Apify vs ScraperAPI
Apify
Best for a scraper somebody already built $19/ScraperAPI
A credit per standard page, and a published multiplier for every hard one $49/Apify vs ScraperAPI turns on how predictable you need the bill to be. ScraperAPI charges 1 credit a standard page and a published multiple for everything harder: 10 to render, 25 for Google, 30 for LinkedIn or ultra premium, 75 for ultra premium rendered, and 10 more behind Cloudflare. Apify charges whatever an Actor lists, or whatever its compute comes to, out of a monthly prepaid plan. Pick ScraperAPI for raw pages at a forecastable rate; pick Apify when a Store Actor already returns the rows, or when search is the job.
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 | ScraperAPI |
|---|---|---|
| What sets it apart | A marketplace of scrapers behind one API token | One credit a page, until the page fights back |
| Entry price | $19/mo | $49/mo |
| Unit cost | $0.20 per compute unit | $0.00049 per credit |
| Billing model | Subscription Pay as you go Free tier | Subscription Pay as you go Free tier |
| Free tier | Free plan, $5 of platform usage a month, no card. Blocked rather than billed when it runs out. | 1,000 free API credits a month at 5 concurrent connections, plus a 7-day trial with 5,000 credits and no card. |
| GTM motion covered | Source Signal | Source Signal |
| Data returned | FirmographicsWeb pages | FirmographicsTechnographicsIntent and newsWeb pages |
| MCP server | Yes Hosted at mcp.apify.com, OAuth or token | Yes Remote at mcp.scraperapi.com/mcp, or self-hosted |
| Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks | REST API MCP server Bulk or async Webhooks n8n node |
| Auth | Bearer API token, or OAuth through the hosted MCP server | API key as the api_key query parameter |
| Rate limits | 60 requests a second per resource, 400 to run an Actor, 250,000 a minute per account. | Concurrent threads by plan: 5 on Free, 20 Hobby, 50 Startup, 100 Business, 200 Scaling, 300 Professional, 500 Advanced. Over the limit is a 429, turned away rather than queued, at no charge. |
| Coverage | Global | Global |
| Compliance | SOC 2 GDPR | None published |
| Best for | Best for a scraper somebody already built | A credit per standard page, and a published multiplier for every hard one |
Pick each one when
Apify
- A Store Actor already returns structured rows for the source.
- Search results on the entry plans, at $2.50 per 1,000 SERPs.
- Schedules, datasets and webhooks should come with the scrape.
ScraperAPI
- Every page type should have a published credit cost.
- One endpoint for many sites, with rendering and proxies as flags.
- Concurrency from 20 to 500 threads, with a 429 that costs nothing.
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 ScraperAPI lists 8. 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 | ScraperAPI |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan with the API | Starter, $19 | Hobby, $49 |
| Tiers published | 4 | 8 |
| Free tier | Free plan, $5 of platform usage a month, no card. Blocked rather than billed when it runs out. | 1,000 free API credits a month at 5 concurrent connections, plus a 7-day trial with 5,000 credits and no card. |
| Unit cost at entry | $0.20 per compute unit | $0.00049 per credit |
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
ScraperAPI
ScraperAPI publishes 8 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $49 to $1,975, with a quoted tier above it.
Free
- 5 concurrent connections
- Plus a 7-day trial with 5,000 credits, no card
Hobby
- 100,000 API credits a month
- 20 concurrent threads, US and EU geotargeting only
- $0.00049 a credit, so $0.0049 a rendered page
Startup
- 1,000,000 API credits a month
- 50 concurrent threads, US and EU geotargeting only
Business
- 3,000,000 API credits a month
- 100 concurrent threads, global geotargeting
Scaling
- 5,000,000 API credits a month
- 200 concurrent threads, pay as you go past the allowance
Enterprise
- 22,000,000+ API credits, 500+ concurrent threads
- Ultra Premium keeps a minimum of $3 per 1,000 requests, $7 rendered
2 steps between the fifth and the last are not drawn here. The cost model below reads all 8.
What Apify and ScraperAPI 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.
ScraperAPI
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.
Apify publishes only an entry price, so that column is the floor for a year, not a forecast.
| A year at | Apify | ScraperAPI |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 a month | $228 | $0 Free |
| 10,000 a month | $228 | $588 Hobby |
| 50,000 a month | $228 | $588 Hobby |
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
ScraperAPI sells a monthly pool of credits. Hobby is $49 for 100,000, so a standard page is $0.49 per 1,000 and a rendered one $4.90; Startup is $149 for 1,000,000, which brings the rendered page to $1.49 per 1,000. Credits do not roll over, and Google and Bing at 25 credits make a search $12.25 per 1,000 on Hobby.
Apify prices a search through its SERPs proxy at $2.50 per 1,000 on Free and Starter, and estimates its Website Content Crawler at about $0.20 per 1,000 raw HTTP pages. A rendered page is $0.50 to $5 per 1,000 by the same estimate, which brackets ScraperAPI's $1.49 on Startup.
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
Search costs far less on the entry plans
$2.50 per 1,000 SERPs through Apify Proxy on Free and Starter, against $12.25 for Google on ScraperAPI Hobby. ScraperAPI only comes level at Business, about $2.49 per 1,000.
Rows, not HTML
Store Actors return datasets with named fields, priced per result where the developer chose pay per event. ScraperAPI's core endpoint returns the page, and the parsing is yours.
