# Olostep vs Zyte API

> Zyte API scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against Olostep's 63 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Olostep leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do scraping. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zyte
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zyte.md (~2,350 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zyte.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zyte.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: 2026-10-09

Zyte API scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against Olostep's 63 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Olostep leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do scraping.

- Olostep: grade B, 63/100, rank #370 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/olostep.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/olostep.json
- Zyte API: grade B, 69.7/100, rank #166 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zyte.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zyte.json

## Which one, for what

### Olostep (B)

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

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 87 against 72
- Payments & pricing, 65 against 40

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: The x402 challenge came back with no payment requirements in our probe

### Zyte API (B)

Good for: An agent or pipeline that fetches protected pages and wants the service to choose proxy and browser per site and to bill only success, and teams already on Scrapy.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 85 against 60
- Security & auth, 55 against 28
- Maintenance & community, 77 against 58
- Transparency & trust, 66 against 58

Watch for: Request price depends on the target site's tier, from $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 HTTP requests and $1.01 to $16.08 with a browser on pay-as-you-go


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Olostep | Zyte API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 85 | Zyte API +25 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 85 | Zyte API +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 72 | Olostep +15 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 28 | 55 | Zyte API +27 |
| 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 | 77 | Zyte API +19 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 66 | Zyte API +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63 · B** | **69.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Olostep | Zyte API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Olostep Technologies, Inc. | Zyte Group Limited |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.olostep.com` | `https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for scraping | $0.495 per 1,000 requests | not published |
| x402 | payer tooling only | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary service under Zyte's terms of service. The Python client is BSD 3-Clause, and the Agentic Web Data plugin is under Zyte's own end-user licence |
| Tools exposed | 11 | 34 |
| 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 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-07-15 | 2026-09-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-07-15 | 2024-08-30 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 24 stars, 8.9k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk | 42k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |

## 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.

**Zyte API.** One POST endpoint with an OpenAPI 3 contract picks proxies, browser rendering and extraction per site, bills only successful responses, and sends problem+json errors with Retry-After. Prices vary by target site across five tiers, so cost per request isn't known before the site is assigned one, and no dated API changelog was found.

## 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

### Zyte API

1. Send the API key as the Basic auth username with an empty password to `https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract`. Set only one of `httpResponseBody` or `browserHtml`, or one extraction field
2. Ask for `httpResponseBody` before `browserHtml`. Browser requests cost about eight to thirteen times more per tier
3. Retry 429, 503 and 520 after the `Retry-After` seconds, with backoff. They aren't billed. Don't retry 400, 401, 422 or 451
4. Read `statusCode` in a 200 response. A target site's 404 comes back as a successful, billed Zyte API response
5. Have the owner set a blocking spending limit on the key you use. A 403 `/auth/account-suspended` means the limit or the trial month ended

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Olostep or Zyte API?

Zyte API scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against Olostep's 63 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Olostep leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing.

### Do Olostep and Zyte API need an API key?

Olostep needs an API key. Zyte API takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Olostep and Zyte API without installing anything?

Yes. Olostep has a hosted endpoint at https://api.olostep.com and Zyte API at https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zyte.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zyte.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "olostep", "b": "zyte"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare olostep zyte`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/olostep.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zyte.json

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