Apify's 4,000+ actor marketplace offers extensive coverage for web scraping needs. Different teams have different requirements when it comes to web scraping tools—from pricing models and support structures to technical approaches and infrastructure preferences.

We tested leading alternatives to help you find the best fit for your specific use case.

Here's a quick overview of leading web scraping alternatives and what makes each one unique:

Apify is a cloud-based web scraping and automation platform that lets you build, run, and scale web scrapers (called "Actors") through a marketplace-style ecosystem. Founded in 2015, it's grown into one of the largest scraping platforms with over 4,000 community-built and official Actors covering everything from Google Maps to Instagram. For a deeper feature-by-feature breakdown, see Firecrawl vs. Apify.

Quick feature overview:

• Actor marketplace with 4,000+ pre-built scrapers for popular websites
• Cloud infrastructure for running scrapers at scale without managing servers
• Proxy management with residential, datacenter, and mobile IP rotation
• Crawlee SDK (open-source) for building custom scrapers in JavaScript/Python
• Scheduling and monitoring for automated data collection
• Credit-based pricing where you pay for compute units, actor usage, and proxy bandwidth
• API access for programmatic scraper execution and data retrieval
• Integrations with Zapier, Make, Google Sheets, and various AI/LLM platforms

Apify works well for developers comfortable with JavaScript who need access to a wide variety of pre-built scrapers. The platform offers a marketplace of community-maintained actors and a credit-based pricing model.

Different teams have different requirements for web scraping tools. Some prefer API-first approaches, others need no-code interfaces, and some want open-source control.

We've organized these alternatives into three categories based on what matters most to you:

• API-first alternatives for developers who want programmatic control without marketplace chaos
• No-code alternatives for business users who need data without learning JavaScript
• Open-source alternatives for technical teams who want self-hosting and full code access

While Apify evolved from a developer marketplace into a sprawling platform with thousands of community-built actors, Firecrawl was purpose-built from the ground up for modern AI and LLM applications that demand clean, structured, machine-readable data.

What makes Firecrawl unique: It's the only Apify alternative that genuinely serves all user types. Whether you're a developer who wants API control, a business user who needs no-code simplicity, or a technical team that prefers open-source self-hosting, Firecrawl delivers without compromise.

The key difference lies in architecture and output format.

Apify delivers HTML and JSON output with a credit system based on compute units, actor usage, and proxy bandwidth.

Firecrawl outputs clean markdown natively, reducing token consumption by an average of 67% and eliminating the need for additional parsing, with a transparent 1 credit per page pricing model.

Apify offers a marketplace of 4,000+ community-built actors covering various use cases. Firecrawl provides LLM-ready markdown with structured metadata, screenshots, and links extracted automatically from scrapers maintained by the Firecrawl team.

Firecrawl's API is built for developers who want control without complexity. While Apify offers a marketplace approach where you search for and select actors, Firecrawl provides direct endpoints with consistent behavior.

Performance advantage

Firecrawl's caching system delivers sub-second response times for previously scraped content, while fresh scrapes complete in 2-5 seconds including JavaScript rendering.

One developer shared their experience: "Moved our internal agent's web scraping tool from Apify to Firecrawl because it benchmarked 50x faster with AgentOps."

AI-powered Agent for complex data gathering

Firecrawl's Agent endpoint uses AI to autonomously navigate and gather data from complex websites, handling multi-step workflows that would require multiple Apify actors chained together.

const result = await firecrawl.agent({
  url: "https://example.com",
  prompt:
    "Find all products, extract name, price, availability, then get full specs from each product page",
});

The agent handles navigation, pagination, and extraction autonomously. No need to find the right actor in the marketplace, configure parameters, or maintain selectors when websites change.

