Apify Alternatives for Web Scraping in 2026
The best Apify alternative depends on which part of Apify you actually use. If you want web pages as clean Markdown for an LLM, use Firecrawl or Crawl4AI. If hard, heavily protected sites are the problem, use Bright Data or Zyte. If you want one simple scraping API that returns HTML, use ScrapingBee or ScraperAPI. If nobody on your team writes code, use Octoparse or Browse AI. If you want to own the code, use Scrapy, Crawl4AI or Crawlee.
That last one is a twist. Crawlee, the open source library many Apify Actors are built on, is Apify's own project. It's Apache-2.0 and runs anywhere. So you can leave the Apify platform and keep the scraper code.
Apify is really three products in one: a marketplace of ready-made scrapers, a cloud that runs them, and a proxy network. Most teams leave for just one of those three, so this guide sorts the alternatives that way.
Quick Comparison
| Tool | Best for | Type | Open source? | Billing model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firecrawl | Pages as Markdown or JSON for AI | Hosted API | Yes, mostly AGPL-3.0 | Credits per page or search |
| Bright Data | Hard sites and ready-made datasets | APIs, datasets, proxies | No | Per request, per record, per GB |
| ScrapingBee | Simple scraping API with JS rendering | Hosted API | No | Monthly credits |
| Zyte | Large Scrapy projects and tough sites | Hosted API plus Scrapy Cloud | Scrapy is BSD-3-Clause | Per 1,000 responses, priced by site tier |
| Octoparse | Non-coders on desktop | No-code app plus cloud | No | Plans plus pay-per-result templates |
| Browse AI | Monitoring sites into spreadsheets | No-code robots | No | Credit-based plans |
| ScraperAPI | High-volume async requests | Hosted API | No | Monthly API credits |
| Crawl4AI | Self-hosted LLM-ready crawling | Python library, plus a cloud API | Yes, Apache-2.0 | Free to self-host; cloud is usage-based |
| Scrapy | Python developers at scale | Framework | Yes, BSD-3-Clause | Free; you pay for hosting |
| Crawlee | Keeping Apify-style code off Apify | Node.js and Python library | Yes, Apache-2.0 | Free; you pay for hosting |
What Apify Is Good At
Start here, because it explains who should stay.
Apify's homepage calls it a marketplace of ready-to-run tools for AI. The store lists more than 100,000 Actors, which are serverless programs that scrape or automate a site. Popular ones include a Google Maps scraper, an Instagram scraper, a TikTok scraper and the Website Content Crawler, which turns sites into Markdown for LLMs and RAG pipelines. Developers can publish their own Actors and get paid when people run them.
Apify also runs an MCP server at mcp.apify.com, so AI agents can discover and run Actors from the store directly.
On the pricing page, billing works in two layers:
- A plan with prepaid platform usage, plus pay-as-you-go beyond it.
- Each Actor's own pricing model: pay per event (often per result), pay per usage, or both.
Platform usage is measured in compute units, where one unit is 1 GB of RAM for an hour, plus proxies, storage and data transfer.
Why People Look for Apify Alternatives
The common reasons:
- Costs are hard to predict. An Actor's per-result fee, compute units, proxy traffic and storage all add up separately. Two runs of the same job can cost different amounts.
- Quality varies by Actor. Many store Actors are built by third-party developers. When a site changes, you're waiting on that developer to fix it.
- You only need one thing. If you just want a URL turned into Markdown, a full Actor platform is more than you need.
- Your team doesn't code. Running and chaining Actors still assumes some technical comfort.
- You want your scraper and data on your own machines.
The Best Apify Alternatives
Firecrawl: pages as Markdown for AI apps
Best for: developers feeding web content to LLMs, RAG systems and agents.
Firecrawl turns pages into Markdown or structured JSON through scrape, crawl, map and search endpoints. Pricing is credit-based: one credit covers a basic scrape or crawl of one page, a search costs 2 credits per 10 results, and JSON extraction adds 4 credits per page. Credits are shared across endpoints. It's also on AWS Marketplace and Google Cloud Marketplace.
The core is open source. The GitHub repo says the project is mostly AGPL-3.0, with SDKs and some UI components under MIT, and it has a self-hosting guide.
