# Olostep vs. Parallel: bulk scraping or retrieval for agents?

## The short answer

Pick Olostep for bulk scraping on a budget: every request is JavaScript-rendered over residential IP addresses, batches take up to 100,000 URLs per job, and per-page prices fall to $0.37 per 1,000 on its Growth plan. Pick Parallel when an agent reads the web while it works: objective-focused excerpts from up to 20 URLs in one synchronous call, search with page excerpts at $1 per 1,000 requests, and deep research that returns a source, reasoning, and confidence for every output field.

Parallel wrote this comparison. Every Olostep figure below comes from Olostep's own pricing page, product pages, or docs, read on November 14, 2026.

## The products

Olostep[Olostep](https://www.olostep.com/api-endpoints) offers Scrapes, Crawls, Maps, Batches, Searches, Answers, Monitors, and a no-code Agents product. Scrapes return markdown, HTML, text, screenshots, raw PDFs, or JSON, through prebuilt parsers for popular sites or LLM extraction against your schema, and support actions such as waiting, clicking, filling inputs, and scrolling. Every request is JavaScript-rendered over residential IP addresses. It ships Python and Node.js SDKs and an MCP server with 10 tools.

Parallel's APIs are built around retrieval for AI agents: Search, Extract, Task for deep research and enrichment, FindAll for entity lists, Entity Search, Monitor, Decisions, and an OpenAI-compatible Responses API. It runs its own web index and ships Python and TypeScript SDKs and a free hosted MCP server[MCP server](/mcp). It has no proxy layer, browser actions, or crawl endpoint, so pages behind aggressive bot protection, and whole-site crawls, are Olostep territory.

## Extraction: reading pages you already have

An Olostep scrape costs 1 credit, prebuilt parsers usually 1 to 5, and LLM extraction 20 credits per request. Each Scrapes call handles one URL. For large lists, the Batch endpoint[Batch endpoint](https://docs.olostep.com/features/batches) takes 100 to 100,000 URLs per job and reports back by webhook, at 1 credit per URL. Olostep's plans count successful requests.

Parallel's Extract API[Extract API](/products/extract) takes up to 20 URLs in one synchronous request. Add an objective and keyword queries, and it returns ranked excerpts from each page aligned to that goal, the full page as markdown, or both, for $1 per 1,000 URLs. It handles JavaScript-heavy pages and PDFs, and a fetch policy chooses between Parallel's cached index and a live fetch. It doesn't return HTML, screenshots, or schema-shaped JSON, and it has no proxy or unblocking layer.

A common read is that Parallel can't return schema-shaped data or process URL lists in bulk. That's accurate for Extract, which returns markdown and reads 20 URLs per call. The Task API[Task API](https://docs.parallel.ai/task/task-quickstart) does return output to your JSON schema, with per-field citations, from $5 per 1,000 runs, and Task Groups submit thousands of runs at once.

For templated pages at volume, Olostep's parsers and batches are the cheaper, more direct tool. For an agent that needs the passages answering its question from a few URLs, Parallel's excerpts send fewer tokens to the model.

## Search and research

Olostep's Search API[Search API](https://docs.olostep.com/features/search) takes a natural-language query and returns a deduplicated list of links with titles and descriptions for 5 credits; adding page content bills each scraped page on top. Answers[Answers](https://docs.olostep.com/features/answers) costs 20 credits and returns a sourced answer, optionally in your JSON shape, with NOT_FOUND for fields it can't support, in 3 to 30 seconds. Monitors run natural-language checks as often as every 10 minutes and alert by email, Slack, SMS, or webhook.

Parallel Search[Parallel Search](/products/search) runs on Parallel's own web index. It takes an objective plus keyword queries and returns ranked results with excerpts pulled from each page body, in four modes: Turbo (about 200ms, $1 per 1,000 requests), Fast (about 700ms, $1 per 1,000), Basic (about 1s, $5 per 1,000), and Advanced (about 3s, $5 per 1,000, the default). Ten results are included, and extra results cost $1 per 1,000.

