# Olostep vs Qovia > Olostep scores 63.1 (B) to Qovia's 61.2 (C) for extraction. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side. - Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-qovia - Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-qovia.md (~5,650 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 .grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.. and .vs.. 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: 2026-11-01 Olostep scores 63.1 (B) on agent readiness against Qovia's 61.2 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Qovia leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do extraction. - Olostep: grade B, 63.1/100, rank #466 of 1253. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/olostep.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/olostep.json - Qovia: grade C, 61.2/100, rank #558 of 1253. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/qovia.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/qovia.json - Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/web-scrapers/index.md - All 261 scrapers comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/web-scrapers/index.md ## Which one, for what ### Olostep (B) Good for: Bulk scraping on a budget and for batch jobs of thousands of URLs. Ahead on: - Reliability, 60 against 40 - Agent ergonomics, 87 against 77 - Payments & pricing, 65 against 55 - Transparency & trust, 60 against 30 Also in its favour: - Runs on your own machine - Free to start without a card Watch for: The x402 challenge came back with no payment requirements in our probe ### Qovia (C) Good for: Agents that need structured public data from Chinese platforms (Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Bilibili, Kuaishou, Zhihu, WeChat official accounts, Taobao and JD reviews) or the Xingtu and Pugongying creator marketplaces, with TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, X and Reddit beside them, paid per successful call from a prepaid balance. Ahead on: - Security & auth, 60 against 28 - Maintenance & community, 77 against 58 Watch for: No status page, incident history or SLA; the terms promise nothing about uptime and the Python client is the only retry guidance beyond `Retry-After` ## Why the edge ### Security & auth: Qovia +32 - Olostep (28): One Bearer key from the dashboard. The authentication page documents no scopes, no multiple keys and no rotation or revocation (15 of 30). 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). No security.txt per the 30 September check, no security or compliance page in the docs index. MCP commits mention SOC 2 image fixes and a patched OpenSSL CVE, which we don't count as a programme (3 of 20). - Qovia (60): API keys with scopes chosen at creation (every endpoint, search, every raw endpoint or one of 24 platform groups), an optional expiry, revocation in the console and hashed storage; the docs say the key is read from the Authorization or x-api-key header only, never the URL or a cookie, and 30 failed authentications from one IP in a minute are throttled. No OAuth and no rotation feature beyond creating another key (24 of 30). The whole surface is read-only retrieval, scopes restrict a key to platforms, the two MCP catalogue tools need no key, and the docs and SECURITY.md tell users to give AI tools a separate scoped key (17 of 20). Every response is third-party platform text, and the only related statement is that error messages never contain the data source's own text; nothing on treating returned content as untrusted (3 of 15). request_id is the usage record ID on every answer, the console lists every charge in a usage log, X-Qovia-Charged and X-Qovia-Balance headers report each call, and GET /v1/account returns the key's scopes and balance at no charge; no exportable audit log or per-call endpoint was found (11 of 15). No security.txt on qovia.ai or api.qovia.ai (404), no bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001; the repository's SECURITY.md names a Telegram handle and a mailbox for reports covering both hosts (5 of 20). 24+17+3+11+5 = 60. ### Transparency & trust: Olostep +30 - 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). - Qovia (30): Closed service. The Terms of Service is one paragraph that names no legal entity, address or liability terms, says Delaware law governs and that the page is a summary with the signed agreement governing; the repository's client is MIT. Between the closed and unclear bands (7 of 30). The privacy policy is one paragraph. Account information is used to deliver and bill, personal information is not sold, requests and results are not resold, deletion requests go to the support mailbox, and the agreement governs where it differs. No retention periods, no subprocessors, no DPA, and no statement about the cache the prov.source flag implies; the SECURITY.md repeats the same points (8 of 30). A 410 endpoint_disabled code exists for retired endpoints and the changelog is dated, but there is no deprecation policy or notice period and nothing is marked deprecated (5 of 20). Stripe is named on the pricing page as the card and Alipay processor; no other provider, data location or transfer basis is stated (3 of 20). 7+8+5+3 = 23. ### Reliability: Olostep +20 - Olostep (60): Better Stack status page at status.olostep.com monitoring /scrapes, /batches, /crawls and /answers (20). No incidents posted, but the 90-day uptime bars show 99.918 to 99.960 per cent on the four API endpoints, so some downtime went without a write-up (20 of 30). Concurrency published per plan, 150 on Starter and 500 on Standard, but the free trial 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). - Qovia (40): Hosted reading, for the REST API with the MCP server described. No public status page was found. https://qovia.ai/status/ answers 404, status.qovia.ai does not resolve and neither the docs nor the footer links one (0). No readable incident history, so 5 by the rubric (5). Limits are published with numbers on the quickstart's rate-limits section, 60 requests a minute per account before the first top-up and 600 after on a sliding 60-second window, with X-RateLimit-Limit and X-RateLimit-Remaining headers, a 64 KiB body cap, an empty-call throttle (50 calls in 10 minutes with over 80 per cent empty, not found or rejected) and