Apify’s 4,000+ actor marketplace sounds impressive until you hit the reality: abandoned scrapers, confusing credits that burn faster than expected, and a learning curve that requires JavaScript skills even for “no-code” features. Users consistently report the same frustrations: runtime failures on large jobs, support limited to Discord, and billing surprises that kill budgets.

We tested the leading alternatives to find tools that actually work without the marketplace chaos.

If Apify’s marketplace chaos, credit confusion, and abandoned actors are slowing you down, here’s what actually works:

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.

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. However, the platform’s complexity, unpredictable credit system, and marketplace of community-maintained actors create friction for teams wanting reliable, production-ready web scraping without the overhead.

While Apify offers a comprehensive platform with thousands of pre-built scrapers, several persistent issues drive developers and businesses to explore alternatives:

Apify’s support model creates serious problems when things go wrong. Users report slow response times, unfulfilled promises to follow up, and a reliance on Discord for “support.”

Louis C. explains the frustration on G2: “No support (don’t include Discord as ‘support’) These unneeded actors max out my account. There are only 1 or 2 actors that have a delete or remove option.”

Raul R., a Data Analyst, adds: “Customer service agents take a long time to respond, do not follow up when they say they would.”

When you’re running production scrapers that drive business decisions, waiting days for support responses isn’t acceptable.

Apify markets itself as accessible to non-developers, but the reality is different. Beyond simple tasks, you need solid JavaScript skills to customize actors or debug issues.

Fabio V. describes the disconnect on G2: “The main downside is the learning curve. For simpler tasks, it’s beginner-friendly, but once you need to build or customize actors, you really need solid JavaScript skills. The documentation is thorough but can feel scattered and overly technical for new users.”

Turi M. echoes this: “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.”

For teams without dedicated developers, this learning curve becomes a dealbreaker.

Apify’s credit-based pricing confuses even experienced users. You’re charged for compute units, actor usage, and proxy bandwidth - but how these combine isn’t intuitive, leading to unexpected costs.

Fabio V. notes: “Pricing is fair, but credit usage isn’t always intuitive, so it takes time to understand how to optimize costs.”

Naveen J. experienced this firsthand: “The credit-based pricing is confusing and caused unexpected overcharges.”

The problem gets worse when scrapers fail. An anonymous user on G2 explains: “This runtime errors still consumes credit, which makes the free trial credit quota deplete faster than expected.”

You’re paying for failures, not just successes - and there’s no way to predict your actual costs until after you’ve burned through credits.

When you need to scrape large datasets, Apify’s reliability becomes a serious concern. Users report jobs failing mid-execution, returning incomplete data, or becoming unreliable over time.

One user on G2 describes the issue: “One of the downsides of Apify is its runtime reliability. Whenever I try to scrape a large amount of data, sometimes it fails to do an accurate work and only scrape a few posts.”

Naveen J. adds: “Debugging cloud failures is difficult without technical skills, and pre-built Actors can become unreliable over time.”

For production workflows where data quality matters, these failures create operational risk.

Apify’s 4,000+ actor marketplace sounds impressive until you realize most are built and maintained by indie developers with no SLAs or support obligations. When an actor breaks or a developer disappears, you’re stuck.

A Reddit user on r/SaaS explains why this matters: “I wouldn’t recommend using Apify if you’re trying to build an actual business at scale. It’s basically a bunch of indie developers operating without any SLAs. If the developer you choose to go with becomes unresponsive, you’ll need to find someone else. So I don’t think its reliable. If you’re building a small scale project you can use Apify.”

You’re building critical infrastructure on top of tools that could stop working tomorrow, with no recourse.

As you scale your scraping operations, Apify’s dashboard becomes increasingly difficult to manage. There’s no way to organize actors into folders or tag datasets, and you can’t even delete unwanted actors that clutter your workspace.

Fabio V. on G2: “The dashboard could benefit from better organization features (like project folders or tags) once you manage a lot of actors and datasets.”

Louis C.’s complaint ties back to this: those unneeded actors max out accounts and can’t be removed, forcing users to work around limitations in their own workspace.

For teams building AI applications, running production scrapers at scale, or simply wanting reliable data collection without JavaScript expertise and billing surprises, these limitations make exploring Apify alternatives a necessity rather than a preference.

Apify’s complexity affects different users in different ways.

Developers struggle with marketplace reliability and credit unpredictability. Business users hit the JavaScript learning curve wall. Technical teams want open-source control without vendor lock-in.

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 fundamental difference comes down to architecture and reliability.

Apify delivers HTML and JSON that require post-processing, wrapped in a credit system where you’re charged for compute units, actor rental, and proxy usage separately.

Firecrawl outputs clean markdown natively, reducing token consumption by an average of 67% and eliminating the parsing layer entirely, all for a transparent 1 credit per page.

