Apify

Pros: 1. Powerful web scraping at scale Apify makes it easy to extract data from websites—even complex or dynamic ones. Whether you're pulling leads, product data, or social media insights, it handles large-scale scraping reliably. 2. Automation that saves serious time You can automate repetitive workflows (like data collection, monitoring, or updates), which frees up hours in your week and keeps your business running more efficiently in the background. 3. Flexible + developer-friendly ecosystem With ready-made “Actors” and the option to build custom ones, Apify works for both beginners and advanced users. It integrates well with other tools, making it easy to plug into your existing systems and scale as you grow.

Cons: 1. Steeper learning curve for non-technical users While Apify is incredibly powerful, getting started—especially with custom Actors or more advanced workflows—can feel overwhelming if you’re not technical. The UI and documentation could be simplified or paired with more beginner-friendly, step-by-step onboarding paths. 2. Debugging and error visibility When something breaks (which can happen often with scraping due to site changes), it’s not always immediately clear why. More intuitive error messages, visual debugging tools, or guided troubleshooting would make a big difference—especially for users running multiple automations. 3. Pricing clarity and predictability Costs can scale quickly depending on usage (compute units, proxies, etc.), and it’s not always obvious upfront how much a task will cost. A clearer pricing estimator or real-time cost tracking during runs would help users stay in control of their budget.

Pros: I've been using Apify as a core part of my AI automation flows for my own business and multiple client projects, and it's become one of the very few tools I recommend without hesitation. The platform makes it straightforward to turn almost any website into an API and plug that data directly into LLMs, CRMs, and marketing stacks, which has saved us countless hours of manual work. What I like most is the combination of ready-made Actors and the flexibility to build custom ones when we need something more advanced. The marketplace of pre-built scrapers and automations means we can prototype fast, then harden solutions with our own code when the use case proves itself.

Cons: Some of the more advanced use cases still require developer time to set up and maintain, so it's not completely no-code for complex workflows.

Pros: Apify's strongest card is how fast it gets you from "we need scraping" to scraping running in production. The pre-built Actor Store covers most common targets out of the box — we had Scout pulling structured listings off freelance boards within an hour of signing up. Beyond that, it's a proper infrastructure platform, not just a scraper: schedules, datasets, key-value stores, proxies, and a clean REST API all sit behind the same account, so wiring it into an agent pipeline is straightforward. The compute-unit pricing scales predictably for mixed workloads, and the observability — run history, dataset views, logs per run — means you can debug a broken scrape without rebuilding your own monitoring stack. For a small team, it does the work of an entire scraping engineer.

Cons: The plan caps are punishing for spiky workloads. Once you hit the monthly compute limit, everything stops dead — no soft overage, no pay-as-you-go top-up that doesn't push you up a whole tier. Actor Store quality is also wildly inconsistent: pre-built actors are a strength when they work, but there's no clear signal of which ones are actively maintained vs abandoned, and we've had selectors silently break mid-pipeline. The local dev story is the third weak spot — iterating on actor inputs or debugging a failing run usually means pushing up and waiting for a cloud run, instead of a clean "run this locally with the same environment as cloud" mode. None of these are dealbreakers, but they're the friction points worth knowing about going in.

Pros: Apify abstracted away all the headaches of web scraping for me. I use it heavily for USE.NGO to aggregate European job postings. The user interface is intuitive, making it easy to configure runs, monitor usage, and set up webhooks. What really stands out is their approach to data management and security. I can confidently run authenticated scrapers knowing the environment is secure, and the data comes out in perfectly clean JSON or CSV formats ready for our database. As a Demand Gen professional, I also use it to scrape B2B data for lead generation campaigns. The productivity improvement is night and day—you set it, forget it, and let the data flow.

Cons: You have to keep an eye on your compute usage. If you write or configure an inefficient scraper, it can chew through your credits faster than expected.

Pros: MCP integration — Calling actors directly from Claude via the Apify MCP server removes the need to manage API keys, polling logic, or dataset retrieval manually. The actor-as-tool abstraction works cleanly for ad-hoc research tasks.

