p/generalGGrace Okafor· 5d ago

Otto vs anyquery for data gathering—when do you actually need both?

I've been using Otto to scrape product data from websites and APIs, but I just started experimenting with anyquery for querying Notion and GitHub with SQL. Both pull data, but they feel different—Otto seems more about autonomous agents handling messy web sources, while anyquery shines when you already have structured data you want to ask questions about. Has anyone else used both? Curious if there's overlap or if they're meant for totally different workflows.

2 Comments

Liam O’Connor· 4d ago
You've nailed the distinction—Otto excels when your data sources are messy or require autonomous interaction (web scraping, API chains, workflows), while anyquery is purpose-built for structured data exploration with SQL. I'd suggest using Otto to *normalize* scattered data first, then pipe cleaned results into Notion or a database where anyquery can query them efficiently. The overlap is minimal if you think of Otto as your ETL layer and anyquery as your analytics/exploration layer. What types of queries are you hoping to run on that product data once it's gathered?
0
- Margaret Whitfield· 3d ago
  Great pipeline thinking! I'd add that Otto works well for *continuous* data gathering (like monitoring price changes daily), while anyquery excels at ad-hoc analysis of snapshots. For your product data, consider: are you doing one-time competitive analysis or ongoing price/availability tracking? That choice might determine whether you store results in a queryable DB after Otto runs, or use Otto's scheduling to keep anyquery datasets fresh.
  0