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Apify Reviews
60 reviews
- 01 What is Apify?
- 02 Pros and cons from reviewers
- 03 Main features
- 04 How Apify compare to similar software?
- 05 Who is Apify best for according to our reviewers?
- 06 Apify Reviews
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01 What is Apify?
Apify is a complete web scraping and browser automation platform designed mainly for developers, startups, and data-heavy teams. The whole platform revolves around “Actors,” serverless programs that can scrape websites, automate browser tasks, process datasets, or feed AI pipelines. One reason people like it is the speed of setup. There are already thousands of ready-made Actors for platforms like LinkedIn, Google Maps, Amazon, Instagram, and many others. Proxy rotation, scaling, scheduling, and cloud infrastructure are handled directly by the platform, which saves teams a lot of operational work. For AI projects, RAG systems, and live data pipelines, Apify has become increasingly popular.
02 Pros and cons from reviewers
Pros from reviewers
-
Large ecosystem of prebuilt Actors
The size of the Apify Store gives teams a major advantage because many scraping workflows already exist and can be deployed immediately, reducing development time and accelerating testing for new projects significantly. -
Reliable infrastructure for scaling workloads
Apify automatically manages compute scaling, scheduling, storage, and proxies behind the scenes, which removes a large operational burden from engineering teams running demanding or continuously scheduled scraping operations. -
Strong support for modern websites
Many scraping platforms struggle with JavaScript-heavy websites, but Apify performs well with dynamic rendering, browser automation, login sessions, and interactive elements through Playwright, Puppeteer, and Selenium integrations. -
Good alignment with modern AI workflows
Apify has adapted quickly to AI-related use cases by offering tools focused on extracting clean website content for LLMs, vector databases, retrieval systems, and autonomous agents requiring fresh online information. -
Developer monetization adds ecosystem value
The ability to publish and monetize Actors encourages developers to maintain high-quality tools inside the marketplace, which benefits users looking for reliable solutions across a wide variety of websites and industries.
Cons from reviewers
-
Pricing can become difficult to predict
Because billing depends on compute usage, proxies, storage, and execution time, teams running unpredictable workloads may find monthly costs harder to estimate compared with flat-rate scraping platforms. -
Advanced customization still requires coding experience
Prebuilt Actors simplify common workflows, but highly customized scraping jobs still demand solid programming knowledge, especially when handling anti-bot protections, browser automation, or large-scale data processing pipelines. -
Limited self-hosting flexibility
Organizations with strict internal infrastructure requirements or sensitive compliance policies may find Apify’s cloud-first model restrictive because fully self-hosted deployment options remain relatively limited compared with open-source alternatives. -
Debugging complex workflows can take time
Diagnosing failures inside large scraping workflows is not always straightforward, particularly when dealing with dynamic websites, browser crashes, proxy instability, or third-party anti-bot protections changing unexpectedly. -
Aggressive anti-bot systems remain challenging
Certain websites deploy sophisticated anti-automation defenses that can still interrupt scraping jobs despite Apify’s proxy infrastructure, requiring ongoing tuning and maintenance to keep workflows operational consistently.
