# Olostep vs ScrapingBee

> Olostep has a score of 63.1 (B) against ScrapingBee's 59.3 (C). Both do scraping. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 27 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapingbee
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapingbee.md (~1,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapingbee.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapingbee.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Olostep has a score of 63.1 (B) against ScrapingBee's 59.3 (C). Both do scraping. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 27 points.

- Olostep: grade B, 63.1/100, rank #210 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/olostep.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/olostep.json
- ScrapingBee: grade C, 59.3/100, rank #268 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapingbee.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapingbee.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Olostep for schema & documentation (+24), agent ergonomics (+19), payments & pricing (+25).

Pick ScrapingBee for reliability (+10), security & auth (+9), maintenance & community (+27).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Olostep | ScrapingBee | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 70 | ScrapingBee +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 60 | Olostep +24 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 68 | Olostep +19 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 28 | 37 | ScrapingBee +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 65 | 40 | Olostep +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 85 | ScrapingBee +27 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 64 | ScrapingBee +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.1 · B** | **59.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Olostep | ScrapingBee |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Olostep Technologies, Inc. | ScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.olostep.com` | `https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | payer tooling only | no |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 11 | 18 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.olostep/olostep-mcp-server` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-07-15 | 2026-09-11 |
| Popularity | 24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk | 132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 4/5 (2) |

## 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.

**ScrapingBee.** Dedicated Google, Amazon, Walmart, YouTube, ChatGPT and Gemini endpoints next to the general HTML API. remote-mcp.txt says the hosted MCP only takes the key as ?api_key= in its URL.

## 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

### ScrapingBee

1. Send render_js=false for static pages and files. It cuts the cost from 5 credits to 1
2. Use mode=auto with max_cost=25 to stop it escalating to 75-credit stealth requests
3. Keep the MCP URL with ?api_key= out of logs and shared configs
4. Back off exponentially on 429 from the MCP, since its concurrency is shared across customers
5. Expect 404 and 410 from the target to be billed. Other failures aren't

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