Apify is an absolute game-changer for web scraping and automation. The platform is incredibly powerful, reliable, and surprisingly easy to use, even for complex tasks. It has drastically cut down development time and provided scalable data solutions—highly recommend!
Apify is extremely good for running api's or other automations as well as using other platforms. The actors make it very easy to find ways to automate behaviour e.g. scraping tools for websites. Makes everything easier. Very well worth it.
Pros
Automations
apis
integrations
Cons
more actors
Likelihood to Recommend
Very well suited when need to do manual work but has to be automated quickly
I use it for Scraping websites and scraping reviews. Very useful tool. Different use cases in one app. It is very cost effective and saves a lot of time for me. Good integration in tools like n8n, zapier or make.com available. I can recommend this application and I haven’t regretted switching to them.
I needed a way to collect public data from a form that required interaction to page. After trying several expensive subscription trials, I tried out Apify's scraping tools and built my own. what would have cost me at least $250 annually now costs me less than 50 cents a month! I'm so glad I discovered this service and cannot wait to use it for all my automation needs!!
Pros
automation
scripting
logging
scheduling
Cons
it's a little daunting as a newcomer to know what to do
naming of processes and features are confusing
need more snippets and plug and play integrations
Likelihood to Recommend
If you need automation on any kind of external service such as hitting an api, processing data, or scraping a site, there is no better bang for your buck than doing it yourself with Apify. and even if you can't do it yourself, there's probably someone who has already done it and you just gotta pay them for it, and it's usually VERY reasonably priced.
However, If you're looking for something plug and play and involves absolutely no technical skills, this probably might be over your head a bit.
I have needed to do simple things like Google search scraping, or scraping individual company sites for critical info. I have clients that need to aggregate info across the web from different platforms, and having a unified API marketplace helps fulfill those needs. Being able to find business from a search term in Google Maps, feed that into a Google Search and use those results for website scraping is invaluable.
Pros
Large marketplace for scraping APIs
Consistent documentation and page design, with easy-to-use on-page testing of each API
Transparent and clear pricing, stated before you buy APIs.
Cons
Limited free sandbox for pre-purchase testing
Ability to set rate flow toggling for the API, so I don't have to always code for it
Likelihood to Recommend
I think it's perfectly suited to applications and automations that require scraping data sources and sites for specific information, for getting search results you can aggregate across a wide range of search products, and for looking for more difficult-to-find information on social media without having to learn each site's ins-and-outs. It's not as useful if you're just trying to use standard APIs that already exist (if there's a public official API, you're better off using that in most cases), and if you're trying to do headless private API calls for services (like eBay). This is purely public site scraping.
I am building an AI Agent Platform with Agents that can go and find information on different platforms. Implementing scrapers for every different platform is tedious. Thus, Apify is a great solution. I think it's great to have a platform that gives you all the scraping you need. You don't need to build and find different tools and integrations. You have a one-stop shop. Of course, it has its price. But for that you get quality.
Pros
Huge catalog of scrapers for every purpose
Free-plan to dip your toes into the water
Easy to get started and test actors in the dashboard
Cons
I think its not always easy to grasp the cost difference between actors
Free-plan will not get you anywhere if you want to use high-quality actors
Onboarding felt like a lot of trial and error
Likelihood to Recommend
If you need multiple data sources and you don't want to figure out the details of a dozen different implementations then Apify is a life-saver. You don't need to worry about searching a working solution. You know you can find a working actor for your purpose within Apify. And when you have an Apify Implementation it makes it easier to build new ones for new actors. The store is amazing and you can easily test new actors in the dashboard.
I'm scraping posts and profile data from various platforms such as LinkedIn. I also use it to scrape Jobs.
Basically, I'm using Apify for lead generation purposes or for building various automations, such as job filtering, CV customization automation, and other similar use cases that I need in my business.
Pros
Scraping LinkedIn Jobs
Scraping LinkedIn posts
Scraping Instagram Reels
Likelihood to Recommend
It depends on the available actors. If you have a great actor for a specific scenario, then it's great to use. Otherwise, you'll need to build it.
We lean on Apify every single day to pull structured data from sites that refuse to offer an API. The actors spin up fast, handle JavaScript-heavy pages without a fuss, and drop clean JSON straight into our databases. From there, our AI pipelines - analytics dashboards, enrichment jobs, language-model prompts - drink it up with zero hand-holding. We’ve tried rolling our own scrapers; none matched Apify’s uptime, proxy rotation, or the dead-simple scheduler that keeps nightly crawls on rails. When something breaks, verbose logs point to the root cause quickly, and a tiny JavaScript tweak gets us back on track. Bottom line: Apify lets us focus on insights, not plumbing, and its predictable pricing keeps finance happy.
Pros
Scrape data from social media platforms
Scrape data from ecommerce platforms
Scrape data from recommendation platforms
Cons
Ease of configuration
Native integration to n8n and make
Direct integration to AWS databases
Likelihood to Recommend
Scraping JavaScript-heavy pages (prices, listings): the Web Scraper actor renders everything and returns clean JSON. One-off, tiny jobs where manual copy-paste beats setting up an actor. Nightly, large-scale crawls that need proxy rotation, retries, and clear logs - platform uptime stays above 99 %. docs.
Not so well suited: teams without technical knowledge.
VU
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Engineering (Computer Software company, 1-10 employees)
