Apify Review - A web scraper that offers a lot more than scraping

For obtaining a large amount of data from websites, businesses and individuals rely on web scraping tools. These tools are powerful automated scripts that can collect, process, and save structured data for various use cases.

And, if you are on the internet, you will find hundreds of tools helping you to perform web scraping with a lot of features.

But there is a tool, or I should say a platform, that caught my attention very quickly. Its name is Apify, and it is more than just a web scraping tool. It is a full platform for scrappers, developers, and even the enterprise businesses.

So here is a detailed Apify review to actually see what is inside this tool and how good it is for scrapping and beyond that.

Apify—What is the tool actually all about?

Apify is a full-stack web scraping and data extraction platform. It allows developers to build, deploy, and manage web scrapers and automation tools. These tools extract data from websites and web tasks and connect with other services, helping businesses and individuals to achieve scraping operations.

I really find the original idea behind Apify unique because they wanted to make it easy for developers to build web crawlers. Slowly, when lots of developers joined, Apify became a marketplace for developers as well as the customers wanting web scraping tools.

It serves more than 4000 customers and has 2000+ actors (web scraping tools) in their store. And, interestingly, the use case of the Apify becomes supporting the below:

Generative AI, machine learning, product matching, data scraping
Lead generation, price comparison, market research, price comparison, and more activities.

Being a web scraper tool, this unique idea to provide a bridge between the developers and users is not something that I have seen too often in other alternatives.

Apify Pros & Cons

Pros

Offers over 300 pre-built scrapers suitable for businesses of any scale.
Supports open-source tools like Crawlee and Apify Python SDK, providing flexibility for developers.
Easy setup with customizable pre-built templates.
Provides Apify proxy services with features like HTTPS support, health monitoring, and custom geolocations.
Seamless integration with webhooks, GitHub, APIs, and various platforms like Zapier, Make, Slack, and more.
Offers multiple plans suitable for different scales of operation, from free plans for beginners to extensive plans for large enterprises.
Detailed documentation and free practice courses on web scraping and browser automation.
Multiple authors provide relevant answers to user questions, enhancing customer service.

Cons

Some users may find it challenging to get started with all the available features.
The free plan has limited proxy usage, which might not be sufficient for all users.

More Than Just Web Scraping- Reviewing Features of the Apify Platform

You must have noticed that I have mentioned multiple times that Apify is more than a web scraper. It is because of the features it packs. Here is a brief review of the features I really enjoyed with this platform.

Apify Stored

One of the core features offered by the team is the marketplace option, which offers more than 300 pre-built scrapers. I am sure that the diversity is a lot and can suit businesses of any scale—startups, medium scale, or large-scale enterprises.

Some of the well-known scrapers are website content crawlers, Google Maps email extractors, and Facebook posts scrapers. Users can see ratings and download stats with every scraping tool you explore from the developers.

Open-source Tools

Another important feature I would like to mention is the support for the open-source tools in Apify, like Crawlee and the Apify Python SDK. From the developer’s point of view, the platform offers flexibility that can benefit businesses—something which commercial platforms often ignore.

Pre-built templates

The platform gives a smooth experience in setting up the scraping projects with their pre-built templates. You can customize these templates and get your projects up and running quickly.

Apify Proxy

While accessing the Apify platform, you get a range of programs and even the pre-templates to start the project. However, I wanted a proxy, and shockingly the platform also provides their own Apify proxy services.

Whenever a scraping request is made, it is assigned to a unique IP address. HTTPS support, health monitoring, traffic statistics, and custom geolocations are some of the features of the proxy services that are really helpful.

Some other elements of Apify worth noting

There are few other elements that I found worth appreciating in the Apify platform. Foremost is the documentation, which lets users learn how to extract value from the web using Apify in written format. Everything about actors, storage, proxy, schedule integrations, security, and more is mentioned in their documentation section.

Further, the academic section gives free practice courses on web scraping and browser automation, making this platform excellent in the learning section too.

For help and support, Apify has multiple authors who share relevant answers to the questions of the users. This is a great strategy to provide one more layer to customer service.

Pricing and Plans of Apify

The Apify platform has a solid pricing structure that does not limit it to one or two plans; instead, it aims to satisfy a diverse need of users. Whether someone just started their operations as a startup or is running a large-scale operation, Apify has multiple plans.

Starting with the free plan suitable for beginners, Apify offers free usage, which is worth the price of $5 compared with its other plans. Platform gives all core features of the Apify-like Actor (program) running with a bit limited proxy usage, still suiting for the beginners who want to explore the platform without a massive financial commitment.

For users who require more resources, there is a starter plan available at $49 per month, which includes 32 GB of RAM, 32 concurrent actor runs, and access to both residential and datacenter proxies. It is perfect for the small to medium-sized projects needing more power and flexibility than a beginner level.

Further, the Scale plan is priced at $499 per month and is for really large projects that require high demands. It delivers 128 GB of RAM and 128 concurrent actor runs, giving what a business at good scale will require for running operations efficiently.

Similarly, for the big enterprises, there is a business plan offering even more resources and customization options. It is priced at $999 per month, giving 256 GB of RAM and 256 concurrent actor runs. Each plan gives access to the amount of resources a business would require at different scales.

Proxies Plans

Free	Starter	Scale
$0.00/month	$49.00/month	$199.00/month
$5 platform credits 20 shared datacenter proxies 4 GB max actor RAM 7-day data retention Discord support 9 team seats	$49 platform credits 30 shared datacenter proxies 32 GB max actor RAM 14-day data retention Email support 9 team seats	$199 platform credits 100 shared datacenter proxies 128 GB max actor RAM 21-day data retention Chat support 9+ team seats
Get Started

Final Verdict

I had a great time exploring Apify, and in my viewpoint, it is one of the top web scraping and data automation platforms. It has some unique features, like an actor’s marketplace that stands unique in the market.

Aptify’s documentation and educational resources are detailed and helpful for both developers and the customers. The plans are diverse too, giving every level of business the benefits of Apify.

There are no serious complaints with this platform; however, it does require some good learning curve if someone wants to check all the ticks of productivity.