When you scrape with Apify, you navigate a marketplace of 4,000+ actors hoping to find one that works and isn’t abandoned. When you scrape with Firecrawl, you get 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. Unlike Apify’s marketplace where you search for actors, test if they work, and hope they stay maintained, Firecrawl gives you direct endpoints that just work.

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.

Users report that Apify “sometimes fails to do an accurate work and only scrape a few posts” when handling large datasets. One developer confirmed Firecrawl’s speed difference: “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, you’d need to:

1. Search the marketplace for a relevant actor
2. Check if it’s maintained (last update, reviews)
3. Configure CSS selectors or XPath expressions
4. Hope it still works when the website updates
5. Find a different actor when the developer abandons it

When websites change their CSS classes (which happens frequently), Firecrawl’s natural language extraction continues working while Apify’s selectors break and require you to find a new actor or learn JavaScript to fix it yourself.

Remember Fabio V.’s complaint about Apify? “Once you need to build or customize actors, you really need solid JavaScript skills.”

Firecrawl eliminates this barrier entirely with 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 that actually work

While Apify offers integrations with tools like Make and n8n, you still need to navigate actor selection and configuration. Firecrawl’s integrations are straightforward:

• 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

The difference? With Apify, you’re still choosing actors and configuring parameters inside these tools. With Firecrawl, you simply specify the URL and get clean data back.

Apify offers Crawlee as an open-source SDK, but the platform itself is closed. You can’t self-host Apify, you can’t audit the scraping infrastructure, and you’re locked into their marketplace model.

Firecrawl is different. With 70.9K GitHub stars, it’s a genuinely open-source project you can:

• 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 offers no equivalent path.

Apify’s marketplace model means you’re dependent on indie developers who, as one Reddit user noted, operate “without any SLAs.” When an actor breaks or becomes abandoned, you’re searching for alternatives and reconfiguring your workflows.

Firecrawl eliminates this uncertainty entirely. Every scraper is built and maintained by the Firecrawl team. When websites change, updates are pushed automatically. There’s no actor hunting, no abandoned tools, no wondering if your scraping infrastructure will break tomorrow.

Firecrawl v2.5 introduced enterprise-grade reliability features including enhanced error handling, automatic retries, and improved caching, making it production-ready for business-critical workflows that Apify users say they “wouldn’t recommend… if you’re trying to build an actual business at scale.”

Apify’s credit confusion is one of its most consistent complaints. As Naveen J. noted: “The credit-based pricing is confusing and caused unexpected overcharges.”

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. And critically: failed requests don’t consume credits, addressing another common Apify complaint where “runtime errors still consumes credit.”

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
• Want reliable scrapers maintained by a dedicated team, not indie developers
• Need transparent pricing without unexpected overcharges
• Require production-ready reliability with actual support (not just Discord)
• Want automatic adaptation to website changes via natural language extraction
• Scaling beyond occasional scraping 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 or running production scrapers, Firecrawl isn’t just an alternative to Apify. It’s a fundamental architectural improvement that eliminates the marketplace chaos, credit confusion, and reliability issues that drive users away from Apify in the first place.

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 defining difference is the workflow approach.

Apify requires navigating a marketplace of 4,000+ actors, configuring parameters, and understanding JSON structures even for pre-built scrapers. 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 removes the technical barrier that Apify creates.

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 require you to understand input schemas, configure parameters correctly, and verify the actor is still maintained. 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. While Apify requires CSS selectors or hiring someone to build a custom actor, Octoparse’s visual approach works 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 understanding actor configurations
• Want a genuine free tier for testing (10 crawlers vs Apify’s $5 that depletes fast)
• Don’t need API integration

ScrapingBee offers a developer-focused scraping API with transparent pricing that puts you in control. Unlike Apify’s unpredictable credit system, ScrapingBee uses opt-in multipliers where you explicitly enable features and know exactly what they’ll cost.

The critical difference: Apify charges you for compute units that vary based on hidden factors like actor efficiency and resource usage. ScrapingBee’s parameters are disabled by default. You opt in explicitly, and credit multipliers apply only when enabled.

Remember Naveen J.’s complaint about Apify? “The credit-based pricing is confusing and caused unexpected overcharges.” ScrapingBee eliminates this problem entirely.

ScrapingBee’s pricing uses credit system which eliminates surprise costs:

• Base request: 1 credit
• With JavaScript rendering: 5 credits (5x, you choose)
• Premium proxies: 10 credits (10x, you choose)
• Both JS + premium: 25 credits (25x, you choose)

You enable these explicitly per request. No scenario where a technical change multiplies your costs without warning, unlike Apify where users discover too late that their chosen actor consumes more compute units than expected.

Simple targets cost as little as 1 credit per request. Protected sites with full parameters run 25 credits. You decide the trade-off based on your needs and budget.

