Apify vs ScraperAPI
Apify and ScraperAPI are both in the Scraping API category. 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. ScraperAPI fits best for: Developers who want a straightforward proxy+rendering API and structured endpoints for big e-commerce and search sites.
| Apify | ScraperAPI | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Scraping API | Scraping API |
| Starting price | $19/mo | $49/mo |
| Free tier | $5 of platform usage per month, no credit card, 5 concurrent runs | 7-day trial with 5,000 credits; FAQ also mentions an ongoing free plan of 1,000 credits/month (5 concurrent) |
| Pricing model | usage (compute units) plus per-Actor pay-per-event/pay-per-result pricing | credits per successful request |
| 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. | Developers who want a straightforward proxy+rendering API and structured endpoints for big e-commerce and search sites. |
| Visit Apify | Visit ScraperAPI |
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 ScraperAPI
- Automatic proxy rotation and retries
- JS rendering and geotargeting
- Structured data endpoints (Amazon, Google, Walmart etc.)
- Async API and DataPipeline scheduler
Watch out for
- Higher entry price than ScrapingBee/Firecrawl
- Credit multipliers for rendering and premium proxies
- No LLM/schema-based extraction found on the pricing page
Our product
Only need structured JSON from pages?
BestAIScraper's extraction API takes a URL and a list of fields and returns typed JSON. Pay per use, no subscription.
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