Apify

Apify: a marketplace of web automation tools for AI

Apify operates a marketplace of ready-to-run tools called Actors, designed for automating tasks on the web and obtaining real-time data. The platform allows you to track competitors, generate sales leads, monitor social media, and integrate applications and artificial intelligence agents. The available catalog amounts to 74,867 Actors, according to information published on the site.

Featured Actors in the catalog

Among the most used tools in the marketplace are the following, with the number of users and the rating shown by the platform itself:

• TikTok Scraper (developed by Clockworks): extracts data from TikTok videos, hashtags, and users, including profiles, posts, followers, likes, and music-related data. It has 293,000 users and a rating of 4.8 out of 5 with 372 reviews.
• Google Maps Scraper (Compass): obtains data from thousands of Google Maps locations and businesses, such as reviews, images, contact information, opening hours, and prices. It has 619,000 users and a rating of 4.7 with 1,817 reviews.
• Instagram Scraper (Apify): extracts Instagram posts, reels, profiles, places, hashtags, carousels, and comments. It has 405,000 users and a rating of 4.7 with 599 reviews.
• Website Content Crawler (Apify): crawls websites and extracts text content to feed AI models, LLM applications, vector databases, or RAG pipelines. It supports Markdown format, HTML cleaning, and file downloads, and integrates tools such as LangChain and LlamaIndex. It has 161,000 users and a rating of 4.6 with 234 reviews.
• E-commerce Scraping Tool (Apify): extracts data from e-commerce sites to monitor prices or compare offers across different stores. It has 15,000 users and a rating of 4.7 with 50 reviews.
• Facebook Posts Scraper (Apify): obtains posts, videos, and engagement metrics from Facebook pages, including texts, reactions, transcripts, images, and external links. It has 113,000 users and a rating of 4.7 with 234 reviews.

Development of custom tools

In addition to using existing Actors, users can create and deploy their own tools using code templates in JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python. The platform offers extensive guides and the option to hire experts to build and maintain custom Actors. Apify provides serverless execution infrastructure, proxies, anti-blocking capabilities, cloud deployment, monitoring, and data processing.

Integration with AI agents and applications

Connection with artificial intelligence agents is done through MCP, CLI, or Skills. The site states that it is enough to add a configuration to the MCP client file for the agent to access the Actors. Likewise, the platform integrates with applications and services such as Zapier, GitHub, Google Sheets, Claude, n8n, Google Drive, and Slack, among others.

Open-source tools and community

Apify maintains Crawlee, its own web crawling and browser automation library, compatible with Python and JavaScript, as well as with Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, Scrapy, and BeautifulSoup. The Crawlee repository has 25,902 stars. The company also runs a web scraping academy with free courses for beginners and experts, and a Discord community with more than 15,000 members.

Model for developers

Developers can publish their own Actors in the marketplace and earn income. According to published data, $1.6 million was paid to creators last month, and many developers earn over $3,000. Publishing is free, customers pay for computing resources, and new creators receive $500 in platform credits. Apify handles billing, taxes, and invoicing, and pays out a net amount monthly. The infrastructure scales automatically without the creator having to manage compute, storage, proxies, or authentication.

Enterprise solutions and compliance

The platform is presented as an enterprise-grade solution for obtaining accurate and secure web data at any scale, with 99.95% uptime and SOC2, GDPR, and CCPA compliance. The site includes testimonials from managers at Intercom, Groupon, and the European Union's Consumer Affairs Directorate about using Apify for data collection and detecting infringements. The company offers specific plans for enterprises, startups, universities, and nonprofits, as well as professional consulting services and a partner program.

Location and contact

Na Příkopě 959/27, Prague, CZ