Natural language extraction vs CSS selector maintenance

Firecrawl's /extract endpoint accepts plain English instructions:

from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp
 
app = FirecrawlApp(api_key='fc-YOUR_API_KEY')
 
result = app.extract_url('https://example.com/products', {
    'prompt': 'Extract product names, prices, and availability status',
    'schema': {
        'type': 'object',
        'properties': {
            'products': {
                'type': 'array',
                'items': {
                    'type': 'object',
                    'properties': {
                        'name': {'type': 'string'},
                        'price': {'type': 'number'},
                        'available': {'type': 'boolean'}
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
})
 

With Apify, the approach typically involves:

1. Search the marketplace for a relevant actor
2. Review actor maintenance status and reviews
3. Configure CSS selectors or XPath expressions
4. Update selectors when websites change their structure

When websites change their CSS classes, Firecrawl's natural language extraction adapts automatically, while selector-based approaches require manual updates to maintain functionality.

Firecrawl offers no-code access through the Playground. Test scraping any website directly in your browser, no signup required, no code needed. See exactly what data you'll get before committing to anything.

No-code integrations

Both Apify and Firecrawl offer integrations with automation tools. Firecrawl's approach focuses on simplicity:

• n8n: Build automated scraping workflows without coding
• Zapier: Connect Firecrawl to 6,000+ apps with triggers
• Make: Create complex automation scenarios
• Bubble.io: Integrate scraped data into visual web apps

With Firecrawl, you simply specify the URL and get clean data back, while Apify requires actor selection and parameter configuration within these tools.

Apify offers Crawlee as an open-source SDK, while the platform itself is a managed service. Firecrawl takes a different approach with a fully open-source project.

With 81K GitHub stars, Firecrawl offers:

• Self-host on your own infrastructure
• Audit the entire codebase
• Contribute improvements
• Customize for your specific needs
• Deploy without vendor lock-in

You get the reliability of a managed service with the flexibility of open source. Start with Firecrawl's hosted API, then move to self-hosting if your needs change.

Apify's marketplace model offers extensive coverage through community developers, providing flexibility across a wide range of use cases.

Firecrawl takes a centrally-maintained approach where scrapers are built and maintained by the Firecrawl team. When websites change, updates are pushed automatically.

Firecrawl v2.5 introduced enterprise-grade reliability features including enhanced error handling, automatic retries, and improved caching, designed for business-critical workflows.

Apify uses a credit-based pricing system that accounts for compute units, actor usage, and proxy bandwidth separately.

Firecrawl's pricing is straightforward: 1 credit per successful scrape, regardless of JavaScript rendering, page size, or proxy complexity.

No compute units to calculate. No actor rental fees. No proxy charges. Failed requests don't consume credits.

Choose Firecrawl if you're:

• Building AI applications (chatbots, RAG systems, ML models, AI agents)
• Need LLM-ready markdown without post-processing
• Want API control, no-code simplicity, OR open-source flexibility (Firecrawl delivers all three)
• Working with JavaScript-heavy, dynamic websites
• Prefer centrally-maintained scrapers over a community marketplace
• Need transparent, predictable pricing per page
• Want automatic adaptation to website changes via natural language extraction
• Scaling to business-critical workflows
• Using LangChain, LlamaIndex, or other AI frameworks
• Want to test thoroughly before committing (Playground access)

For teams building AI-powered products, Firecrawl offers a different architectural approach focused on LLM-ready output, transparent pricing, and centrally-maintained infrastructure.

Octoparse is a desktop application for web scraping that uses visual point-and-click configuration, designed for users who need powerful scraping without coding.

The key difference lies in the interface approach.

Apify uses a web-based marketplace where you select actors and configure parameters. Octoparse provides a standalone desktop application where you visually configure scrapers by clicking on the data you want.

For data analysts, market researchers, and business intelligence teams who work primarily with Excel and don't write code, Octoparse offers a visual point-and-click interface.

Octoparse provides 600+ pre-built templates covering:

• E-commerce: Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Walmart, Target
• Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (limited)
• Business Directories: Yelp, Yellow Pages, Google Maps
• Real Estate: Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia
• Job Boards: Indeed, LinkedIn Jobs, Glassdoor

These templates work immediately without training. Enter your search parameters (product name, location, category) and click "Run." The scraper executes immediately.

Apify's actors allow for customizable configuration with various parameters. Octoparse's templates are officially supported and updated when websites change.

