Olostep
Web data API for AI agents: scrape, crawl, search, and monitor.
A practical, developer-friendly API for web data extraction at competitive prices. The breadth of endpoints and transparent top-ups make it a solid choice for AI agent builders. But the tiny free tier and lack of enterprise compliance hold it back for larger teams.
Verified 18d ago · liveness 95/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/olostep
- Developers building AI agents needing real-time web data extraction
- Data teams requiring scalable batch scraping from thousands of URLs
- SaaS companies needing web monitoring for brand protection or price changes
- Researchers automating collection of web-based datasets and summaries
- Non-technical users requiring a point-and-click interface
- Enterprises requiring SOC2 compliance or on-premise deployment
- Hobbyists needing a generous free tier beyond 500 requests
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Skip Olostep if you need a point-and-click interface, require SOC2 compliance, or expect a generous free tier beyond 500 requests.
Going past your plan's request limit forces you to buy credit packs (e.g., $20 for 10k credits), which are valid only 6 months.
Olostep's pricing is competitive for low-to-moderate usage: $9/mo for 5,000 requests ($0.495/1K) beats Firecrawl's $19/mo for 4,000 credits. At scale, $399/mo for 1M requests ($0.399/1K) is cheaper than Apify's $499 for 100,000 compute units. However, forced JavaScript rendering adds hidden cost per request. The Trial tier (500 requests) is less generous than Firecrawl's 500 free credits. Top-up credit packs ($20/10K, $200/250K, $1,000/2M) offer flexibility but expire in 6 months.
In short
Olostep — Web data API for AI agents: scrape, crawl, search, and monitor. Best for Developers building AI agents needing real-time web data extraction, Data teams requiring scalable batch scraping from thousands of URLs, SaaS companies needing web monitoring for brand protection or price changes. Free to start; paid plans from $9/mo.
What's new in Olostep
Checked 6 days agoAcross the latest 9 updates: 9 feature updates.
8 Best Real Estate Data Providers in 2026 Compared
Blog post comparing 8 real estate data providers in 2026.
How to Bypass reCAPTCHA v3 for Web Scraping in 2026
Blog post on bypassing reCAPTCHA v3 for web scraping in 2026.
What Is a Data Marketplace? How It Works, Types and Examples
Blog post explaining data marketplaces, their types, and examples.
What Is a DataDome CAPTCHA Solver? Methods and Alternatives
Blog post on DataDome CAPTCHA solvers, methods, and alternatives.
How to Scrape Financial Data: Methods, Sources and Tools
Blog post on scraping financial data including methods and tools.
What Is Bad Data? Types, Causes, Costs and How to Prevent It
Blog post covering bad data types, causes, costs, and prevention.
What Is a reCAPTCHA Solver? How It Works and When to Use One
Blog post explaining reCAPTCHA solvers and their use cases.
CrewAI Multi-Agent Framework: A Beginner’s Guide to Building AI Agent Teams
Blog post: Guide on building AI agent teams using CrewAI multi-agent framework.
Introducing storage parameter for persistent extraction results
New storage parameter allows persisting extraction results with configurable retention up to 'never'.
Viability Score
How likely is Olostep to still be operational in 12 months? Based on 4 signals — momentum (how recently it shipped), wrapper dependency, revenue model, and web presence.
Last calculated: July 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Scrape URLs to Markdown, HTML, JSON, or screenshots
- Crawl sites with configurable max pages and include/exclude filters
- Map/sitemap generation from any URL
- Batch process up to 10,000 URLs in 5-8 minutes
- Search the web with natural language (Web Search API GA)
- AI-powered answer extraction with citations (Answer endpoint)
- Monitor pages for content changes (Monitors API)
- Persistent storage with expires_in parameter (10d to never)
- Native Python SDK client
- Native Node.js SDK client
- MCP Server integration
- CLI for terminal usage
- Webhook events for async processing
- AI-powered browser automations (Scale plan+)
- Credit packs for top-ups valid 6 months
About Olostep
Olostep is a unified web data API purpose-built for AI agents, LLMs, and automation pipelines. It provides endpoints for scraping any URL to clean Markdown, HTML, JSON, or screenshots; crawling entire sites with configurable filters; mapping URL structures; searching the web with natural language; and extracting AI-powered answers with citations. The recently launched Monitors API enables automated periodic extraction with change detection, and the new storage parameter lets you persist results from 10 days to indefinitely. Native Python and Node.js SDKs, an MCP Server, and a CLI make integration straightforward. Compared to scraping frameworks like Scrapy or browser automation like Playwright, Olostep offers a managed API with built-in IP rotation and JavaScript rendering. It competes with Firecrawl and Apify but differentiates on transparent pricing and pay-per-use top-ups. Best for developers and data teams needing scalable, real-time web data for AI applications.
Behind the Verdict
Olostep gets a lot right: it's a single API for scraping, crawling, searching, answering, and monitoring the web. That's convenient for developers building AI agents who want one provider instead of stitching tools together. The pricing is refreshingly clear — no hidden per-page fees, just published per-1K costs and top-up packs. The newer storage parameter and Monitors API add persistence and change detection that were missing. Where it bites: the free tier is 500 requests across all endpoints, which is tight for evaluation. Enterprise features like SOC2 compliance and dedicated support are absent. If you need compliance or high-volume guarantees, Firecrawl or Apify might be safer bets. For most dev teams building AI features — especially with RAG or agentic workflows — Olostep is a pragmatic pick. We'd reach for it when we need to move fast and want a single dashboard for multiple web data tasks.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Olostep actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Building a Slack bot that answers company questions from docs and web searches.
