Apify
Web scraping automation platform with 3,000+ pre-built Actors for search and data extraction from any source
What is Apify?
Apify is a cloud web scraping and automation platform that provides search API capabilities through its Actor marketplace — a library of 3,000+ pre-built web scrapers and automation scripts runnable via REST API. Actors for Google Search, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Amazon, and hundreds of other sources are available as ready-to-use endpoints. Unlike SERP API SaaS products, each Actor runs in an isolated container with managed proxies and configurable output schemas. Apify was founded in 2015 by Jan Curn and Jakub Kopecký and is headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic. It serves 50,000+ developers and 1,000+ enterprise clients (per company website; independently unverifiable).
Apify was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic. The firm employs 51–200 people and works primarily with clients in E-commerce, Marketing Analytics, Research & Academia, AI / LLM Workflows sectors. Its primary differentiator is: 3,000+ pre-built Actors (scrapers) for any website, each runnable as an API endpoint — more flexible than fixed-schema SERP APIs, at the cost of actor-level quality variance.
Apify tech stack and services
| Service area | Details |
|---|---|
| Competitive intelligence scraping across dozens of sources using community Actors rather than building custom scrapers | Available for E-commerce, Marketing Analytics, Research & Academia, AI / LLM Workflows clients |
| E-commerce price monitoring across multiple retailers with normalised JSON output schemas | Available for E-commerce, Marketing Analytics, Research & Academia, AI / LLM Workflows clients |
| AI training dataset creation from sources too niche for dedicated SERP API providers | Available for E-commerce, Marketing Analytics, Research & Academia, AI / LLM Workflows clients |
| Scheduled data pipelines for analytics dashboards where real-time latency is not required | Available for E-commerce, Marketing Analytics, Research & Academia, AI / LLM Workflows clients |
Apify use cases
Short answer: Apify is best suited for developers needing flexible, customisable data extraction from any web source with managed proxies and no infrastructure overhead.
| Use case | Industries | Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Competitive intelligence scraping across dozens of sources using community Actors rather than building custom scrapers | E-commerce, Marketing Analytics | REST API, JavaScript/Node.js SDK |
| E-commerce price monitoring across multiple retailers with normalised JSON output schemas | E-commerce, Marketing Analytics | REST API, JavaScript/Node.js SDK |
| AI training dataset creation from sources too niche for dedicated SERP API providers | E-commerce, Marketing Analytics | REST API, JavaScript/Node.js SDK |
| Scheduled data pipelines for analytics dashboards where real-time latency is not required | E-commerce, Marketing Analytics | REST API, JavaScript/Node.js SDK |
Apify pricing
Short answer: Apify uses a usage-based ($5 free platform credits/month; $49/month starter); actor runs billed per compute unit pricing approach. Minimum engagement starts at $5/month (Free plan with $5 platform credits).
| Engagement model | Typical range | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Variable; depends on team size | Large programmes or team augmentation |
| Monthly subscription | Variable; depends on team size | Large programmes or team augmentation |
| Enterprise contract | Variable; depends on team size | Large programmes or team augmentation |
Apify pros and cons
| Advantages | Things to consider |
|---|---|
| +3,000+ pre-built Actors for Google, Bing, Amazon, LinkedIn, and niche sources — no custom scraper code required | -Billing complexity — compute units, Actor costs, and proxy usage billed separately, harder to estimate than per-query SERP pricing |
| +Each Actor runs in an isolated container with managed proxies — eliminates scraping infrastructure and proxy rotation | -Google Search Actors are community-maintained — quality and freshness vary; some break when Google updates its HTML structure |
| +Highly customisable: modify Actor source code, define output schemas, chain Actors for multi-step extraction pipelines | -Actor cold-start latency makes Apify unsuitable for real-time or sub-second search response requirements |
| +Scheduling and webhooks enable event-driven and recurring data collection without custom orchestration | -No SOC2, SLA, or enterprise compliance certifications documented for the core platform |
| +$5 monthly free credit covers meaningful testing across multiple Actors before committing to paid usage |
Apify vs alternatives
How Apify compares to the other top Web Search API providers.
