Apify vs Oxylabs
Apify
Best for a scraper somebody already built $19/Oxylabs
A per-result price that falls with the plan, priced by target $30/Apify vs Oxylabs is clearest on search. Oxylabs prices a search at $1 per 1,000 on every plan and a generic scrape from $0.50 per 1,000 results down to $0.25 at 10 million, where Apify's SERPs proxy runs $2.50 per 1,000 on Free and Starter. Apify's advantage is the platform around the scrape: Store Actors that return rows, datasets, schedules, webhooks and a hosted MCP server. For results by the million pick Oxylabs; for a pipeline that needs more than results, Apify.
Where they actually differ
Every value comes from the same record that drives the Sourcing APIs listing, so this table cannot disagree with the cards. Accented tags are data one provider returns and the other does not.
| Compare | Apify | Oxylabs |
|---|---|---|
| What sets it apart | A marketplace of scrapers behind one API token | Priced per thousand results, and the target decides the rate |
| Entry price | $19/mo | $30/mo |
| Unit cost | $0.20 per compute unit | $0.0005 per result |
| Billing model | Subscription Pay as you go Free tier | Subscription Free tier |
| Free tier | Free plan, $5 of platform usage a month, no card. Blocked rather than billed when it runs out. | $5 in welcome credits toward any product. |
| GTM motion covered | Source Signal | Source Signal |
| Data returned | FirmographicsWeb pages | FirmographicsTechnographicsIntent and newsSearch resultsWeb pages |
| MCP server | Yes Hosted at mcp.apify.com, OAuth or token | Yes oxylabs-web-api-mcp, self-hosted, API key |
| Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks | REST API MCP server |
| Auth | Bearer API token, or OAuth through the hosted MCP server | API key as a Bearer token in the Authorization header; HTTP Basic is refused on /v1/scrape and /v1/search |
| Rate limits | 60 requests a second per resource, 400 to run an Actor, 250,000 a minute per account. | Not published for the Web API. A per-plan request rate is published only for the separate Web Unblocker product. |
| Coverage | Global | Global |
| Compliance | SOC 2 GDPR | None published |
| Best for | Best for a scraper somebody already built | A per-result price that falls with the plan, priced by target |
Pick each one when
Apify
- You want rows with named fields rather than raw results.
- You want a hosted MCP server rather than one you run yourself.
- A published rate limit matters: 60 requests a second per resource.
Oxylabs
- Search results at volume, at $1 per 1,000 flat.
- A per-result price that falls as the plan grows.
- Each target priced on the rate card before the first call.
Neither of these indexes anything: they fetch pages. Take a hundred URLs you really need, the hardest ones included, run them through both free tiers, and count the pages that came back usable and what each one cost, retries and multipliers included. That ratio is the number you are actually buying.
What each one costs, tier by tier
Both publish a full rate card, so this comparison runs on numbers rather than on adjectives. Apify lists 4 tiers and Oxylabs lists 4. Every figure is read off the vendor's own pricing page, and the pages they came from are listed at the foot of this one.
| The short version | Apify | Oxylabs |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan with the API | Starter, $19 | Starter, $30 |
| Tiers published | 4 | 4 |
| Free tier | Free plan, $5 of platform usage a month, no card. Blocked rather than billed when it runs out. | $5 in welcome credits toward any product. |
| Unit cost at entry | $0.20 per compute unit | $0.0005 per result |
The cheapest paid plan is rarely the plan you end up on, because what moves you up a tier is usually volume rather than a feature. The two rate cards below are what you are choosing between.
Apify
Apify publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $19 to $999.
Free
- No credit card
- Compute at $0.20 a CU, 16 GB of RAM
- 5 concurrent runs
- Blocked, not billed, when the $5 runs out
Starter
- $19 of prepaid usage a month
- Compute at $0.20 a CU, 64 GB of RAM
- 32 concurrent runs
- Bronze discount on Store Actors
Scale
- $199 of prepaid usage a month
- Compute at $0.16 a CU, 256 GB of RAM
- 128 concurrent runs
- Silver discount on Store Actors
Business
- $999 of prepaid usage a month
- Compute at $0.13 a CU, 512 GB of RAM
- 256 concurrent runs
- Gold discount and an account manager
Oxylabs
Oxylabs publishes 4 tiers, none of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $30 to $2,500.
