Apify is a marketplace of ready-to-run cloud tools called Actors for web scraping, data extraction, lead generation, and AI agent automation.
About
Apify is a web scraping, data extraction, and automation platform built around a marketplace of ready-to-run cloud programs called Actors. Instead of writing and maintaining scrapers, proxy setups, and job schedulers from scratch, users pick an Actor from Apify Store, configure it, and run it on Apify's infrastructure. The catalog spans tens of thousands of tools covering social media scraping, local business data, e-commerce monitoring, and website crawling.
An Actor is a serverless cloud program that accepts JSON input and returns structured output; on Apify, the term is always capitalized and refers to this construct, not to an AI agent. Most Actors are built, priced, and maintained by independent creators who earn revenue when others use them, while Apify handles the infrastructure, billing, and distribution. The platform also includes Apify Proxy with IP rotation, anti-blocking features, cloud storage, integrations with external apps, and a hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server so AI clients such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor can discover and run Actors. Apify maintains Crawlee, an open-source web scraping and crawling library, and publishes documentation, code templates, and a Web Scrapaping Academy.
Key Features
Pricing & Fees
- Pricing: A free plan is available at $0 with $5 of monthly usage credit and community support, with no credit card required. Paid plans are Starter at $19/month, Scale at $199/month, and Business at $999/month (each including equivalent Store credit), with pay-as-you-go compute units at $0.20, $0.16, and $0.13 respectively; annual billing takes 10% off. Custom enterprise plans are available through sales.
- Free tier: The free plan renews $5 of usage monthly; if the credit runs out, access pauses until the next month rather than incurring charges.
- Open source: Apify develops and maintains Crawlee, an open-source web scraping and crawling library available on GitHub.
- Add-ons: Optional extras include concurrent runs ($5/run), additional Actor RAM ($1/GB), datacenter proxies (from $0.60/IP), and personal training ($150/hour).
Who It's For
Apify suits developers and data teams who need web data without building and operating scraping infrastructure, as well as marketers and sales teams using scrapers for lead generation, competitor tracking, and social media monitoring. E-commerce teams use it for price and product monitoring across retail sites. AI engineers and agent builders use the Website Content Crawler and MCP server to feed LLM applications, vector databases, and RAG pipelines. Developers can also earn income by publishing their own Actors to the marketplace. Enterprise offerings cover compliant web data delivery at scale.
FAQ
What is Apify?Apify is a platform and marketplace for Actors — serverless cloud programs that scrape websites, extract data, and automate web tasks, created largely by an independent developer community.
Does Apify have a free plan?Yes, the free plan costs $0 and includes $5 of monthly usage credit with no credit card required; usage pauses rather than billing if the credit runs out.
How does Apify connect to AI agents and LLMs?Apify provides a hosted MCP server that lets clients such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor discover and run Actors, and the `apify-client` package or REST API for code-based integrations; note that `apify-client` is for calling Actors, while the `apify` package is the SDK for building them.
Is an Actor the same thing as an AI agent?No, on Apify an Actor is a serverless cloud program that takes JSON input and returns structured output; it is not itself an AI agent, though agents can call Actors.
Can developers earn money on Apify?Yes, developers can publish Actors to Apify Store and get paid when others use them; Apify reports distributing $1.7M to developers in a recent month.
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