Apify vs Zyte API
Apify and Zyte API 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. Zyte API fits best for: Python/Scrapy teams that want a reliable unblocking API and pay-per-success billing.
| Apify | Zyte API | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Scraping API | Scraping API |
| Starting price | $19/mo | Pay as you go |
| Free tier | $5 of platform usage per month, no credit card, 5 concurrent runs | $5 free credit valid for 30 days |
| Pricing model | usage (compute units) plus per-Actor pay-per-event/pay-per-result pricing | per 1K successful responses, tiered by site difficulty |
| 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. | Python/Scrapy teams that want a reliable unblocking API and pay-per-success billing. |
| Visit Apify | Visit Zyte API |
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 Zyte API
- Automatic ban handling and proxy rotation
- Browser rendering and actions
- AI-powered automatic extraction for products, articles, jobs etc.
- Native Scrapy integration and Scrapy Cloud hosting
Watch out for
- Per-site tier pricing makes costs hard to estimate upfront
- Browser rendering on hard sites gets expensive (up to ~$16/1K PAYG)
- Best value requires a monthly commitment
Our product
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