A free plan that does real work
$5 of usage a month, blocked rather than billed when spent. ScraperAPI's free 1,000 credits a month at 5 concurrent connections is 100 rendered pages.
ScraperAPI
A published cost for every page type
1 credit standard, 10 rendered or premium, 25 for both or for Google and Bing, 30 for LinkedIn or ultra premium, 75 for ultra premium with rendering, plus 10 behind Cloudflare, Datadome or PerimeterX. A job can be priced on paper.
Concurrency that grows with the plan
20 threads on Hobby to 500 on Advanced, and a request over the limit is a 429 at no charge. Throughput is a column on the pricing page.
A remote MCP server and an async batch API
MCP at mcp.scraperapi.com or self-hosted, beside webhooks and batch jobs, all on the same key.
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
The price of a hard page is learned by running it
ScraperAPI prices a LinkedIn page at 30 credits before you send it. A pay-per-usage Actor bills compute for however long the page takes, retries included, so a test run is the only real figure.
A synchronous call stops at 300 seconds
The run-and-read endpoint returns at 300 seconds, so a long crawl goes through start, poll and read. ScraperAPI answers each page on its own request, with an async batch API for the large jobs.
ScraperAPI
Credits that do not roll over
An unused month is gone, and the multipliers mean a pool of 100,000 credits is 4,000 Google searches. Size the plan on the hardest page type you call, not the easiest.
The key travels in the URL
Authentication is an api_key query parameter, so the key lands in any log that records request URLs. Keep the calls server-side.
Nothing to cite on compliance
No SOC 2 report or DPA was found to put in the record. If procurement asks, ask ScraperAPI before shortlisting it.
Using Apify and ScraperAPI together
Teams comparing these two often end up running both, and the arrangement below is the one they settle on.
Use ScraperAPI as the fetcher inside an Apify Actor when you want Apify's scheduling and storage but a published price per page. The Actor holds the logic and the dataset; ScraperAPI fetches at 1 credit a standard page.
Route search the other way. On the entry plans Apify Proxy's $2.50 per 1,000 SERPs is far cheaper than 25 ScraperAPI credits a Google page, so keep search on Apify until a ScraperAPI Business plan brings it level.
Whichever does the fetching, count the cost per useful row rather than per request. A rendered page that yields nothing still spends 10 ScraperAPI credits or a slice of Apify compute.
Apify or ScraperAPI, for you
Three 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 |
| ScraperAPI | Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news, 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 ScraperAPI
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
ScraperAPI 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. ScraperAPI uses an API key as the api_key query parameter.
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.
ScraperAPI's limits: concurrent threads by plan: 5 on Free, 20 Hobby, 50 Startup, 100 Business, 200 Scaling, 300 Professional, 500 Advanced. Over the limit is a 429, turned away rather than queued, at no charge. 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 credit expiry, rollover and the overage rate only show up at renewal 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 and ScraperAPI alternatives both start 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 →ScraperAPI alternatives
4ScraperAPI is 1 credit a page until the page fights back. Then it is 10, 25, 30 or as many as 75, and that multiplier is the bill.
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, Firecrawl vs ScraperAPI and Apify vs PhantomBuster.
And: Apify vs Browse AI and Apify vs Browserbase. Every comparison in the directory is on the compare hub.
Firecrawl vs ScraperAPI
One credit a rendered page as Markdown, against one credit a plain page as HTML. The multipliers decide which is cheaper.
Compare them →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 →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 ScraperAPI, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is Apify or ScraperAPI 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 credit, so the cost model above is the comparison, not the rate card.
Can I try Apify and ScraperAPI for free?
Apify: Free plan, $5 of platform usage a month, no card. Blocked rather than billed when it runs out. ScraperAPI: 1,000 free API credits a month at 5 concurrent connections, plus a 7-day trial with 5,000 credits and no card.
What are the rate limits on Apify and ScraperAPI?
Apify: 60 requests a second per resource, 400 to run an Actor, 250,000 a minute per account. ScraperAPI: Concurrent threads by plan: 5 on Free, 20 Hobby, 50 Startup, 100 Business, 200 Scaling, 300 Professional, 500 Advanced. Over the limit is a 429, turned away rather than queued, at no charge.
Do Apify and ScraperAPI both have MCP servers?
Both do. Apify: Hosted at mcp.apify.com, OAuth or token. ScraperAPI: Remote at mcp.scraperapi.com/mcp, or self-hosted.
Which is better, Apify or ScraperAPI?
Apify vs ScraperAPI turns on how predictable you need the bill to be. Pick ScraperAPI for raw pages at a forecastable rate; pick Apify when a Store Actor already returns the rows, or when search is the job.
What are the downsides of Apify and ScraperAPI?
Apify: the price of a hard page is learned by running it; a synchronous call stops at 300 seconds. ScraperAPI: credits that do not roll over; the key travels in the URL; nothing to cite on compliance. The Limits section above has each one in full.
Can you use Apify and ScraperAPI together?
Use ScraperAPI as the fetcher inside an Apify Actor when you want Apify's scheduling and storage but a published price per page. The Actor holds the logic and the dataset; ScraperAPI fetches at 1 credit a standard page.
Can I migrate from Apify to ScraperAPI without losing data?
The fields survive: ScraperAPI 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.