Apify vs Browserbase
Apify is a Scraping API, while Browserbase is a Proxy & data infrastructure. Apify fits best for: Teams that want a ready-made scraper for a popular site (Google Maps, Amazon, social media) or a platform to host their own. Browserbase fits best for: Teams building AI agents that need to log in, click and navigate real browsers reliably in the cloud.
| Apify | Browserbase | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Scraping API | Proxy & data infrastructure |
| Starting price | $19/mo | $20/mo |
| Free tier | $5 of platform usage per month, no credit card, 5 concurrent runs | 1 browser hour, 3 concurrent browsers |
| Pricing model | usage (compute units) plus per-Actor pay-per-event/pay-per-result pricing | browser hours plus proxy GB |
| AI extraction | ||
| Structured JSON | ||
| JS rendering | ||
| Proxies / anti-bot | ||
| API | ||
| No-code UI | ||
| Open source | ||
| MCP server | ||
| Best for | Teams that want a ready-made scraper for a popular site (Google Maps, Amazon, social media) or a platform to host their own. | Teams building AI agents that need to log in, click and navigate real browsers reliably in the cloud. |
| Visit Apify | Visit Browserbase |
Why choose Apify
- Apify Store with thousands of prebuilt scrapers (Actors)
- Build and deploy your own Actors (Crawlee, JS/Python)
- Built-in proxy, scheduling, storage and webhooks
- Official MCP server exposing Actors to AI agents
Watch out for
- Costs can be hard to predict across compute units and per-Actor fees
- Quality of community Actors varies
- Free plan's proxy usable only inside the platform
Why choose Browserbase
- Serverless headless Chrome sessions at scale
- Stagehand open-source SDK for natural-language actions and extraction
- Session replay and debugging
- Stealth, proxies and persistent auth contexts
Watch out for
- Infrastructure, not a turnkey scraper: you write the automation
- Billing by browser hours can add up for slow pages
- Proxy bandwidth billed separately
Our product
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