Cons: Apify MCP server has been genuinely useful in my daily workflow, particularly for scraping and automation tasks. That said, I've hit a few unexpected issues worth flagging — most notably, the server occasionally breaks without sending any notification or status update, so I only find out when something downstream fails or returns empty results. Adding proactive failure alerts, or even a basic health-check endpoint, would meaningfully improve reliability and reduce debugging time on my end.

Pros: Apify has completely transformed the way I manage and scale my business. Before using it, I was bogged down by repetitive tasks and struggling to keep operations organized. Now, it serves as the backbone of my daily workflow. The features have saved me countless hours each week, allowing me to focus heavily on actual growth strategies rather than getting stuck in the weeds. Since integrating Apify, I've seen a massive increase in efficiency and overall output. It's not just a tool; it's a vital partner in my business growth. If you're looking for a reliable solution to elevate your operations, I highly recommend giving Apify a try

Cons: Rate limit numbers and access to more platforms. More easily accessible tools to understand what can be used. Possibly an AI assistant to help you understand how to use all the different tools that are available and what costs they are.

Pros: Fast setup using prebuilt actors Handles proxies, scaling, and scheduling out of the box Reduces maintenance of custom scrapers Works well for large-scale data collection Easy to integrate into existing pipelines

Cons: Learning curve for custom Actors Debugging failed runs can be unclear Costs become harder to predict at scale UI gets slow with large datasets or many runs

Pros: Apify has become a core part of my tech stack for building AI-powered automation tools. The platform handles web scraping infrastructure (proxies, browser management, scheduling) so I can focus on building the actual product. The Actor marketplace has pre-built scrapers for virtually every platform I need, and the API makes it easy to integrate into any backend. I run my scraping jobs on their cloud, get clean structured data back, and feed it into my AI pipeline. Simple and effective.

Cons: The pricing calculator could be more transparent — it took me a bit to understand how compute units translate to actual cost for my specific workload. Also, the free tier is quite limited if you're doing anything beyond small tests.

Pros: It has a easy-to-use UI, that helps me to achieve good quality and fast results from the web scraping, it is specially useful for integration with it's API

Cons: The costs for the actors runs are not predictable, so some runs may end up costing much more than expected

Pros: The prebuilt Actor library is the biggest strength. I can scrape Google Maps, LinkedIn, and dozens of other platforms within minutes using ready-made Actors without writing any custom scraping code. The API and webhook integration with n8n is seamless and reliable — scraped data flows automatically into my automation pipelines the moment a job completes. The scheduling feature is rock solid and keeps lead databases fresh without any manual intervention.

Cons: Compute unit pricing can escalate quickly on high-volume scraping jobs, which makes it necessary to factor Apify costs into every client project quote. Some prebuilt Actors break silently when target websites update their layout, and the error logs during failed runs are too technical and vague to debug quickly without deep platform knowledge.

Pros: Apify makes complex automation incredibly simple and reliable, even without coding skills. It saves me a significant amount of time on repetitive tasks, and the structured data output is consistently clean and easy to work with. The integration with Make is seamless, allowing me to build full end‑to‑end workflows with almost no friction.

Cons: There isn’t much to dislike, but debugging can sometimes take longer because certain error messages look similar and require extra interpretation. The versioning workflow in the Web IDE could also be more intuitive, especially when switching between builds. These are small areas for improvement rather than real drawbacks.

Pros: apify is a very powerful too for scraping data anywhere, from social media to google maps to website crawlers. it offers a very handy set of scrapers ready out of the box which is amazing

Cons: i dont have much complaints about apify as it is a pretty good service, one thing i wish they do is getting directly the scraping results in the api instead of getting the dataset id and then fetching the api again to get the results

Pros: Préwanted to share a quick overview of how we’ve been using Apify and where it’s been most valuable for us. Apify has become a key part of our data strategy, particularly when it comes to building and refining our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Before adopting it, we relied heavily on static and often outdated data sources, which made our targeting less effective and increased manual effort for the team.cision

Cons: Too slow wanted to share a quick overview of how we’ve been using Apify and where it’s been most valuable for us. Apify has become a key part of our data strategy, particularly when it comes to building and refining our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Before adopting it, we relied heavily on static and often outdated data sources, which made our targeting less effective and increased manual effort for the team.

