Olostep — Web data API for AI: search, scrape, crawl, and monitor the web. Best for AI startups building web research agents that need clean, structured data, Developers looking for a single API to replace scattered scraping, crawling, and monitoring tools, E-commerce and brand protection teams monitoring competitive pricing and content changes. Free to start; paid plans from $9/mo.
AI startups building web research agents that need clean, structured dataDevelopers looking for a single API to replace scattered scraping, crawling, and monitoring toolsE-commerce and brand protection teams monitoring competitive pricing and content changesData scientists collecting large-scale web datasets for model training
Not ideal for
Teams requiring a completely free, open-source scraping solutionSimple one-off scraping tasks that don't need an API (use curl or a browser extension)Projects that must avoid any third-party API dependency for compliance reasonsUsers who need transparent, self-service pricing without sales contact
A strong contender for AI teams needing a single API for search, scraping, and monitoring. Its batch processing and agent-friendly outputs (Markdown, JSON, HTML) stand out. However, pricing isn't public, so cost-conscious teams should test with the free tier first.
Olostep is a well-rounded web data API tailored for AI workloads. Its key strength is the breadth of endpoints: search (natural language), answer (AI-powered), scrape, crawl, map, batch, and monitor. This eliminates the need to cobble together multiple tools. The native Python and Node.js SDKs reduce integration friction, and the batched crawl of up to 100k URLs in minutes is impressive for large-scale data collection. The monitoring feature is a differentiator—ideal for tracking competitive changes or content updates. However, the website lacks transparent pricing; you must contact sales, which is a barrier for smaller teams. Also, the product is relatively new, so community support and documentation may be thinner than established players. For developers building AI agents that need real-time web data, Olostep is worth a trial. But if you need a more battle-tested solution with predictable pricing, consider scraping APIs like ScrapingBee or Bright Data.
Skip Olostep if Skip Olostep if you need a free or low-volume scraping solution for occasional use, or if you prefer a GUI-based tool over an API.
Latest from Olostep
Updated today
Across the latest 9 updates: 8 feature updates and 1 launch.
How likely is Olostep to still be operational in 12 months? Based on 6 signals including funding, development activity, and platform risk.
funding runway
80
website health
90
github activity
50
category mortality
70
wrapper dependency
100
hyperscaler overlap
80
About Olostep
Olostep is a unified web data API designed to power AI agents and applications with clean, structured data from the web. It provides endpoints for scraping single pages, crawling entire sites, mapping URL structures, processing batch jobs up to 100k URLs, natural language search, AI-powered answers, and event monitoring. Built for developers, Olostep offers native Python and Node.js SDKs, webhook support, and an object-oriented API that returns clean Markdown, HTML, or JSON. The platform handles distributed infrastructure, VM sandboxes, and form interactions, making it a full-stack solution for extracting web data at scale. Ideal for AI companies, research agents, brand protection, and local business analysis, Olostep positions itself as the web data layer for the "second user" of the web: AI. Compared to alternatives like Scrapy or Puppeteer, Olostep eliminates the need to manage proxies, rendering, or infrastructure, offering a managed API with monitoring and structured data parsers.
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Key Features
Search the web with natural language queries
AI-powered answer generation from web search
Real-time scraping with Markdown, HTML, JSON output
Full-site crawling with configurable depth and filters
Site mapping to discover all URLs
Batch processing up to 100k URLs in 5-8 minutes
Event monitoring for web changes
Structured data parsers
Distributed infrastructure with VM sandboxes
Form filling and click automation
Object-oriented API with SDKs (Python, Node.js)
Webhook events and metadata support
Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Olostep actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
AI Agent Developer
You are building an agent that researches competitors. Use Olostep's /search API with natural language queries to gather URLs, then /crawl to extract full page content into Markdown for your RAG pipeline.
Outcome: Agent gets structured web context without managing browsers or proxies.
Brand Monitoring Specialist
Set up a Monitor via the new Monitors API to watch for new blog posts on competitor domains. Configure webhooks to ping your Slack whenever a change is detected.
Outcome: Real-time alerts on competitor activity without manual checks.
Data Scientist
You need to collect 10,000 product pages for ML training. Use the /batches endpoint to send a CSV of URLs, receive clean JSON in 5-7 minutes.
Outcome: Large-scale dataset ready for model training with minimal engineering effort.
Crawl entire documentation sites to build a knowledge base for an AI assistant.
Batch process thousands of URLs to generate training data for ML models.
Models Under the Hood
proprietary answer extraction model
Limitations
No free tier or trial credits are mentioned; all plans are paid starting at $49/month. The batch processing limit of 100k URLs in 5-7 minutes may not suit ultra-low-latency scenarios. Usage-based pricing with credits means costs can scale unpredictably for high-volume scraping. JavaScript rendering and proxy network add overhead, potentially slowing down simple requests compared to lighter APIs.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Annual total
Free
Over 12 months
Effective monthly
Free
Billed monthly
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Olostep tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Trial
$0/month
Ideal for
Developers who want to evaluate API quality before committing to a paid plan.
What this tier adds
Free entry point: 500 requests with JS rendering and residential IPs, but low rate limits.
Starter
$9/month
Ideal for
Solo developers or small projects needing a few thousand requests per month.
What this tier adds
Upgrades to 5000 requests and 150 concurrent requests, with lower cost per request.
Standard
$99/month
Ideal for
Growth-stage teams with moderate web data needs, 200K monthly requests.
What this tier adds
Increases to 200K requests, 500 concurrent requests, and best per-request cost ($0.399/1K).
•Overage via credit packs may be cheaper than subscription cost per 1k requests
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Olostep's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Olostep's pricing starts at $49/month for Hobby (100k credits) and $9/month on the newer Starter tier (5000 requests). For heavy usage, Growth at $499/month gives 2M credits. Credit packs offer flexibility for spiky usage. Compared to competitors like ScrapingBee ($49/month for 100k requests) or Apify ($49/month for 50k compute units), Olostep's per-successful-request pricing can be competitive, especially with AI-optimized endpoints.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Olostep — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
For developers: get a working scrape in minutes using Python or Node.js SDKs after signing up. The playground allows instant API testing without coding. MCP integration with Claude or Cursor takes under 10 minutes. Batch processing of thousands of URLs can begin within an hour of setup.
Switching to or from Olostep
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
Migrating in
→From Firecrawl: rewrite API calls to Olostep's /scrapes endpoint using Python/Node SDKs — same data output format, different auth.
→From ScrapingBee: replace API key and adjust endpoint paths; Olostep offers additional /search and /answer endpoints.
→From self-managed headless browser (Puppeteer/Playwright): replace with a single /scrapes call, Olostep handles proxies and rendering.
Migrating out
↗To Firecrawl: export your saved URLs and parser templates; rewrite API calls to Firecrawl's schema.
↗To ScrapingBee: migrate if you need simpler pricing without credits.
Recent material changes
Pricing, brand, ownership, or deprecation changes worth knowing before you commit. Most-recent first.
•2026-05-20: Launched Monitors API for automated web monitoring (blog announcement).
•2026-05-01: Updated pricing page to show Starter tier ($9/month) and Trial ($0/500 requests).
•2026-04-30: Expanded MCP integrations to 33 tools including Gemini CLI, OpenAI Codex, and JetBrains.