Starter
- Up to 60,000 generic scrape results at $0.50 per 1,000
- Up to 30,000 searches at $1 per 1,000
- Google with JavaScript at $1.35 per 1,000, so about 22,000 of those
- Allowance counted in generic scrape results; dearer targets buy fewer
Basic
- Up to 222,000 generic scrape results at $0.45 per 1,000
- Up to 100,000 searches at $1 per 1,000
- Google with JavaScript at $1.30 per 1,000
Flexible
- Up to 1,430,000 generic scrape results at $0.35 per 1,000
- Up to 500,000 searches at $1 per 1,000
- Google with JavaScript at $1.15 per 1,000
Enterprise
- 10M+ generic scrape results at $0.25 per 1,000
- 2.5M+ searches, Google with JavaScript at $0.90 per 1,000
What Apify and Oxylabs cost at your volume
Put your own volume in. The model picks the cheapest published plan that covers it on each side, which is the question a rate card cannot answer and the one that decides the bill.
Apify
Its plans are not metered in records, so the figure below is the entry plan rather than a forecast.
Oxylabs
Priced on the volume you use, so the plan that covers a normal month is the one that decides the bill.
Plans are read from each vendor's own pricing page and the model picks the cheapest one that covers you, so these are list prices on the billing term each vendor publishes, annual where that is how it prices, before any discount you negotiate. Apify publishes plans that are not metered in records, so the figure shown is the entry plan rather than your bill.
What a year costs at three volumes
The same plan-fit arithmetic as the model above, run out to a year, because an annual number is what a budget actually asks for.
None of these prices moves with volume, so one row says it all. Apify and Oxylabs publish only an entry price, so those columns are the floor for a year, not a forecast.
| A year at | Apify | Oxylabs |
|---|---|---|
| At any volume | $228 | $360 Starter |
These are list prices on the published plan that covers each volume, on the billing term each vendor publishes, so they are the number before you negotiate.
How this plays out once it is running
Oxylabs prices its Web API per 1,000 results, with the rate set by the target and falling with the plan. A generic scrape is $0.50 per 1,000 on Starter at $30 a month, $0.45 on Basic at $100 and $0.35 on Flexible at $500. A JavaScript-rendered Google page is $1.35 down to $0.90, and a search is $1 per 1,000 throughout.
Apify puts similar prices behind its plans rather than per target: SERPs through Apify Proxy at $2.50 per 1,000 on Free and Starter down to $1.70 on Business, and an Unblocker at $1.50 down to $1. A Store Actor adds its own per-result price, so the comparison depends on whether you would send raw requests or run a finished scraper.
What each one is genuinely good at
These are the things that keep somebody paying after the first month, which is a different question from what the marketing page leads with.
Apify
Finished scrapers, priced on their own page
A Store Actor for a directory or a marketplace returns rows with named fields, at a per-result price on its own page. With Oxylabs the per-result price buys the fetch, and the fields are your work.
A hosted MCP server
Apify runs its MCP server at mcp.apify.com with OAuth, so an agent connects with no infrastructure. Oxylabs ships an MCP server you run yourself, locally or over HTTP.
Published rate limits
60 requests a second per resource and 250,000 a minute per account, stated per endpoint. Oxylabs publishes no rate limit for its Web API.
Oxylabs
Search at $1 per 1,000 on every plan
The same rate from Starter to Enterprise, against $2.50 on Apify Free and Starter and $1.70 on Business. At 100,000 searches a month that is $100 against $170 to $250.
A rate that falls with volume
A generic scrape drops from $0.50 to $0.25 per 1,000 results between Starter and the 10-million tier. The plan you grow into is cheaper per row, not only bigger.
