# Olostep vs Spider

> Spider has a score of 74.3 (BB) against Olostep's 63.1 (B). Both do scraping. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 31 points. Spider accepts x402. Olostep doesn't. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-spider-cloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-spider-cloud.md (~1,700 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-spider-cloud.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-spider-cloud.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: 2026-10-05

Spider has a score of 74.3 (BB) against Olostep's 63.1 (B). Both do scraping. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 31 points. Spider accepts x402. Olostep doesn't.

- 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
- Spider: grade BB, 74.3/100, rank #49 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/spider-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/spider-cloud.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Olostep for agent ergonomics (+17).

Pick Spider for reliability (+20), security & auth (+14), payments & pricing (+31), maintenance & community (+27), transparency & trust (+9).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Olostep | Spider | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 80 | Spider +20 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 87 | Spider +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 70 | Olostep +17 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 28 | 42 | Spider +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 65 | 96 | Spider +31 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 85 | Spider +27 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 69 | Spider +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.1 · B** | **74.3 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Olostep | Spider |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Olostep Technologies, Inc. | Spider (BAGELMEN LLC) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.olostep.com` | `https://api.spider.cloud` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | payer tooling only | yes, from $0.0005/call |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 11 | 22 |
| 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` | `cloud.spider/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-07-15 | 2026-07-19 |
| Popularity | 24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk | 2.7k stars, 2.7k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3.3/5 (8) |

## 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.

**Spider.** Keyless /scrape and working x402 v2 on every core route, so an agent needs no account. Operated by BAGELMEN LLC with no address, retention periods or DPA in the privacy policy.

## 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

### Spider

1. Every content route returns a JSON array, even /scrape. The status field is the page's, not the API call's
2. Leave request on smart and set return_format to markdown for LLM input
3. Set limit on /crawl. Unset, it caps only at your credit balance
4. Use /scrape with `stealth: true` instead of /unblocker, which is deprecated
5. Honour Retry-After on 429. Keyless use allows 4 requests a minute

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