Olostep vs ZenRows (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Olostep if

• Fits if you need to scrape lots of URLs in batches cheaply
• Works for people testing a scraper before committing

Look elsewhere if

• Tight if you stay free: the trial is 500 requests, once
• Watch out: AI browser automations are listed from Scale at $399 a month
• Watch out: only monthly prices are shown and no yearly discount is listed
• Pricey if you grow: Growth is $1,100 a month and the top tier $3,500, through sales

Pick ZenRows if

• Fits if you scrape protected sites and want Google results from the same credits
• Works for AI agents that need web pages as Markdown or JSON

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you want a fixed SERP format, as the result groups vary with what Google or Bing shows
• Watch out: a page costs 1 credit plain, 5 rendered, 10 on premium proxies and 25 with both
• Watch out: residential bandwidth draws 25,000 credits per GB and the Browser 5 credits a minute
• Tight if you're on Free, which stops at 5,000 credits with no top-ups until the next month
• Pricey if your volume grows, as each plan's price steps up with its credit allowance

Olostep

• The pricing page does not say whether the 500 trial requests refill; it is shown as a trial, not a monthly allowance.
• AI browser automations are listed from the Scale plan up.
• Top-up credit packs are valid for 6 months, from $5 for 2,000 credits to $1,000 for 2,000,000.
• Only monthly prices are shown; no annual discount is stated on the pricing page.

ZenRows

• A standard page costs 1 credit, 5 with JavaScript rendering, 10 with premium proxies and 25 with both; residential bandwidth is 25,000 credits per GB.
• Search results come from fetching a Google or Bing results address and parsing the page, so the groups returned vary with what the page shows.
• The free plan stops at 5,000 credits until the next month; paid plans can buy top-ups up to ten times a billing period.
• Each paid plan's price rises with its credit allowance, in three steps (five for Scale).

Olostep

Scrape, crawl and map

Separate endpoints fetch a single page, crawl a site, or list a site's URLs.

Batch processing

Batch jobs run thousands of URLs together, from 5,000 URLs in 20 minutes on Starter to 1 million on Growth+.

Search and Answer APIs

A search endpoint and an AI answers endpoint sit beside the scraping ones, and a Monitor API appears in the endpoint list.

People and company search

A dedicated endpoint for looking up people and companies is listed with the other APIs.

Agents and integrations

An MCP server and CLI serve agents. The integrations page lists Claude Desktop, Cursor, n8n and LangChain.

ZenRows

Fetch

Returns any page as HTML, Markdown, JSON or a screenshot, getting past anti-bot walls, CAPTCHAs and fingerprint checks on protected sites.

Extract

Detects the data on a page and returns it as JSON with no selectors or schema to write. It currently costs nothing on top of the Fetch it uses.

Search results as JSON

Send a Google or Bing results address with a country and get organic results, related questions, videos and other groups back with their positions.

Crawl and Batch

Crawl collects every page behind a starting address, each billed as a Fetch; Batch runs large queued jobs with retries, webhooks and status tracking.

Browser

Drives a real browser for pages that need clicks, forms, logins or a session kept across a long job, billed at 5 credits a minute plus bandwidth.

MCP server, CLI and SDKs

An MCP server for Claude, Cursor and Codex, a command-line tool, and Python, Node and Go SDKs, all published as open source under MIT.

Olostep

• Trial$0

  500 successful requests with JavaScript rendering and residential IPs, low rate limits, no card needed.

• Starter$9

  per month for 5,000 requests

  $1.80 per 1,000 requests, 20 concurrent requests, batches of 5,000 URLs in 20 minutes.

• Standard$99

  per month for 200,000 requests

  $0.50 per 1,000 requests, 200 concurrent requests, batches of 10,000 URLs in 20 minutes.

• Scale$399

  per month for 1 million requests

  $0.40 per 1,000 requests, 500 concurrent, AI browser automations, batches of 100,000 URLs.

• Growth$1,100

  per month for 3 million requests

  $0.37 per 1,000 requests, 750 concurrent requests, batches of 200,000 URLs in 20 minutes.

• Growth+$3500

  per month for 10 million requests

  $0.35 per 1,000 requests, 1,000 concurrent requests. Sold through sales.

ZenRows

• Free$0

  5,000 credits a month, refreshed monthly with no rollover or top-ups, 5 concurrent requests and community support.

• Build$16

  per month for 45,000 credits, billed annually ($19 billed monthly)

  20 concurrent requests, email support and top-ups. Rises to $33 a month for 120,000 credits ($39 billed monthly).

• Launch$58

  per month for 250,000 credits, billed annually ($69 billed monthly)

  50 concurrent requests and chat support. Rises to $108 a month for 700,000 credits ($129 billed monthly).

• Growth$166

  per month for 1.2M credits, billed annually ($199 billed monthly)

  100 concurrent requests, priority support and the residential network at scale. Rises to $333 a month for 3M credits ($399 monthly).

• Scale$458

  per month for 5M credits, billed annually ($549 billed monthly)

  200 to 400 concurrent requests and committed capacity options. Rises to $2,499 a month for 45M credits ($2,999 monthly).

• EnterpriseCustom

  Committed volume, 500 to 1,000+ concurrent requests, an SLA, a DPA and a dedicated account manager. Through sales.

Olostep

No public discounts listed.

ZenRows

• Annual discount

  Two months free with annual billing

  Zenrows says paying yearly gives two months free (pay for 10, get 12), shown as a 17% saving, with the year's credits up front.