Apify review

Apify is a hosted cloud platform and marketplace for web-scraping tools called Actors. An Actor is a ready-made or custom tool that runs on Apify's infrastructure; it can collect data from sites including social media, maps and e-commerce services. The platform sits between your application or agent and the target website: you start Actors, retrieve or export their results, and can schedule and monitor runs.

The marketplace is useful when a team needs a common scraper without building one first. For a site-specific workflow, developers can create and deploy their own Actors using code templates and guides. Apify also supplies proxies, unblocking, cloud deployment, monitoring and data processing. That makes it more than a scraper library: it is a managed execution layer with an API and marketplace, where compute and capacity are part of the operating cost. The homepage also describes connections to AI agents through MCP, CLI or Skills.

Apify says Actors can be run via API, and their scraped data can be exported. The homepage presents MCP, CLI and Skills as ways to connect AI agents; its MCP setup uses an HTTP server at mcp.apify.com. Developers can build Actors from code templates and guides, schedule and monitor runs, and integrate them with other tools. The homepage names Python and JavaScript, and says Apify works with Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, Scrapy and Crawlee.

Those language and tool references do not by themselves establish which SDKs are available or their supported versions. Confirm SDK support and API details in Apify's developer docs before choosing a client. The homepage points to an MCP guide and an agent quickstart, and says custom Actor guides are available. For an AI data pipeline, the stated integration path is to connect an agent, run an Actor, then export its results; check the docs for the output format and run behavior your application needs.

Free costs $0 per month and includes $5 monthly prepaid usage, $0.20 per compute unit, 16 GB Actor RAM and five concurrent runs. Starter is $19 monthly, with $19 prepaid usage, $0.20 per compute unit, 64 GB RAM and 32 concurrent runs. Scale is $199 monthly, with $199 prepaid usage, $0.16 per compute unit, 256 GB RAM and 128 concurrent runs. Business is $999 monthly, with $999 prepaid usage, $0.13 per compute unit, 512 GB RAM and 256 concurrent runs. Enterprise has custom terms and compute-unit pricing.

The prepaid amount is not a flat cap: pay-as-you-go overages are billed on the next invoice, and unused prepaid credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. The pricing page lists 10% off for annual billing. Add-ons include concurrent runs at $5 per run, Actor RAM at $1 per GB and datacenter proxies from $0.60 per IP. Personal training is $150 per hour on Starter; Scale includes one hour per quarter and Business one hour per month.

Apify's homepage says the platform works with open-source tools and names Python, JavaScript, Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, Scrapy and Crawlee. That does not mean the Apify platform itself is open source. The vendor does not publish the platform's licence or a self-hosting option on its homepage, so teams that require either should confirm the terms with Apify before adopting it. The service is presented as cloud deployment, not a server you install in your own environment.

You can export scraped data, which gives a project a route to take its collected results elsewhere. How much migration work that saves depends on whether your application relies on Apify-specific Actor inputs, run behavior or integrations. Keep your collection logic and downstream data schema under your own control where practical, and check export formats and retention behavior in the docs before making Apify a production dependency.

Apify publishes plan-specific Actor RAM and concurrent-run limits: Free starts at 16 GB and five runs, while Business lists 512 GB and 256 runs. Higher capacity is available on Enterprise with custom terms. Compute-unit prices also change by plan, and proxy use, additional concurrency and RAM can add charges. The vendor does not publish API rate limits on its homepage; confirm rate limits, run failure behavior, data retention and support response expectations before setting production SLOs.

The homepage lists unblocking, proxies, monitoring and data processing as platform capabilities, but teams still need to check how a target site's changes or access controls affect their specific Actor. Reddit users report both useful results and cost concerns: one Maps-scraping commenter called Apify “pricey,” while another warned that heavy browser use and premium proxies can make costs climb. Treat Actor results, target-site terms and compliance obligations as part of your own operational review; the platform does not remove those responsibilities.