ScrapingBee uses headless Chrome for JavaScript rendering, handles CAPTCHA solving and browser fingerprinting automatically, and rotates through 40M+ IPs with 50+ country targeting. All controlled through simple API parameters.

No searching through Apify’s marketplace for an actor that handles JavaScript. No checking if the community maintainer is still active. No discovering mid-project that the actor you chose doesn’t handle the anti-bot protection you need.

Choose ScrapingBee if you:

• Want transparent, predictable pricing without surprise overcharges
• Prefer explicit opt-in parameters vs. hidden compute unit calculations
• Need developer-friendly API integration without marketplace complexity
• Running budget-conscious small to medium projects
• Want to avoid Apify’s “$5 credit depletes faster than expected” problem
• Don’t need thousands of pre-built scrapers (just a reliable API)

Bright Data operates at enterprise scale with 150M+ proxy IPs and comprehensive scraping infrastructure, targeting organizations that need massive-scale data collection with mission-critical reliability.

The fundamental difference is scale and accountability.

Apify’s marketplace model means you’re dependent on indie developers who, as one Reddit user noted, operate “without any SLAs.” Bright Data provides enterprise SLAs, dedicated account managers, and officially maintained scrapers built for companies like Microsoft, Siemens, and Accenture.

When your data operations drive million-dollar decisions, you can’t afford the “if the developer you choose becomes unresponsive, you’ll need to find someone else” problem that plagues Apify users.

Bright Data’s pre-built data collectors for Amazon, LinkedIn, Walmart, and other major platforms are maintained by Bright Data’s team, not random developers who might abandon the project.

When a website changes, updates are pushed immediately. You’re not searching through marketplace reviews trying to figure out if an actor still works or posting in Discord hoping someone will fix it.

Bright Data’s Web Unlocker automatically determines whether residential proxies, JavaScript rendering, or specific retry logic is needed for each request. You send the URL and receive results without experimenting with different actors or proxy configurations.

This solves Turi M.’s Apify complaint: “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.” Bright Data removes the guesswork entirely.

Choose Bright Data if you:

• Operating at enterprise scale (millions of pages monthly)
• Require 99.99% uptime and SLA guarantees
• Need advanced anti-bot capabilities for heavily protected sites
• Subject to compliance requirements (SOC2, GDPR, CCPA)
• Have budget for dedicated support and account management
• Scraping data that drives high-value business decisions
• Can’t risk depending on indie developers without accountability

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, CAPTCHA solving, and anti-bot bypass 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)
• Don’t need advanced anti-bot bypassing (or willing to integrate 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

Apify’s marketplace creates real problems: abandoned actors, unpredictable credits, and no accountability when things break.

For most teams, Firecrawl solves these issues directly. Team-maintained scrapers (no abandoned actors), transparent 1-credit-per-page pricing (no surprise charges), 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 gives developers complete control with zero ongoing costs.

Test Firecrawl’s Playground before committing to anything. No signup required.

1. What is the best alternative to Apify for AI applications?

Firecrawl is purpose-built for AI workflows, delivering native markdown output that reduces LLM token consumption by 67% versus raw HTML. Unlike Apify’s HTML/JSON requiring post-processing, Firecrawl integrates directly with LangChain, LlamaIndex, and custom models. The Agent endpoint handles complex multi-step data gathering autonomously, eliminating the need to chain multiple Apify actors together.

2. Why are users switching from Apify to other tools?

Users cite unreliable marketplace actors (“indie developers operating without SLAs”), confusing credit-based pricing causing unexpected overcharges, steep learning curves requiring JavaScript skills, failed runs consuming credits, and poor support (Discord-only with slow response times). These issues make Apify unreliable for production-scale businesses.

3. Is Apify good for web scraping at scale?

Apify’s own users say no. One Reddit user stated: “I wouldn’t recommend using Apify if you’re trying to build an actual business at scale… If the developer you choose becomes unresponsive, you’ll need to find someone else.” Runtime reliability issues cause scrapers to fail on large jobs, and the lack of SLAs means no recourse when actors break.

4. What’s the cheapest alternative to Apify?

Scrapy is free (open-source), with costs limited to infrastructure hosting. For managed services, Firecrawl offers transparent 1-credit-per-page pricing starting at $16/month for 3,000 credits, with failed requests not consuming credits (unlike Apify where “runtime errors still consumes credit”).

5. Which Apify alternative has the best support?

Unlike Apify’s Discord-based support where “customer service agents take a long time to respond, do not follow up when they say they would,” Firecrawl provides email support with documented response times. Bright Data and Oxylabs offer dedicated account managers for enterprise plans.

6. Can I use Apify web scraping alternatives without coding?

Yes. Octoparse and Browse.AI offer visual point-and-click interfaces that eliminate the JavaScript requirement that frustrates Apify users. Firecrawl’s Playground lets you test scraping without writing code, then offers no-code integrations with Zapier, n8n, and Make.