03 Main features
Starting Price
Free Plan
Built-in proxy management
Marketplace monetization opportunities
Apify Store with ready-made Actors
Custom Actor development
Scheduling and monitoring tools
More details about Apify plans
Starting Price
$39
/ month
Free Plan
Yes
Built-in proxy management
Marketplace monetization opportunities
Apify Store with ready-made Actors
Custom Actor development
Scheduling and monitoring tools
04 How Apify compare to similar software?
05 Who is Apify best for according to our reviewers?
-
Marketing and competitive intelligence teams
Marketing departments can use Apify to monitor competitor pricing, track reviews, analyze search engine visibility, collect social media information, and automate repetitive research tasks that would otherwise consume significant manual effort. -
Data teams building AI pipelines
Apify works particularly well for teams collecting training data, website content, or structured datasets for AI applications. The platform already includes tools aimed at LLM workflows, RAG systems, and vector database ingestion pipelines. -
Developers building products powered by scraped data
SaaS teams that rely on web data for pricing intelligence, aggregation platforms, analytics dashboards, or monitoring systems benefit from Apify’s APIs, scheduling tools, and cloud infrastructure without maintaining their own scraping stack. -
Agencies delivering client scraping projects
Agencies and freelancers handling data extraction projects can move faster using Apify’s ready-made Actors, cloud infrastructure, and automation tooling, reducing the amount of custom backend infrastructure required for each engagement. -
Researchers and analysts collecting large datasets
Researchers, journalists, and analysts often need repeatable access to large volumes of public web data. Apify simplifies recurring collection, storage, exporting, and scheduling workflows for long-term research projects and reporting.
06 Apify Reviews
Apify rating
Apify Reviews
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Evelia Beer
Ecommerce Tracking With Scheduled Runs and Dashboard-Ready Outputs
For ecommerce tracking, Apify has been useful because we can run scrapers on a schedule, compare product changes over time, and plug the results into our internal dashboards with less manual cleanup than expected
July 25, 2026
-
Regan Gleason
Reliable Runs Once Configured (Joinsecret Discount a Bonus)
I found Apify more reliable than a lot of scraping tools once runs are configured properly, and the small discount we got via Joinsecret on the monthly subscription during year one was a nice extra while we were still validating usage
July 21, 2026
-
Zita Rodriguez
Easy Monitoring, Logs, and Retries
We started with Apify for simple website extraction, but the part that kept us there was the ability to monitor runs, inspect logs, and retry failed tasks without digging through a messy homegrown stack
July 13, 2026
-
Tobias Huels
Strong on Dynamic Sites With Scheduling and Storage
Apify handles dynamic sites better than most tools we tried, especially on pages that need browser automation, and the scheduling plus dataset storage makes recurring collection jobs much easier to maintain
July 6, 2026
-
Dan Bergnaum
Prebuilt Actors Speed Up Lead Research
Apify has been a solid fit for our lead research workflow because the prebuilt Actors save a lot of setup time, and when we need something custom the docs and API are good enough that our dev could adapt it quickly
June 30, 2026
-
Arlette Botsford I
Actor Store Enables Same-Day Validation and Exportable Datasets
I mainly use the store of ready-made Actors, and for a small team that matters because we can test a use case in a day instead of building a scraper from scratch, then export datasets in formats our sales ops team can actually use
June 21, 2026
-
Vern Weimann
No-Code + Custom Logic (Plus Joinsecret Savings)
We picked Apify because it let us mix no-code convenience with custom logic, and getting a lower monthly rate through Joinsecret for the first year made the decision easier without being the main reason we chose it
June 16, 2026
-
Jefferson O'Kon LLD
Scheduled Scraping With Webhooks in One Platform
What I like most is that Apify is practical: we use it to run scheduled scraping jobs, send the output straight to webhooks, and keep everything in one place instead of juggling scripts on different servers
June 7, 2026
-
Aron Homenick
Browser Automation + Proxies + Run History + Structured Datasets (Joinsecret Bonus)
Apify is not magic and some targets still need careful tuning, but the combination of browser automation, proxy options, run history, and structured datasets has made it one of the more useful tools in our stack, and the reduced monthly pricing we accessed through Joinsecret for the first year was a welcome bonus
June 1, 2026
-
Solomon Berge
Speed for Non-Tech Users, Control for Devs (Joinsecret Perk)
The platform is good for teams that need both speed and control: non-technical people on our side can launch existing Actors, while developers can step in when we need custom input schemas, proxies, or API-based integrations, and we also happened to save a bit through Joinsecret on the monthly plan
May 26, 2026
Start saving on the best SaaS
Secret has already helped tens of thousands of startups save millions on the best SaaS like Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace & many more. Join Secret now to buy software the smart way.