When templates don't cover your use case, Octoparse's visual builder lets you:

1. Navigate to your target page
2. Click the data points you want (prices, titles, descriptions)
3. Octoparse auto-detects patterns and builds the scraper
4. Run on-demand or schedule for automatic execution

The platform handles pagination automatically and adapts when websites change their layout. Octoparse's visual approach is designed specifically for non-technical users.

Choose Octoparse if you:

• Need a visual interface without code or marketplace navigation
• Are a business user without coding background
• Want built-in scheduling and monitoring
• Need data flowing directly into Excel, CSV, or databases
• Prefer point-and-click over marketplace navigation
• Want a free tier for testing (10 crawlers included)
• Don't need API integration

Oxylabs operates 175M+ proxy IPs across 195 countries, delivering high success rates and fast response times. While it started as a proxy provider, it has expanded into web scraping APIs to compete with platforms like Apify.

The core difference is infrastructure ownership.

Apify requires you to purchase proxies separately or consume additional credits for proxy usage, then hope the community actor you selected handles proxy rotation correctly. Oxylabs owns the proxy network and built the scrapers specifically to work with their infrastructure.

When runtime reliability matters (remember the user complaint: "sometimes it fails to do an accurate work and only scrape a few posts"), having the proxy provider and scraper built by the same team eliminates a major failure point.

With Apify, proxy management becomes a puzzle. Do you buy proxies separately? Use an actor's built-in proxies (if it has them)? How do you know if the proxy pool is good enough for your target site?

Oxylabs eliminates this decision fatigue. The Web Scraper API includes proxy rotation and infrastructure management as core features. You don't configure proxies because the infrastructure is designed for scraping from the ground up.

This addresses multiple Apify pain points: the learning curve (no proxy configuration to learn), reliability (professionally maintained infrastructure), and cost predictability (no separate proxy billing).

Choose Oxylabs if you:

• Need premium proxy infrastructure without separate vendor management
• Scraping sites with aggressive anti-bot protection
• Want 99.95% success rates vs. Apify's variable reliability
• Require fast response times (0.6s vs. reported slowness)
• Prefer professionally maintained scrapers over marketplace roulette
• Budget allows for $49+ monthly spend
• Need dedicated support, not Discord-based community help

Scrapy is a Python web scraping framework that provides complete architecture for building, deploying, and maintaining web crawlers at scale. Unlike Apify's marketplace model, Scrapy gives you full control over every aspect of the scraping pipeline.

The core difference is ownership and cost.

Apify is a managed service where you pay per request and work within their marketplace constraints. Scrapy is an open-source framework where you own the infrastructure, pay only for hosting, and customize every aspect of the scraping pipeline.

For developers comfortable with Python who need maximum flexibility or have budget constraints, Scrapy offers capabilities that paid services fundamentally can't match. Remember the Reddit user who said Apify isn't reliable "if you're trying to build an actual business at scale"? With Scrapy, you control the entire stack.

Scrapy uses Twisted, an asynchronous networking library, to handle multiple requests simultaneously without blocking. This makes it exceptionally fast for large-scale projects.

When scraping 10,000 pages:

• Scrapy: Sends hundreds of concurrent requests, completing in minutes
• Apify: Limited by concurrent request caps (varies by plan tier) and actor efficiency

Scrapy's asynchronous engine automatically manages request queuing, retries, and throttling. You define the concurrency level and download delays, and Scrapy handles the rest. No credits consumed by failed requests, no compute units to calculate.

Scrapy provides:

Built-in middleware system:

• Request/response processing pipelines
• Automatic cookie handling
• User-agent rotation
• Custom header injection

Data processing:

• Item pipelines for cleaning and validating
• Multiple export formats (JSON, CSV, XML, database)
• Built-in XPath and CSS selectors

Spider management:

• Command-line tools for running and managing spiders
• Built-in debugging and logging
• Statistics collection

Apify handles proxies and JavaScript rendering through actors, but offers limited control over the request pipeline, data processing, or export formats. With Scrapy, you can integrate any Python library, customize retry logic, or implement complex data transformations that would be impossible within Apify's actor constraints.

The biggest advantage over Apify? Complete freedom.

With Apify, you're locked into their marketplace ecosystem. If they change pricing (which affects your budget), deprecate features (which breaks your scrapers), or if the indie developer abandons the actor you depend on (which forces you to rebuild), you have limited options.

With Scrapy:

• Your code runs anywhere (local, AWS, GCP, Azure)
• No marketplace dependencies
• No credit system limitations
• No surprise pricing changes
• Complete portability

Choose Scrapy if you:

• Comfortable with Python development
• Scraping millions of pages monthly (massive cost savings)
• Need complete control over scraping logic and infrastructure
• Building complex crawlers with custom processing
• Want zero vendor lock-in
• Have infrastructure to host scrapers (or budget for cloud hosting)
• Working with sites that have simpler infrastructure (or willing to integrate additional tools)
• Building long-term scraping infrastructure for your company

Scrapy addresses Fabio V.'s complaint about Apify head-on. Instead of needing "solid JavaScript skills" to customize actors, you write Python code with full control. Instead of scattered documentation, you get comprehensive guides built by a 58,900-star community. Instead of credit confusion, you pay only for hosting.

The trade-off is real: you're responsible for infrastructure, anti-bot measures, and maintenance. But for developers who want control and cost efficiency at scale, that's exactly the trade-off they're looking for. Scrapy offers unmatched flexibility and zero ongoing subscription costs that Apify's marketplace model fundamentally cannot provide.

Browse.AI is a no-code web scraping tool that lets non-technical users extract data through point-and-click selection, with built-in monitoring for website changes and automated workflows.

The fundamental difference is interface philosophy and workflow focus.

Apify requires navigating a marketplace of 4,000+ actors, understanding input schemas, and configuring parameters even with pre-built scrapers. Browse.AI provides a Chrome extension and visual interface where you click the data you want, and it automatically generates the scraper.

For business users building automated monitoring workflows (tracking competitor prices, monitoring job listings, watching product availability), Browse.AI removes the technical barrier that drives Turi M.'s complaint about Apify: "As a newbie to workflow design, it's a bit challenging to be sure that you've got the best module chosen for what you need to do."

Browse.AI uses "robots" that you train by demonstrating what data to extract. The workflow:

1. Install the Chrome extension
2. Navigate to your target page
3. Click the data points you want (prices, titles, descriptions)
4. Browse.AI auto-detects patterns and builds the scraper
5. Run on-demand or schedule for automatic execution

The platform handles pagination automatically, works with infinite scroll, and adapts when websites change their layout. While Apify requires you to find an actor, configure input parameters, and debug when selectors break, Browse.AI's visual approach works immediately.

Browse.AI's monitoring feature tracks specific data points and sends alerts when they change. Set up monitors for competitor prices, product availability, or job listings, and receive email notifications automatically.

For example, monitoring competitor pricing:

• Train a robot to extract prices from competitor product pages
• Set monitoring frequency (hourly, daily, weekly)
• Receive alerts when prices change
• Export historical data to track trends

With Apify, you'd need to build this infrastructure yourself: find or create an actor for scraping, set up scheduling, implement change detection logic, configure notifications, and manage data storage for historical tracking. Browse.AI handles all of this out of the box.

Choose Browse.AI if you:

• Need a visual interface without marketplace navigation
• Are a business user without coding background
• Want built-in monitoring and change alerts for tracking competitors or market data
• Need data flowing into Google Sheets or business apps automatically
• Prefer point-and-click over understanding actor configurations
• Building automated workflows for price monitoring, lead generation, or market research
• Want to test thoroughly with a free tier before committing

Different web scraping tools serve different needs. Apify's marketplace model offers extensive coverage for various use cases.

Firecrawl offers a different approach with team-maintained scrapers, transparent 1-credit-per-page pricing, and LLM-ready markdown for AI applications. Whether you need API access, no-code tools, or open-source flexibility, it handles all three.

For specialized needs: Visual no-code tools like Octoparse work well for business users, while Scrapy offers developers complete control with zero ongoing costs.

Test Firecrawl's Playground before committing. No signup required.