a per-second cap per endpoint without a number (15). Retry-After is declared on too_many_auth_failures, rate_limited, too_many_unbilled, endpoint_busy and upstream_busy, the error table marks the retryable codes, the docs say a 503 endpoint_unavailable carries none and will not clear, and the Python client retries 429 and 503 honouring the header. Every operation is a read, including POST /v1/search, and a failed or timed-out call is refunded, so idempotency keys are not needed (15). No SLA. The terms summary says nothing about uptime and the pricing FAQ excludes outages, rate limits and platform changes from refunds; the 11 September 2026 archived home page advertised a 99.95 per cent enterprise SLA that the current pages have dropped (0). The endpoints are sold and labelled Live on the docs and coverage pages, but every one of the 143 carries x-qovia-status beta in the OpenAPI file, the API version is 0.1.0 and the MCP server reports 0.1.0 (5 of 10). 0+5+15+15+0+5 = 40. ### Maintenance & community: Qovia +19 - Olostep (58): Node SDK release on 2026-07-15 per the 30 September check, MCP 1.0.17 on 2 July and Python SDK 1.2.2 on 22 June (20). Fewer than three dated releases or changelog entries since 3 July (5 of 20). The changelog hasn't moved since 18 June. MCP repository issue replies not read (8 of 25). Official Python and Node SDKs (15). MCP pull requests run contract and golden-description checks (10). - Qovia (77): The newest changes are the registry entry ai.qovia/qovia 0.1.1 and the repository's tools snapshot and plugin manifests on 28 October 2026, after the Python client 0.1.1 on PyPI on 27 October; the repository was pushed on 1 November (30). Eight changelog entries on 21 and 22 October, two registry versions (22 and 28 October) and two PyPI releases (25 and 27 October) are more than three dated entries in 90 days, all within ten days (20). Closed service with a public changelog. Support is Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat and one mailbox, with a one-business-day reply promised for email; GitHub issues are enabled on the repository with none opened, and no forum, Discord or community was found (7 of 15). ai.qovia/qovia is in the official MCP registry under a DNS-verified reverse-DNS namespace at 0.1.1, marked latest, and the Python client is an official package on PyPI (15). The client is standard-library Python with a test file, MIT, no dependencies and no CI workflow in the repository tree; the account's other nine repositories are forks of lists and directories (5 of 10). 30+20+7+15+5 = 77. ### Agent ergonomics: Olostep +10 - 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). - Qovia (77): API reading. Responses come in fixed page sizes per endpoint, from about 5 comments on Xiaohongshu to 100 Fliggy reviews, with limit only on Bilibili danmaku and no field selection; the record shape is compact and shared across posts, notes and videos. The MCP server loads four tools by default, keeps the catalogue out of context until search_endpoints and get_endpoint are called, and ?tools= selects platforms or everything, which on the MCP reading would score 25 (18 of 25). Cursor pagination with has_more on most lists, search_id on Douyin and Zhihu search, page numbers on Weibo, Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, sort options on several, and the cross-platform search filters by platform, content type, sentiment and whole-day date windows up to 90 days (17 of 20). One error object with 20 codes, request_id on every answer, the retryable set marked, refunded codes separated from never-charged ones, and MCP tool errors carrying error.code, the HTTP status and retry_after_seconds (19 of 20). All calls are reads, failed and empty calls are refunded, Retry-After is declared and the Python client retries; no readOnlyHint or other annotation appears in the vendor's 28 October tools/list snapshot (14 of 20). One required parameter on 117 of 144 operations and defaults set on the server, but the only official SDK is the Python client; Node and curl are examples (9 of 15). 18+17+19+14+9 = 77. ### Payments & pricing: Olostep +10 - 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). - Qovia (55): No x402, MPP or L402 on Qovia's own endpoints; USDT on TRC-20 is a top-up method from a console session, not a machine payment protocol. The vendor's five Actors on the Apify Store under the profile qovia (Qovia Data, the same Telegram handle and mailbox as the site), such as the Xingtu Actor at $0.01 to $0.06 a section, can be paid through Apify, whose prepaid token is sold over x402, so partial credit for a third-party route on part of the catalogue (10 of 40). Per-call prices are published without a login, per endpoint in the OpenAPI file, llms.txt and the docs, search at $5 and raw endpoints from $0.5 to $19.5 per 1,000, with the tier rule and payment fees stated (20). 50 trial calls for a new account, counted only when a call returns data; the quickstart says to top up when they run out and the docs ask for no card at sign-up, though no account was created to confirm it (20). A person signs up in a browser and creates a key; the MCP catalogue tools work without a key but data calls do not, and the Apify route reaches four platforms without a Qovia account (5 of 20). 10+20+20+5 = 55. ## Score by category | Category | Weight | Olostep | Qovia | Edge | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 40 | Olostep +20 | | Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 86 | Qovia +2 | | Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 77 | Olostep +10 | | Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 28 | 60 | Qovia +32 | | Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 65 | 55 | Olostep +10 | | Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 77 | Qovia +19 | | Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 30 | Olostep +30 | | Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | | | **Total** | | **63.1 · B** | **61.2 · C** | | ## Facts side by side | Fact | Olostep | Qovia | | --- | --- | --- | | Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API | | Vendor | Olostep Technologies, Inc. | Qovia | | Hosted endpoint | `https://api.olostep.com` | `https://api.qovia.ai` | | Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | | Auth | API key | API key | | Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use | | x402 | payer tooling only | no | | Licence | MIT | Proprietary hosted service under a one-paragraph Terms of Service summary that defers to a signed agreement. The qovia/qovia-mcp repository (setup guide, examples, Python client) and the qovia package on PyPI are MIT; the service's source is not public | | Tools exposed | 11 | 141 | | Read-only variant documented | no | no | | llms.txt | yes | yes | | MCP registry | `io.github.olostep/olostep-mcp-server` | `ai.qovia/qovia` | | Last release | 2026-07-15 | 2026-10-28 | | Terms last updated | 2025-07-15 | not read yet | | Privacy policy last updated | 2025-07-15 | not read yet | | Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not read yet | | Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not read yet | | Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not read yet | | Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not read yet | | Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not read yet | | Popularity | 24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk | 0 stars | | Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none | ## How the scores have moved ### Olostep - no change on 28 October 2026: new evidence - +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist - -0.1 on 8 October 2026: checklist ### Qovia No score change since it was listed. ## Verdicts **Olostep.** OpenAPI 3.0.3 for every endpoint and a structured error body. The x402 challenge came back with no payment requirements in our probe. **Qovia.** An OpenAPI 3.1 file with 144 operations, one envelope and 20 error codes, per-endpoint prices with failed and empty calls refunded, scoped keys and a four-tool MCP server that keeps the catalogue out of context. No status page, no legal entity, one-paragraph terms and privacy pages, and a product ten days old at the check. ## Before you call either ### 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. Hosted MCP wants `Authorization: Bearer`, stdio wants OLOSTEP_API_KEY. Mixing them up shows 0 tools 5. Check the 402 body before paying over x402. Our probe got an empty one ### Qovia 1. Send `Authorization: Bearer sk-qovia-...` to https://api.qovia.ai and check `meta.empty` on every HTTP 200; `data` may be `null` or an empty structure and nothing is charged for it. 2. Branch on `error.code`, never on `message`. Retry only `rate_limited`, `too_many_unbilled`, `endpoint_busy`, `upstream_busy` and `too_many_auth_failures` after `Retry-After`; `endpoint_unavailable` has none and will not clear. 3. Stay under 60 requests a minute (600 after the first top-up) across every key on the account, and keep empty or not-found calls under 80 per cent of the last 10 minutes or expect 429 `too_many_unbilled`. 4. Pass the previous page's `cursor` (and `search_id` on Douyin and Zhihu search) back unchanged and stop when `has_more` is false; each page is a separate charge, and unknown parameters answer 400. 5. For MCP, connect to https://api.qovia.ai/mcp over Streamable HTTP; call `search_endpoints` then `get_endpoint` before `call_endpoint`, or add `?tools=douyin,kuaishou` for typed direct tools. Catalogue tools need no key. ## Questions ### Which is better for AI agents, Olostep or Qovia? Olostep scores 63.1 (B) on agent readiness against Qovia's 61.2 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Qovia leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. ### Do Olostep and Qovia need an API key? Both need an API key. ### Can an agent call Olostep and Qovia without installing anything? Yes. Olostep has a hosted endpoint at https://api.olostep.com and Qovia at https://api.qovia.ai. ## For agents - This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-qovia.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-qovia.min.md - Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "olostep", "b": "qovia"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare olostep qovia` - Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/olostep.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/qovia.json ## Other comparisons with Olostep or Qovia - [Bright Data vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-qovia.md) - [Firecrawl MCP vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-olostep.md) - [Firecrawl MCP vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-qovia.md) - [Bright Data vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-olostep.md) - [Context.dev vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-olostep.md) - [Jina Reader vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-olostep.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 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 ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zenrows.md) - [Olostep vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zyte.md) - [Context.dev vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-qovia.md) - [Diffbot vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-olostep.md) - [Diffbot vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-qovia.md) - [jevcrawl vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-qovia.md) - [Olostep vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapeatlas.md) - [Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/oxylabs-web-scraper-vs-qovia.md) - [Qovia vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapeatlas.md) - [Qovia vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapegraphai.md) - [Qovia vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scraperapi.md) - [Qovia vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapewise.md) - [Qovia vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapfly.md) - [Qovia vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapingant.md) - [Qovia vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapingbee.md) - [Qovia vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapingdog.md) - [Qovia vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-spider-cloud.md) - [Qovia vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-zenrows.md) - [Qovia vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-zyte.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) --- Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp