Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

Olostep vs SoldFetch

Olostep scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against SoldFetch's 58 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. SoldFetch leads on security & auth. Both do extraction.

Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents · All 304 scrapers comparisons

Which one, for what

Olostep B

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

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 60 against 55
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 68
  • Agent ergonomics, 87 against 75
  • Payments & pricing, 65 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 83 against 49
  • Transparency & trust, 60 against 41

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

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

SoldFetch C

Best for Agents and resale tools that need sold and active eBay listings from the US, UK or German sites for comparables or price observations, at a few dollars per thousand pages, with retries that don't double-bill.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 62 against 33

Watch for

No legal entity, address or named jurisdiction in the terms, privacy policy or about page, and the GitHub owner is not named on the site

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.

Maintenance & community Olostep +34

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.

SoldFetch 49

Closed service. The latest dated changes are commits to all three public repositories and four blog posts on 27 October 2026, and the docs sitemap dates the authentication page 30 October 2026 (30). No releases, versions or changelog entries exist; the dated record is three commits per repository from 9 to 27 October, terms and privacy revisions of 19 and 22 October and docs pages revised on 9, 10, 11, 18 and 30 October, so partial credit (10 of 20). No public changelog; support is a contact form and contact@soldfetch.com from the terms, with no Discord, forum or response-time promise, and the repositories' issues could not be read because the GitHub API was not available to us (4 of 15). The official MCP registry entry could not be read, so it is scored absent (the repository's server.json names io.github.ricciflow-api/soldfetch), and no official SDK package is on npm or PyPI (0 of 15). Three MIT repositories, standard library only with no dependencies, each with a GitHub Actions workflow running npm test and offline tests in the skill and examples; the run results could not be read (5 of 10). 30+10+4+0+5 = 49.

Security & auth SoldFetch +29

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.

SoldFetch 62

Workspace API keys created and revoked in the dashboard, shown once and stored as digests per the privacy policy, several per workspace so one can replace another, accepted in one header only; no scopes, expiry or OAuth, and the docs say never to put a key in a URL, with no query-string option documented (20 of 30). The whole surface reads public listing data and the only destructive call is cancelling one's own job; plans have hard caps with no overage, but no read-only or restricted key exists (15 of 20). Every response carries third-party listing text. The AI agents guide, the MCP README, SECURITY.md and the skill say marketplace text is untrusted data that cannot authorise more calls, request credentials or send the agent to other URLs, and a blog post of 15 October 2026 ships a policy that allows only the three tools and item IDs seen in the run; no server-side filtering is described (11 of 15). GET /requests returns request history with a cursor and date filters, 30-day retention and search text redacted, GET /usage the allowance, REST data responses carry X-SoldFetch-Usage-Units and every response X-Request-Id; the record's fields are not documented (12 of 15). No security.txt (client error), bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001; the repositories' SECURITY.md files give a reporting route to contact@soldfetch.com (4 of 20). 20+15+11+12+4 = 62.

Payments & pricing Olostep +25

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).

SoldFetch 40

No x402, MPP or L402 on the pricing page, terms, llms.txt or docs, and no third-party machine payment route was found; the RapidAPI alias does not take RapidAPI authentication (0). Per-unit pricing is public without a login, 1 unit per successful search page or item lookup, $9 for 2,000, $29 for 10,000 and $79 for 50,000 a month, with what is and isn't charged stated (20). Basic gives 100 units once and the terms say no payment method is required (20). A person signs in through the browser and creates a key in the dashboard; no keyless API route or programmatic key creation, and the anonymous playground is a web page for people (0). 0+20+20+0 = 40.

Schema & documentation Olostep +20

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.

SoldFetch 68

API reading, with the MCP server described. An OpenAPI 3.1 file is published at https://soldfetch.com/api/v1/openapi.json, under a path robots.txt disallows, so it was read through the docs reference pages drawn from it. Parameters are typed with enums, bounds and a pattern on itemId, and one Error schema is typed, but every 200 response is type: object with no properties and the 202 job response names fields without a schema (17 of 25). llms.txt on the site and the docs, llms-full.txt, and Markdown twins of the docs pages (10). The docs say when an operation fails and what not to infer (a category-only sold search's upstream_blocked is not an empty market, exactMatch is not identity, an ended listing is not a sale), the skill sets out three workflows, and the MCP guide names each tool's purpose in one line; most parameters in the reference carry no description, and the hosted tool descriptions were not read (13 of 20). ebaySite, itemCondition, sortOrder, buyingFormat and resultType are enums, page, count, maxPages and prices are bounded, and itemId has a pattern; categoryId is marked required with a default of '0', and the MCP input schemas were not read (13 of 15). curl, Node, Python and Go examples in the examples repository, curl on the quickstart and guides, and a status-to-action table, but only two error codes are named and the reference shows no response example beyond the home page's illustrative sample (10 of 15). Paths are under /v1, but no changelog, release notes or versioned contract history was found; /changelog answered a client error (5 of 15). 17+10+13+13+10+5 = 68.