Priced by target, in advance
Generic pages, Google with JavaScript and search each carry their own published rate. You know what a job costs before you send it, which pay-per-usage compute never tells you.
Where each one falls down
Every provider on this site has a case it handles badly, and the people who find out are the ones who bought it for that case. These are the ones worth knowing before you sign rather than after.
Apify
Search costs more
$2.50 per 1,000 SERPs on Free and Starter and $2 on Scale. Search-heavy work is cheaper on Oxylabs at every Apify tier.
The better rates sit on the $999 plan
SERPs fall to $1.70 per 1,000 and the Unblocker to $1 only on Business, at $999 a month. Oxylabs charges its $1 a search from the $30 Starter plan.
Oxylabs
No published rate limit for the Web API
A per-plan rate is published only for the separate Web Unblocker product. Throughput has to be measured rather than designed against.
A plan is a spend, not an allowance
Starter's $30 buys up to 60,000 generic results but only about 22,000 Google pages with JavaScript. Dearer targets buy fewer rows from the same plan.
An MCP server you host
The oxylabs-web-api-mcp server runs on your side with the API key, which is one more service to keep up for an agent.
Using Apify and Oxylabs together
Teams comparing these two often end up running both, and the arrangement below is the one they settle on.
The natural split is Oxylabs for the search layer and Apify for the work around it. An Actor you own can call Oxylabs for the queries at $1 per 1,000, then crawl or enrich the results itself and land everything in one dataset.
Mind the tokens when you combine them. Apify supports scoped tokens, but a scheduled run is handed an unscoped one with access to the whole account, so an Actor that also holds an Oxylabs key should be one you would trust with both.
Price the search line first. At 100,000 searches a month the gap between $1 and $2.50 per 1,000 is $150, nearly eight times the cost of an Apify Starter plan.
Apify or Oxylabs, for you
Four questions, answered from the same records as the rest of this page. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no result to email yourself.
Each answer leans one way. The recommendation appears here once you have picked at least two.
A tool like this can only weigh what is on the page. It does not know your workload, and the one test that does is the bake-off on this page: your own rows, queries or records, run on the cheapest entry each side offers.
Where an answer leans on a certification or an integration, it means that vendor publishes it on the pages this directory read, which is not the same as the other one lacking it. The sources are listed at the foot of the page.
Where the data comes from, and what you may do with it
The question that arrives late and expensively is who is allowed to hold the data. These are the fields each one returns, the coverage it claims and the compliance it publishes.
| Provider | Fields returned | Coverage | Compliance | Redistribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apify | Firmographics, Web pages | Global | SOC 2 GDPR | Not stated |
| Oxylabs | Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news, Search results, Web pages | Global | None published | Not stated |
None of these states a redistribution position on its pricing or docs pages. Internally that never matters. Put the rows in something your customers can see and it becomes the question your legal team asks first.
Two practical notes that apply to every provider on this page. A compliance badge describes the vendor rather than your use of it, so a GDPR DPA does not give you a lawful basis for the outreach you send. And every one of these vendors runs its own opt-out, which means a person who asks you to delete their record has to be removed from your copy as well as from theirs.
Moving between Apify and Oxylabs
Most readers of this page are already on one of these two, and the order below catches the expensive mistakes while they are still free.
Measure the thing you are about to lose
Replay 100 of the queries, URLs or lookups you really send through Apify and record the usable results, the failures and what each one cost. Without that baseline every provider looks cheaper per call than the one you are paying for today.
Check which fields change
Oxylabs returns every field Apify does, so nothing downstream has to change shape. Confirm the values rather than the keys: the same field can be named, typed or formatted differently on the other side.
Rewrite the auth and the limits, in that order
Apify authenticates with a bearer API token, or OAuth through the hosted MCP server. Oxylabs uses an API key as a Bearer token in the Authorization header; HTTP Basic is refused on /v1/scrape and /v1/search.
The limits are the part that bites later. Apify's limits: 60 requests a second per resource, 400 to run an Actor, 250,000 a minute per account.