Pros: I liked the wide range of ready-made scrapers (Actors) and how easy it is to automate data collection without needing to build everything from scratch. The platform is flexible and works well for web scraping and automation workflows.

Cons: Some advanced use cases require time to understand, especially for beginners. Pricing can also become high depending on usage and compute needs.

Pros: - Managed scrapers for hostile targets — Facebook Events, Instagram Posts, and Website Content Crawler (for Cloudflare-protected sites like Resident Advisor) absorb maintenance we'd never manage ourselves. - Pay-per-use pricing — fair and predictable for a small-team daily-batch workload; no idle cost. - Ready-made actor store — new data sources go from idea to running pipeline in hours. - Clean API and SDK — scheduled runs, dataset exports, and webhook integration all "just work." - Solid output quality — structured JSON drops straight into our Claude extraction pipeline without glue code.

Cons: - Actor discovery is noisy — multiple overlapping actors per platform with weak trust signals (official vs. community, last-updated, production readiness). - Output schemas vary between similar actors — switching an actor means rewriting normalization code. - Cost predictability for long crawls — a dry-run cost estimator would help budgeting. - Partial-failure transparency — when an actor returns fewer items than expected, it's not always clear whether the source had fewer results or something silently broke.

Pros: Everything is really good good scraper and like lots of platforms Instagram TikTok Facebook LinkedIn reddit

Cons: Nothing at all everything is quite good like really good best for scraping and getting leads that convert

Pros: j'aime bien le serveur MCP de apify très pratique et j'aime aussi la diversité des acteurs sur apify

Cons: Il manque parfois des actors sur certaines données à scraper. Mais sinon dans l'ensemble je recommande apify

Pros: Currently, I am using apify to review the linkedin posts and figure out some automations and we are finding more and more ways to use apify and is really helping in the productivity where our employees are spending no time finding listings, posts, and doing research or creating outreach plan.

Cons: Hostly, there's nothing I don't like about Apify. I like it most. Currently, I am using apify to review the linkedin posts and figure out some automations and we are finding more and more ways to use apify and is really helping in the productivity where our employees are spending no time finding listings, posts, and doing research or creating outreach plan.

Pros: The pre-built Actor library is the standout feature — it covers most of the sites I target without needing to build anything from scratch. Pair that with reliable scheduling, seamless data exports, and genuinely useful documentation, and it's a platform that earns its place in my workflow. The time and cost savings compared to manual research or third-party list services have been significant.

Cons: The learning curve is real. Understanding compute units, decoding actor-specific pricing structures, and knowing which Actor to use for a given job all take more time than they should. The dashboard also feels cluttered and a bit redundant when you're managing multiple scrapers simultaneously. A cleaner UI would up my overall score.

Pros: This tool is really good to bypass anti-bots and the store actors save me so much time for my n8n automations.

Cons: The compute units are a bit expensive and the dashboard is kind of messy when you start using it, but you get used to it fast.

Pros: The pre-built Actor marketplace means we can go from "we need leads in a new vertical" to a clean, usable list within hours rather than days. No scraper development, no proxy setup, no maintenance overhead. The SDK and API integrate cleanly into our Python automation pipelines. Triggering Actors programmatically, polling for results, and pulling structured data all work predictably, which is essential when scraping is one step in a larger workflow.

Cons: Estimating the cost of a new Actor run before executing it is largely guesswork. A dry-run mode or clearer upfront cost forecasting would save a lot of trial and error. Some community-built Actors are excellent, but others are abandoned or silently broken. Better visibility into maintenance status, success rates, and recent issues would help avoid wasted runs.

Pros: super easy to incorporate with Claude. easy to test in Apify's console too to see if the input is well placed and to get a good sense of the output it gives

Cons: search console should be easier to take you to show all actors instead of just showing the ones I've used

Pros: The Apify Store has 24,000+ ready-to-use Actors that work perfectly with Google Maps, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Shopee, etc. The platform is rock-solid, super easy to scale, with great proxies and anti-bot protection. Developer experience is excellent (Node.js & Python), support is fast, and billing is fair with free monthly credits.

Cons: about the price need to be lower in scale packet and customer service sometime late, but everything fine.