Where it's stronger than Apify: one predictable unit (credits) instead of compute units plus per-Actor fees. Where it's weaker: no marketplace of site-specific scrapers. For a Google Maps or Instagram job, Apify has a ready-made Actor and Firecrawl doesn't. Our Firecrawl alternatives guide compares it with other Markdown-first tools.
Bright Data: when sites fight back
Best for: companies scraping large, heavily protected sites, or who'd rather buy the data outright.
Bright Data's pricing page covers a lot: an Unlocker API, a SERP API, a Browser API for remote browsers, Scraper APIs for more than 1,200 sites, pre-collected Datasets, and residential, ISP and datacenter proxies. It also runs an MCP server for agents. Its Unlocker API handles proxy rotation, CAPTCHAs and JavaScript rendering, and Bright Data says you pay only for successful requests.
Where it's stronger than Apify: a much larger proxy network, plus datasets you can buy instead of scraping. Where it's weaker: it's built for enterprise buyers. The product list is long, and most products bill on a different unit, so working out costs takes time.
ScrapingBee: one simple scraping API
Best for: developers who want to send a URL and get HTML, Markdown or JSON back.
ScrapingBee runs the headless browsers and proxies for you. Its pricing page lists JavaScript rendering, rotating and premium proxies, geotargeting, screenshots, CSS and XPath extraction rules, AI data extraction and a Markdown output mode. There are also dedicated APIs for Google, Amazon, Walmart and YouTube, plus an MCP server.
Everything runs on monthly API credits. A basic request costs 1 credit, JavaScript rendering costs 5, and premium proxies cost 10 or 25 depending on rendering. Credits expire after a month.
Where it's stronger than Apify: one endpoint and one unit, so there's much less to learn. Where it's weaker: you write the parsing and crawling logic yourself, and there's no marketplace.
Zyte: Scrapy, managed
Best for: Python teams already on Scrapy, and anyone who needs per-site pricing for tough targets.
Zyte maintains Scrapy, the BSD-3-Clause Python framework, and sells hosted services around it. The Zyte pricing page shows how Zyte API bills: per 1,000 successful responses, with every website placed in one of five tiers from simple to advanced. Browser-rendered responses cost more than plain HTTP ones, and a monthly commitment lowers the rate. Zyte also offers Scrapy Cloud for hosting spiders, and a managed data service.
Where it's stronger than Apify: you can check the price for a specific site before you scrape it. Where it's weaker: it fits best if you write Python. There's no big store of ready-made scrapers.
Octoparse: no-code, on your desktop
Best for: marketers, researchers and analysts who want data without writing code.
Octoparse has two ways to build a task: a desktop app where you click through a page to set it up, and an AI Assistant mode where you describe the data you want. Desktop tasks run on your own computer. Paid plans add cloud runs, schedules, IP rotation, API and MCP access, and templates priced per row of data.
Where it's stronger than Apify: a point-and-click builder for people who've never written a scraper. Where it's weaker: less flexible for custom logic. Cloud and scheduling sit on higher plans, not the entry one.
Browse AI: monitor sites into spreadsheets
Best for: teams tracking prices, listings or job posts over time.
Browse AI lets you train a "robot" on a website with no code, then run it on a schedule. It focuses on change detection and monitoring, and syncs results to Google Sheets or Airtable, or through integrations with thousands of other apps. It offers more than 200 prebuilt robots and can turn a website into an API. Plans are credit-based and limited by number of domains.
Where it's stronger than Apify: the monitoring workflow is the product, so getting a live spreadsheet takes minutes. Where it's weaker: big crawls and complex multi-step jobs are more natural on Apify.
ScraperAPI: high-volume requests
Best for: developers sending lots of requests who want retries handled for them.
ScraperAPI offers a synchronous API, an async service that keeps retrying jobs until they succeed, JavaScript rendering, structured JSON endpoints for Amazon, Google and Walmart, an AI parser, and DataPipeline for scheduled jobs without code. Plans are monthly API credits with set concurrency limits.
Where it's stronger than Apify: built for raw request volume with little setup. Where it's weaker: like ScrapingBee, it fetches the page. Turning it into clean data is up to you.
Crawl4AI: open source, LLM-ready
Best for: Python developers who want Firecrawl-style Markdown on their own servers.
Crawl4AI is an Apache-2.0 crawler that outputs clean Markdown and structured data. You can run it as a Python library or a Docker server. Its README now also points to Crawl4AI Cloud, a hosted API from the same team with scrape, extract and search endpoints and an MCP server. So you can start hosted and move to self-hosted later.
