# Microlink vs Olostep (slim)

> Olostep scores 66.9 (B) to Microlink's 65.9 (B) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microlink-vs-olostep.md (~4,950 tokens) · this version ~2,330 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microlink-vs-olostep.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microlink-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 Microlink's 65.9 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Microlink leads on security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do scraping.

- Microlink: B 65.9, rank #395 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/microlink.min.md
- Olostep: B 66.9, rank #348 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/olostep.min.md
- Microlink, good for Agents that need link previews, screenshots, PDFs, metadata or a page as Markdown from one GET. Ahead on Security & auth, 44 against 33; Transparency & trust, 75 against 60.
- Olostep, good for Bulk scraping on a budget and for batch jobs of thousands of URLs. Ahead on Reliability, 60 against 52; Agent ergonomics, 87 against 82; Payments & pricing, 65 against 47.

| Category | Microlink | Olostep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 52 | 60 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 89 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 82 | 87 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 44 | 33 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 47 | 65 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 86 | 83 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 75 | 60 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Microlink | Olostep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Microlink Labs, S.L. | Olostep Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.microlink.io/mcp` | `https://api.olostep.com` |
| Transports | stdio, 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 | 24 | 11 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.olostep/olostep-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-10-31 | 2026-10-28 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2025-07-15 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2025-07-15 |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 805 npm/wk | 24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Olostep +18: Microlink 47 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plans are public and the Pro price is stated per 1,000 requests ($1.07), but Business and Enterprise are on request (15 of 20). Free key with 25 requests a day, no card (20). The free endpoint and hosted MCP server answer 5 requests a day with no key or signup, and the MCP checkout tools let an agent start a purchase that a person completes (12 of 20). 0 + 15 + 20 + 12 = 47.); 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).)
- Transparency & trust, Microlink +15: Microlink 75 (The API is closed under terms naming Microlink Labs, S.L. with its registry details, and the SDK, MCP server and the libraries behind it are MIT (20 of 30). The DPA, updated 30 October 2026, gives cache retention of 24 hours by default up to 31 days, logs 15 days and deletion within 15 days, but the privacy policy is undated, names no controller and gives no periods (20 of 30). The terms promise advance notice before a paid feature is materially reduced, and the changelog records changes by month, with no notice period (10 of 20). Subprocessors list updated 16 October 2026, with services, data types and locations (18 of 20). 20 + 20 + 10 + 18 = 68.); 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).)
- Security & auth, Microlink +11: Microlink 44 (One API key per account in the `x-api-key` header, with no scopes, rotation or expiry documented. auth.md says to keep it out of URLs and no query option is documented (20 of 30). Tools are reads apart from microlink_function, which runs caller-supplied code against the page in Microlink's browser, and the checkout tools never return a key (10 of 20). Pages come back as Markdown and text, and no prompt-injection guidance was found in the docs, auth.md or the MCP README (0). A request id on every response, with no per-call log for the customer documented (4 of 15). security.txt is valid to 28 July 2027 and links a responsible-disclosure policy and acknowledgements. No bug bounty or certification found (10 of 20). 20 + 10 + 0 + 4 + 10 = 44.); 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.)
- Reliability, Olostep +8: Microlink 52 (Graded on the hosted lines. microlink.io/status exists but is drawn by script, showing only 'Please wait' to our reader, and status.microlink.io failed through our proxy, so components and history are unchecked and scored absent (0). No readable history (5). Free and keyed quotas are published, 5 and 25 requests a day and 2 at a time, with paid quotas from 46,000 a month and x-rate-limit headers on every response (15). 429 with ECONCURRENCY says to wait a second and retry, a quota 429 gives the reset time, and every call only reads, but there is no Retry-After header documented (12 of 15). The terms commit to 99.9% uptime on paid plans, with service credits only under an Enterprise agreement (10). Generally available (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 12 + 10 + 10 = 52.); 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 +5: Microlink 82 (24 MCP tools in @microlink/mcp 2.8.17 with no toolset filter found (15 of 25). `filter` selects fields, `embed` returns one field as the body, and Markdown and text tools return only page content (18 of 20). Error codes such as EAUTH, ERATE, ECONCURRENCY, EPRO and EPROXYNEEDED with documented fixes (19 of 20). Every tool but microlink_function sets readOnlyHint true and destructiveHint false, and calls are reads with a cache and `force` to refresh. No idempotentHint (18 of 20). Only `url` is required; official JavaScript SDK (@microlink/mql) and CLI, with examples in seven languages but no other official SDK found (12 of 15). 15 + 18 + 19 + 18 + 12 = 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).)