Why choose it: AI and developer teams that need clean web content or structured extraction for agents, RAG pipelines, and data applications.
Apify: Pricing, Features & Alternatives
Cloud platform for running, scheduling and selling web scrapers packaged as serverless Actors.
Overall Score84/100
4.3Editor Rating
Market Signal 85Top-rated in Data Extraction#1 of 8 in Data Extraction by Overall Score
What Is Apify?
Apify is a cloud platform for web scraping and browser automation built around Actors: serverless programs that take JSON input, run in Docker containers and write results to built-in storage. Teams can run ready-made Actors from Apify Store, publish their own there and charge for them, or build private ones in the web IDE or locally with the Apify CLI and the JavaScript or Python SDKs. Each run gets a dataset for structured results, plus key-value stores for files and request queues for crawl lists. Runs start from the Console, the API or a schedule, and integrations push output to Zapier, Make, n8n, Google Drive, Airtable or Snowflake. Apify Proxy supplies datacenter, residential and Google SERP IP pools, and an MCP server lets AI agents such as Claude or Cursor call Actors as tools. Billing combines a subscription with metered compute units.
Best for: Developer and data teams that need scheduled, scalable scraping jobs whose results arrive by API, webhook or an automation tool.
Apify packages extraction routines as Actors that accept structured JSON input and write records to persistent datasets. A task saves an Actor's configuration for repeated execution, while schedules and webhooks remove the need for manual launches. Actor runs and exported datasets are separate resources, which matters when an integration must retrieve the correct run's output.
4.3
out of 5
Editor Rating
Calculated from facts we verified on Apify's own website, using published thresholds. Nobody can pay to change it. Together with Market Signal it makes the Overall Score of 84 that orders our lists.
- Pricing transparency4.8
- Entry cost5.0
- Free access5.0
- Platforms & API2.5
- Support4.5
- Integrations3.0
- Security & compliance5.0
Dimensions without verified data count as a neutral 2.5. Facts checked October 13, 2026. How the rating works
85
Strong
Market Signal
Real dataComputed from Ahrefs + Semrush data about Apify's own website. Not an assessment of the product itself. How this works →
Market Strength
88
Where it stands today
Momentum
74 Rising Fast ↑↑
Where it’s heading
Data Confidence
Medium
How much to trust it
- Traffic Strength86
- Search Visibility90
- Authority87
- Brand & Market Presence89
Tick mark = category average.
Compared with 13 tracked Web Data & Scraping tools (a small set, so read it as directional). Data through September 2026, pulled October 12, 2026.
Who Is It Best For?
- Growth and SEO teams collecting SERP, marketplace or social data on a schedule
- Developers who want to sell scrapers through Apify Store
- AI teams feeding web data into LLM apps through MCP or LangChain
Who Should Avoid It?
- Teams that need a fixed monthly bill, since compute and residential traffic are metered
- Free-account users who need to route their own scripts through Apify Proxy
Use Cases
- Scraping search results and e-commerce listings on a schedule
- Sending scraped data to Google Sheets, Airtable or Snowflake
- Giving AI agents live web data through the Apify MCP server
- Running headless browser automations with rotating proxies
Apify Features
- Apify Actors
- Apify Store
- Hosted browser automation
- Datasets and key-value stores
- Scheduling and webhooks
- Proxy services
Apify Pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (mo) | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Free |
|
| Starter | $19 | Not listed |
|
| Scale | $199 | Not listed |
|
| Business | $999 | Not listed |
|
| Custom | Custom | Custom |
Pricing shown reflects list prices as of our last check and may have changed. Confirm current pricing on Apify's website before purchasing.
Apify Integrations
Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, Slack, GitHub, Pinecone, LangChain
Customer Support
Help center, Community forum, Live chat, Email
Apify at a Glance
- Founded
- 2015
- Headquarters
- Prague, Czech Republic
- Built for
- Freelancer, Small Business, Mid-Market, Enterprise
- Platforms
- Web, API
- Languages
- English
Apify Pros and Cons
What We Like
- Apify Store offers ready-made Actors, and developers can publish and charge for their own.
- Any code that runs in Docker can become an Actor; JavaScript and Python get official SDKs.
- Proxy pools cover datacenter, residential and Google SERP IPs with country targeting.
- An MCP server plus LangChain and Pinecone integrations connect Actors to AI agents.
- Named storages are kept indefinitely, and datasets export to JSON or Excel.
What Could Be Better
- Free accounts cannot connect to Apify Proxy from outside the platform.
- Residential proxy traffic is billed per GB on top of the subscription.
- Compute is metered by RAM and run time, so monthly usage varies with job size.
- Official SDKs cover only JavaScript and Python; other languages need custom Docker images.
Apify Alternatives
Why choose it: Analysts and operations teams that need recurring web data extraction without maintaining custom scraping code.
Why choose it: Data, AI, ecommerce, and research teams that need large-scale public web access through proxies, APIs, browsers, or datasets.
Why choose it: Engineering and data teams that need scraping infrastructure backed by proxy, browser, extraction, and managed service options.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Apify have a free trial or free plan?⌄
Apify offers a free plan, though it doesn't offer a separate free trial of paid tiers.
How much does Apify cost?⌄
Apify starts at $19/mo + usage on its Starter plan. Pricing was last checked October 13, 2026. Always confirm current pricing on the vendor's site before purchasing.
What are the best alternatives to Apify?⌄
Commonly considered alternatives include Firecrawl, Octoparse, Bright Data and Zyte. The Alternatives section on this page shows what each one is best at and its starting price.
Last updated: October 13, 2026Details checked: October 7, 2026Pricing checked: October 13, 2026