For research, the Task API[Task API](https://docs.parallel.ai/task/task-quickstart) runs asynchronously across nine processors, from $5 to $2,400 per 1,000 runs, and returns output to your JSON schema with a citation, reasoning, and calibrated confidence for every field. Task Groups submit thousands of runs at once. The OpenAI-compatible Responses API returns cited answers synchronously for $10 to $250 per 1,000, and FindAll and Monitor cover entity lists and change tracking.

## Pricing

Olostep sells monthly plans measured in successful requests, plus prepaid credit packs that stay valid for six months. Parallel charges per request, with no plan required. Olostep's self-serve plans[self-serve plans](https://www.olostep.com/pricing):

Here's what common jobs cost per 1,000, using Olostep Standard (about $0.50 per 1,000 credits) and Parallel's published prices[published prices](https://docs.parallel.ai/getting-started/pricing). On Olostep Starter, credits cost $1.80 per 1,000.

Check official documentation for current pricing.

## Throughput and limits

Olostep scales by concurrency: 20 concurrent requests on Starter, 200 on Standard, 500 on Scale, and 750 on Growth. Its pricing page lists batch throughput from 5,000 URLs per 20 minutes on Starter to 200,000 on Growth.

Parallel meters requests per minute rather than concurrency: 600 for Search and Extract on the default plan, 1,500 on the Scale plan[Scale plan](/pricing), 2,000 Task runs a minute, and 300 Monitor creations a minute. Polling for results doesn't count against those limits, per Parallel's rate limit docs[rate limit docs](https://docs.parallel.ai/getting-started/rate-limits).

## Compliance

Olostep's pricing and docs pages don't describe a SOC 2 report or a zero-data-retention option, so ask its team if you need either.

Parallel Web Systems is SOC 2 Type II certified. The Scale plan ($1,000 a month) includes hybrid zero data retention, and Enterprise adds SSO, a custom MSA and DPA, a HIPAA BAA, and an uptime SLA. An EU endpoint serves Search in basic mode.

## Benchmarks

We couldn't find a public benchmark that runs Olostep and Parallel on the same task as of November 14, 2026. On Openbenchmarks' web search boards[Openbenchmarks' web search boards](https://openbenchmarks.com/web-search), Parallel Basic leads multi-hop company search at 46.5 F1, and Olostep isn't listed. Parallel's own evals are on parallel.ai/benchmarks[parallel.ai/benchmarks](/benchmarks). Run both on a sample of your own URLs before you commit.

## When to use each

Choose Olostep when you're fetching a lot of pages and price per page decides. Residential IPs on every request, batches of up to 100,000 URLs, parsers for popular sites, browser actions, and change monitors with Slack or SMS alerts are all things it does and Parallel doesn't.

Choose Parallel when an agent reads the web at request time. Search returns page excerpts from Parallel's own index for $1 per 1,000 requests, Extract returns only the passages that matter from up to 20 URLs per call, and Task, FindAll, and Monitor cover research with per-field evidence, entity lists, and change tracking.

The two pair well: Olostep for scheduled bulk collection from known sites, Parallel for open-web lookups inside the agent loop.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is Olostep cheaper than Parallel?

Per page scraped, yes, from Olostep's Standard plan up: $0.50 per 1,000 on Standard and $0.37 on Growth, against Parallel's $1. For search, Parallel Turbo and Fast at $1 per 1,000 with excerpts cost less than Olostep's $2.50 for links only on Standard. Olostep's Starter plan works out to $1.80 per 1,000 pages.

### Can Parallel get past bot protection?

No. Parallel has no proxy or unblocking layer, so pages that actively block automated access are better handled by Olostep or another scraping API.

### Does Parallel support batch jobs?

Extract reads up to 20 URLs per synchronous request, at 600 requests a minute by default. For research or enrichment over large lists, Task Groups submit thousands of Task runs at once and stream results as they finish. There's no single endpoint that takes 100,000 raw URLs the way Olostep's Batch does.

**Related reading: **The best web extraction APIs for LLMs[The best web extraction APIs for LLMs](/articles/best-web-extraction-apis) / Context.dev vs. Parallel[Context.dev vs. Parallel](/articles/context-dev-vs-parallel) / Parallel vs. Firecrawl[Parallel vs. Firecrawl](/compare/firecrawl-vs-parallel) / ScrapingBee vs. Parallel[ScrapingBee vs. Parallel](/articles/scrapingbee-vs-parallel).