Oxylabs' limits: not published for the Web API. A per-plan request rate is published only for the separate Web Unblocker product. A loop tuned to the first will either crawl or get throttled on the second.
Run both for one billing cycle
Keep the old key live and route a slice of real traffic to the new one. A month is the shortest honest test, because the limits and the overage rate only show up under a real month's load, and those are where the surprises live.
Cancel on the renewal date
Annual seats and prepaid usage rarely refund mid-term. Check what the contract says about the time you have already paid for, and time the switch to the renewal date.
The step people skip is the first one, and it is the only one that cannot be done after the fact. Once the old key is off you have nothing to compare the new one against, so a provider that is quietly worse on your workload looks like a provider that is fine.
The wider field for both
Sometimes the answer is neither, and the reason you are comparing these two points somewhere else entirely: Apify alternatives starts from the reason people leave.
Apify alternatives
4People rarely leave Apify because a scraper failed. They leave because the bill is set by whoever wrote the Actor, and the plan is dollars that expire.
See the alternatives →Everything in Source
28The full category these two sit in, filtered by data returned, billing model and entry price.
Browse the category →Related comparisons
The 52 providers behind every pairing here are in the main listing.
Pairings that share a side with this one: Apify vs Bright Data, Apify vs PhantomBuster and Apify vs Browse AI.
And: Apify vs Browserbase and Apify vs ZenRows. Every comparison in the directory is on the compare hub.
Apify vs Firecrawl
A marketplace that runs other people's crawlers against one endpoint built to turn a page into Markdown. Raw HTTP is cheaper on Apify; a rendered page is close.
Compare them →Apify vs Bright Data
Two platforms selling scrapers, an unblocker and proxies, and pricing the unblocker identically on the entry tier. Search is where they part.
Compare them →Apify vs PhantomBuster
Both bill for running code rather than for rows. PhantomBuster sells execution hours through your own accounts; Apify sells prepaid usage and lets each Actor price its results.
Compare them →Testing providers one at a time? Run the waterfall in Clay.
Clay runs a waterfall across 150+ data providers from one table, without a separate contract with each. A lookup that finds nothing costs no data credit, and the free plan includes 500 actions a month.
Frontal is a Clay Elite Studio Partner.
Apify and Oxylabs, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is Apify or Oxylabs cheaper?
Both have a free tier that carries the API, so neither costs anything to start; what each one includes is in the next answer. Per unit they meter different things, a compute unit against a result, so the cost model above is the comparison, not the rate card.
Can I try Apify and Oxylabs for free?
Apify: Free plan, $5 of platform usage a month, no card. Blocked rather than billed when it runs out. Oxylabs: $5 in welcome credits toward any product.
What are the rate limits on Apify and Oxylabs?
Apify: 60 requests a second per resource, 400 to run an Actor, 250,000 a minute per account. Oxylabs: Not published for the Web API. A per-plan request rate is published only for the separate Web Unblocker product.
Do Apify and Oxylabs both have MCP servers?
Both do. Apify: Hosted at mcp.apify.com, OAuth or token. Oxylabs: oxylabs-web-api-mcp, self-hosted, API key.
Which is better, Apify or Oxylabs?
Apify vs Oxylabs is clearest on search. For results by the million pick Oxylabs; for a pipeline that needs more than results, Apify.
What are the downsides of Apify and Oxylabs?
Apify: search costs more; the better rates sit on the $999 plan. Oxylabs: no published rate limit for the Web API; a plan is a spend, not an allowance; an MCP server you host. The Limits section above has each one in full.
Can you use Apify and Oxylabs together?
The natural split is Oxylabs for the search layer and Apify for the work around it. An Actor you own can call Oxylabs for the queries at $1 per 1,000, then crawl or enrich the results itself and land everything in one dataset.
Can I migrate from Apify to Oxylabs without losing data?
The fields survive: Oxylabs returns everything Apify does. What changes is the auth and the limits. Either way, replay a hundred real URLs through both and count the usable pages before you switch.