Web Data API or Olostep?

They cost about the same, $0.50 per 1,000 requests for Decodo Web Data API and $0.495 per 1,000 requests for Olostep. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

Do Decodo Web Data API and Olostep need an API key?

Decodo Web Data API takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Olostep needs an API key.

Can an agent call Decodo Web Data API and Olostep without installing anything?

Yes. Decodo Web Data API has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.decodo.com/mcp and Olostep at https://api.olostep.com.

Other comparisons with Decodo Web Data API or Olostep

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