Where it's stronger than Apify: no per-result fees when you run it yourself. Where it's weaker: no store of site-specific scrapers, and you bring your own proxies when self-hosting.
Scrapy and Crawlee: own the code
Best for: developers who want full control and no platform lock-in.
Scrapy is a mature Python framework for crawling and extracting structured data. Its README says it's cross-platform, needs Python 3.11+, and is maintained by Zyte.
Crawlee is Apify's own open source library, under Apache-2.0, with a Node.js version and a Python version. It works with Playwright, Puppeteer, Cheerio, JSDOM and raw HTTP, and includes proxy rotation, session management, request queues and storage. The README says Crawlee runs anywhere, though since Apify develops it, it's easy to deploy to the Apify platform.
That's the key point for anyone leaving Apify: if you wrote your own Actors on Crawlee, the crawling logic itself isn't tied to Apify. Plan time to replace any Apify-specific pieces, like inputs, storage and proxies, before you move.
The trade-off for both: you run the servers, proxies, schedules and monitoring yourself. If the sites you scrape need a real browser, our Browserbase alternatives guide covers the browser layer.
How to Choose an Apify Alternative
| Your reason for leaving | Look at | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Want Markdown for LLMs | Firecrawl, Crawl4AI | Built for AI-ready output |
| Sites keep blocking you | Bright Data, Zyte | Large proxy networks and per-site handling |
| Want one simple API | ScrapingBee, ScraperAPI | URL in, page out, one credit unit |
| Team doesn't code | Octoparse, Browse AI | Point-and-click or AI-built tasks |
| Need data on a schedule in a sheet | Browse AI | Monitoring is the core feature |
| Want to own the code | Scrapy, Crawlee, Crawl4AI | Open source, run anywhere |
Two more checks before you switch:
- Count your Actors. If you use five different store Actors for five sites, no single alternative replaces all of them. You may end up with one API plus a bit of your own code.
- Read the site's rules. Check robots.txt and the site's terms of service, and be careful with personal data. Whichever tool you use, that responsibility stays with you.
If your agent needs search results more than full crawls, a search API may fit better. See our Exa alternatives guide.
Where Apify Is Still the Right Call
Stay on Apify if:
- A ready-made Actor already does your job. For sites like Google Maps, Instagram and TikTok, a maintained store Actor beats building your own.
- You want scrapers, scheduling, storage and proxies on one bill.
- Your agents run scrapers through MCP. Apify's MCP server gives an agent the whole store as tools.
- You want to sell a scraper. Few alternatives let developers publish and earn from their tools.
Where Taku Fits
Taku isn't a scraping platform, and it doesn't replace Apify or anything here. It helps with a different problem: someone has already built a working AI tool on top of web data, and you'd rather use it than wire up scrapers yourself.
That's where Taku comes in. Taku Apps and Sites, built by the best AI minds. Find one, run it, and keep it in your Mac Dock. Taku is in Beta, and the Mac app is available now. You can browse what's there in the marketplace.
FAQ
Who are Apify's main competitors?
Bright Data, Zyte, ScrapingBee and ScraperAPI compete on scraping infrastructure. Firecrawl competes on AI-ready output. Octoparse and Browse AI compete for no-code users.
What is the best open source Apify alternative?
Crawlee, if you want to keep Apify-style code, since Apify builds it under Apache-2.0. Scrapy, if you work in Python and want the most mature framework. Crawl4AI, if you want LLM-ready Markdown out of the box.
Is Crawlee open source?
Yes. Both the Node.js and Python versions are on GitHub under Apache-2.0. You can run Crawlee anywhere, with or without the Apify platform.
Apify vs Firecrawl: which is better?
Use Firecrawl if you mostly turn pages into Markdown or JSON for AI and want one credit unit. Use Apify if you need site-specific scrapers from its store, or scheduled runs with storage and proxies included.
Is there a no-code alternative to Apify?
Yes. Octoparse has a point-and-click desktop builder and an AI Assistant mode. Browse AI trains no-code robots and sends results to Google Sheets or Airtable.
What is cheaper than Apify?
It depends on the job. Self-hosting Crawlee, Scrapy or Crawl4AI removes platform and per-result fees, but you pay for servers and proxies. For simple pages, a credit-based API like ScrapingBee or Firecrawl is often easier to predict.