What is an agentic web crawler?

TL;DR

An agentic crawler uses AI to interact with websites—clicking buttons, scrolling, and navigating menus—to reach data hidden behind dynamic interfaces.

What is an agentic web crawler?

Traditional crawlers follow links and parse static HTML. Agentic crawlers go further: they observe page content, identify interactive elements, and take actions like a human user would.

Feature

Traditional

Agentic

Link following

Yes

Yes

Button clicks

No

Yes

Form filling

No

Yes

Scroll handling

No

Yes

When to use it

Use agentic crawling when data requires interactions: product filters, "Load More" buttons, pagination, or login-protected content.

Olostep Answers API handles this automatically—describe what you need, and the agent searches, navigates, and extracts.

Key Takeaways

Agentic crawlers use AI to interact with dynamic websites, reaching data that static crawlers miss.