Outcome: Integrate Olostep's Search and Answer APIs via the MCP Server—bot returns cited answers from live web sources in under 2 seconds.
Monitoring competitor pricing pages weekly.
Outcome: Set up a recurring crawl with the Schedules API, store results with storage parameter (90d), and trigger a Slack notification via webhooks on price changes.
Collecting 10,000 product descriptions for a classification model.
Outcome: Upload a CSV of URLs to the Batch endpoint, retrieve structured JSON with self-healing Parsers, and download results in 5-7 minutes with no manual scraping.
Use Cases
- Monitor competitor websites for new blog posts or product updates using the Monitors API
- Extract structured data from hundreds of e-commerce pages for price comparison
- Feed web search results with AI-powered answers into a RAG chatbot
- Automate brand protection by scraping mentions across multiple domains
- 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
- Schedule recurring data collection for market research or trend analysis
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-07-14
Limitations
- No free ongoing plan—only a Trial tier with 500 requests.
- Batch processing limit is 10,000 URLs, not 100,000.
- JavaScript rendering is forced on all requests, which adds overhead for simple pages.
- Usage-based pricing with credits means costs can scale unpredictably for high-volume scraping.
- No publicly documented SOC2 compliance or enterprise SLAs.
as of 2026-07-02
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
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/mo
Ideal for
Developers evaluating Olostep's API with small-scale tests of up to 500 requests, no credit card required.
What this tier adds
Free entry point with 500 requests, but low rate limits and JavaScript rendering forced on all requests.
Starter
$9/mo
Ideal for
Solo developers or small projects needing up to 5,000 successful requests per month with 150 concurrent requests.
What this tier adds
Adds 5,000 requests and 150 concurrent requests over the Trial tier, at $0.495/1K cost per request.
Standard
$99/mo
Ideal for
Growing teams or startups requiring 200K requests per month with 500 concurrent requests for moderate-scale scraping.
What this tier adds
Upgrades to 200K requests and 500 concurrent requests, lowering cost per 1K to $0.399.
Scale
$399/mo
Ideal for
High-volume users needing 1 million requests per month plus AI-powered browser automations for complex workflows.
What this tier adds
Adds AI-powered browser automations and 1M requests, with the lowest per-1K cost among monthly plans.
Credit Pack 10k
$20 one-time
Credit Pack 250k
$200 one-time
Credit Pack 2M
$1000 one-time
Enterprise
Custom
Ideal for
Large organizations with hundreds of millions of credits needing custom discounts, dedicated support, and enterprise-grade reliability.
What this tier adds
Custom pricing and SLAs for massive scale; no SOC2 compliance documented yet.
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 is competitive for low-to-moderate usage: $9/mo for 5,000 requests ($0.495/1K) beats Firecrawl's $19/mo for 4,000 credits. At scale, $399/mo for 1M requests ($0.399/1K) is cheaper than Apify's $499 for 100,000 compute units. However, forced JavaScript rendering adds hidden cost per request. The Trial tier (500 requests) is less generous than Firecrawl's 500 free credits. Top-up credit packs ($20/10K, $200/250K, $1,000/2M) offer flexibility but expire in 6 months.
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: install the Python or Node.js SDK (pip/npm), grab an API key from the dashboard, and run your first scrape in under 5 minutes. The MCP Server works immediately in Claude Code or Cursor without install. CLI setup: npm i -g olostep-cli, then 'olostep scrape https://example.com'. Non-technical users may need 15-20 minutes to understand endpoints and parameters.
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.
- →From Firecrawl: Olostep's API is REST-based with Python/Node SDKs—map your scrape calls to /scrapes endpoint and adjust rate limits according to your tier.
- →From Apify: Use Olostep's Batch endpoint for bulk processing; their credit system is simpler (per-request vs. compute units), which may reduce costs for structured output.
- →From manual Scrapy/Playwright: Replace your scheduler and proxy management with Olostep's managed endpoints—no need to handle IP rotation or JavaScript rendering yourself.
- ↗To Firecrawl: Firecrawl offers a similar API with 500 free credits; migrate by replacing Olostep SDK calls with Firecrawl's SDK and adjusting output formats (Olostep's Markdown vs Firecrawl's markdown).
- ↗To Apify: Apify's act-based system requires rewriting scrape logic as Apify actors; Olostep's batch CSV uploads can be adapted to Apify's batch processing via webhooks.
- ↗To manual Playwright: Olostep's managed browser can be replaced with your own Playwright scripts, but you'll need to handle proxies, IP rotation, and JavaScript rendering yourself.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
- Documentationolostep.com
Docs
Full product docs from olostep.com
- Resourceolostep.com
Blog - Best Web Search, Scraping, and Crawling API
A look into the Best Web Search, Scraping, and Crawling API for AI.
- Resourceolostep.com
Web Search, Scraping, Crawling & Structured Data API
Helpful link from olostep.com
- Resourceolostep.com
Web Data API Glossary
The complete reference for Web Search, Crawling, Scraping, and Extraction APIs.
Tutorials & Learning
Official links
Tools that pair well with Olostep
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Olostep, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Alternatives to Olostep
View allFrequently Asked Questions
Categories
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