# Olostep vs ZenRows

> ZenRows has a score of 75.1 (BB) against Olostep's 63.1 (B). Both do scraping. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 29 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zenrows
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zenrows.md (~1,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zenrows.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zenrows.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

ZenRows has a score of 75.1 (BB) against Olostep's 63.1 (B). Both do scraping. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 29 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
- ZenRows: grade BB, 75.1/100, rank #43 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zenrows.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zenrows.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Olostep for agent ergonomics (+8).

Pick ZenRows for reliability (+27), security & auth (+13), payments & pricing (+15), maintenance & community (+29), transparency & trust (+15).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Olostep | ZenRows | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 87 | ZenRows +27 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 83 | Olostep +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 79 | Olostep +8 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 28 | 41 | ZenRows +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 65 | 80 | ZenRows +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 87 | ZenRows +29 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 75 | ZenRows +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.1 · B** | **75.1 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Olostep | ZenRows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Olostep Technologies, Inc. | ZenRows |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.olostep.com` | `https://api.zenrows.com/v1/` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | payer tooling only | payer tooling only |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 11 | 44 |
| 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` | `io.github.ZenRows/zenrows-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-07-15 | 2026-09-18 |
| Popularity | 24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk | 21 stars, 35k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3.8/5 (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.

**ZenRows.** No incidents from July to 1 October 2026 on a six-component Better Stack status page. The Fetch API only takes the key in the query string.

## 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

### ZenRows

1. Start with mode=auto and let it escalate. Force js_render or premium_proxy only when you know the site needs it
2. Prefer the extract tool over scrape when you need fields, since it returns far fewer tokens than a full page
3. Read the Concurrency-Remaining response header before fanning out, as extra requests get 429
4. Set ZENROWS_AUTO_SIGNUP=false in stdio configs so a missing key fails loudly instead of creating an account

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