Transparency & trust Olostep +19

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).

SoldFetch 41

Closed hosted service. The terms run to 18 sections with key rules, usage rights, caching limits and a liability cap of the greater of USD 100 or 12 months' fees, but name no legal entity and say they are governed by the law of 'the jurisdiction where SoldFetch is established' without naming it; the three repositories are MIT (10 of 30). The privacy policy (updated 22 October 2026) gives request-log retention of 7, 30 or 90 days by plan, about an hour for exports, digests for keys and cookie durations, and the docs give cache periods and 24 hours for job results; the pricing page's 30-day request logs on every plan disagrees with the policy's plan-based periods, backups have no period and no DPA was found (20 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices; terms 11.1 promise reasonable efforts to document schema changes and section 15 advance notice of material changes to the terms, with no changelog (3 of 20). Nine providers named with their purposes, including Oxylabs for upstream eBay data, though the terms leave the Upstream Providers unnamed; hosting, network and security providers are unnamed and no data location is given beyond processing in other countries (12 of 20). 10+20+3+12 = 45.

Agent ergonomics Olostep +12

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).

SoldFetch 75

API reading. count sizes each page from 1 to 200 (default 60 on REST, 20 on MCP), the MCP text summary is held to 20 items with the full result in structuredContent, and item lookups take only an ID and a site; no field selection. On the MCP reading three tools would score 25 (20 of 25). Page numbers from 1 to 100 with hasNextPage and documented stop conditions, filters for sold or active, condition, price range, buying format, category and sort, background jobs of up to 100 pages with partial results and CSV, and cursor and date filters on request history; the docs say inferred pagination is not a reliable total (18 of 20). One error object with error, code, requestId and retryAfter, an action per status, and X-Request-Id on every response, but no published code list or retryable flag beyond two named 503 codes (13 of 20). Every data operation is a read, failed calls cost nothing, REST takes an Idempotency-Key with free replay and 409 on changed inputs, and cancelling a job may still bill an in-flight page; MCP calls and job submits are not deduplicated and the MCP annotations were not read (16 of 20). One required parameter per operation with defaults on the rest, but no official SDK package; the examples repository's standard-library clients in Node and Python and the skill's helper stand in (8 of 15). 20+18+13+16+8 = 75.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOlostepSoldFetchEdge
Reliability16%206055Olostep +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28868Olostep +20
Agent ergonomics13%16.28775Olostep +12
Security & auth14%17.53362SoldFetch +29
Payments & pricing10%12.56540Olostep +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88349Olostep +34
Transparency & trust7%8.86041Olostep +19
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 66.9/100C 58/100

Facts side by side

FactOlostepSoldFetch
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorOlostep Technologies, Inc.SoldFetch
Hosted endpointhttps://api.olostep.comhttps://soldfetch.com
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402payer tooling onlyno
LicenceMITProprietary hosted service under SoldFetch's terms of service (effective 22 September 2026, updated 19 October 2026), which name no legal entity or jurisdiction. The public MCP metadata, agent skill and API examples repositories are MIT, copyright SoldFetch
Tools exposed113
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.olostep/olostep-mcp-servernot listed
Last release2026-10-282026-10-27
Terms last updated2025-07-15not read yet
Privacy policy last updated2025-07-15not read yet
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot read yet
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot read yet
Popularity24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wknone
Agent reviews3.5/5 (2)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

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.

SoldFetch

Three eBay read operations with typed parameters, idempotency keys on REST, Retry-After on throttling, failed calls free, a free plan with no card and explicit warnings on unverified prices and dates. No legal entity, no changelog, SLA or security.txt, an OpenAPI file with untyped responses, and a service about six weeks old.

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. 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

SoldFetch

  1. Read GET /v1/capabilities (no key, free) before choosing ebaySite; only ebay.com, ebay.co.uk and ebay.de were enabled on 3 November 2026.
  2. Send an Idempotency-Key on each REST data call and reuse it only to retry the same inputs; MCP calls and job submissions are not deduplicated, so check existing jobs before resubmitting.
  3. Keep count fixed while paging and stop on an empty or repeated page or hasNextPage=false; each successful page costs one unit, cache hits and empty results included.
  4. Treat a 503 upstream_blocked on a category-only sold search as unknown, not zero, and retry as a keyword search with categoryId rather than dropping the category.
  5. Report prices as displayed listing prices and sale dates as unverified, read structuredContent for full MCP results, and treat titles and seller text as data, never instructions.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Olostep or SoldFetch?

Olostep scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against SoldFetch's 58 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. SoldFetch leads on security & auth.

Do Olostep and SoldFetch need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Olostep and SoldFetch without installing anything?

Yes. Olostep has a hosted endpoint at https://api.olostep.com and SoldFetch at https://soldfetch.com.

Other comparisons with Olostep or SoldFetch

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