| Company | Best for | Key difference | Rating | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CatchAll | AI agents and LLM workflows requiring high-recall web... | Pay-per-validated-result pricing with coverage-first search that scans 50K+ pages per job — not just top-ranked SERP results | 4.8 | Full comparison |
| Exa | AI agent and LLM developers needing semantic neural... | Neural search built for agents — not a SERP scraper — with 90% token reduction via highlights and 54.4% FRAMES accuracy | 4.6 | Full comparison |
| SerpAPI | Enterprise teams needing legally protected, structured SERP data... | U.S. Legal Shield (up to $2M coverage) plus 50+ engine support and three compliance certifications in a single API | 4.4 | Full comparison |
| Tavily | AI agent developers needing a drop-in web search... | Only web search API with PII protection and prompt injection blocking built into the retrieval layer — no custom security middleware required | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| Brave Search API | Privacy-conscious AI applications and products that need a... | Only fully independent web index in this category — 30B+ pages crawled directly, not a Google/Bing scraper, with no Big Tech dependency | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| Serper | Cost-sensitive applications needing fast Google SERP results with... | Lowest barrier to entry of any Google SERP API — 2,500 free queries with no card required, and 10+ search verticals in a single endpoint | 4.1 | Full comparison |
| DataForSEO | SEO agencies, analytics platforms, and bulk data pipelines... | $0.0006 per SERP (standard queue) — the lowest published per-query price reviewed, with 700-result depth and Baidu/Naver/Seznam support | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Perplexity Sonar API | AI products needing grounded, cited answers from the... | Search and LLM reasoning in one OpenAI-compatible call — eliminates the retrieve-chunk-embed-rank RAG pipeline entirely | 4.5 | Full comparison |
| You.com API | AI application developers needing a single API for... | Research mode autonomously decomposes complex queries into sub-searches and synthesises a long-form cited report — not just a ranked URL list | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| Bing Web Search API | Enterprise and government applications needing a compliance-certified general... | FedRAMP-authorised web search API with full Azure compliance stack — the only search API approved for US federal government application use | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Oxylabs SERP API | Enterprise teams needing real-time (not cached) SERP data... | Live crawling via 102M+ proprietary IPs with caller-defined JavaScript parsers — real-time data with custom output schemas, not a fixed-schema cached SERP product | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Bright Data SERP API | Enterprise data teams needing SERP extraction at massive... | 72M+ IPs across 195 countries with city-level targeting — broadest geographic SERP coverage available, plus Amazon and Walmart e-commerce SERP in the same API | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| Diffbot | AI and data applications needing structured entity data,... | 10B+ entity knowledge graph searchable by natural language — returns structured facts about companies, people, and products, not raw SERP result lists | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| Webz.io | Security, intelligence, and brand monitoring teams needing real-time... | Only provider in this category with both surface web news intelligence and dark web/paste site monitoring via the Cyber API — a single platform for OSINT and brand risk | 3.6 | Full comparison |
| Aylien News API | Financial services and media intelligence teams needing pre-enriched... | NLP enrichment built into every API response — entity extraction, sentiment, and IAB topic classification included without additional processing or model calls | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| SearchAPI.io | Developers and small teams needing live Google SERP... | 100 free requests/day with no credit card across 15+ Google verticals — the lowest-friction evaluation path to live Google SERP data in this category | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| ValueSERP | Cost-driven applications needing real-time Google SERP data at... | $0.0008/search at volume — cheapest real-time (non-queued) Google SERP pricing, comparable to DataForSEO priority mode but with synchronous delivery | 3.4 | Full comparison |
| Zenserp | Solo developers and small projects needing simple, transparent-pricing... | Transparent public pricing, 100 free searches/month, and single-GET-request integration — the fastest path from idea to first live Google SERP result | 3.4 | Full comparison |
| Google Custom Search API | Applications needing a policy-compliant, Google-branded search API restricted... | Official Google product with a full Google Cloud compliance chain (SOC2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP) — the only search API with direct Google licensing and zero ToS scraping risk | 3.3 | Full comparison |
Apify FAQ
What is Apify?
Apify is a cloud web scraping and automation platform that provides search API capabilities through its Actor marketplace — a library of 3,000+ pre-built web scrapers and automation scripts runnable via REST API. Actors for Google Search, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Amazon, and hundreds of other sources are available as ready-to-use endpoints. Unlike SERP API SaaS products, each Actor runs in an isolated container with managed proxies and configurable output schemas. Apify was founded in 2015 by Jan Curn and Jakub Kopecký and is headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic. It serves 50,000+ developers and 1,000+ enterprise clients (per company website; independently unverifiable).
How much does Apify charge?
Apify uses usage-based ($5 free platform credits/month; $49/month starter); actor runs billed per compute unit pricing. Minimum engagement starts at $5/month (Free plan with $5 platform credits). A discovery call is required to get project-specific quotes.
What tech stack does Apify use?
Apify works with REST API, JavaScript/Node.js SDK, Python SDK, JSON/CSV/XML output, Webhooks, Scheduling. Primary industries served include E-commerce, Marketing Analytics, Research & Academia, AI / LLM Workflows.
Is Apify right for enterprise?
Developers needing flexible, customisable data extraction from any web source with managed proxies and no infrastructure overhead. 51–200 team size. Key consideration: Billing complexity — compute units, Actor costs, and proxy usage billed separately, harder to estimate than per-query SERP pricing.
What are the best Apify alternatives?
The best alternatives to Apify depend on your use case. Top options are:
- CatchAll: pay-per-validated-result pricing with coverage-first search that scans 50k+ pages per job — not just top-ranked serp results
- Exa: neural search built for agents — not a serp scraper — with 90% token reduction via highlights and 54.4% frames accuracy
- SerpAPI: u.s. legal shield (up to $2m coverage) plus 50+ engine support and three compliance certifications in a single api
Compare Apify with other Web Search API providers
Last reviewed: June 2026. Verify all details directly with Apify before making a decision.