Apify
Apify is a web data and automation platform. It is also a marketplace of ready-to-run scraping tools. Its home page lists 97,142 tools in Apify Store. They collect public data from TikTok, Instagram, Google Maps, online shops and many other sites. Developers can also host their own scrapers on Apify, run them on a schedule, or publish them in the Store and charge for them.
What Apify offers
The figures and prices in this section come from the Apify home page, pricing page and platform documentation, read on October 24, 2026. The number of Store tools changes daily, and each tool's own page sets how it is billed.
| Apify product | What Apify states | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Apify Store | Ready-made scrapers and automation tools. Each tool page states whether it bills per event or per usage | Use a finished tool to collect data from one site without writing code |
| Pricing and plans | Five tiers: Free, Starter, Scale, Business and Enterprise. The free plan needs no credit card. Compute units start at $0.2 each | Try it free, then move up as usage grows |
| Proxies | Residential proxies from $8/GB, Google SERP proxies from $2.5 per 1,000 searches, plus datacenter proxies and an unblocker | Your own scraper needs rotating IPs or help with blocks |
| Platform documentation | An API, SDKs, a command-line tool and Crawlee, an open-source crawling library | Write your own scraper and host it on Apify on a schedule |
| MCP server | A hosted MCP address that lets AI tools call tools from the Store | Let an assistant in Claude or Cursor find a tool and collect data |
The home page also says run results can flow into Zapier, Google Sheets, n8n and Slack, or be fetched through the API.
Who it is for
- Teams that collect data from many kinds of public sites. The Store covers social media, maps, shops and search results. It suits one-off and recurring jobs.
- Developers who write code. They use the Apify SDK and Crawlee for their own scrapers. The platform handles runtime, schedules and result storage.
- Developers who want to sell a scraper. The website says publishing is free and users pay for compute. Apify handles payments and invoices.
How Apify and EveryInfra divide the work
Apify works on a one-tool-per-site model: pick a ready-made tool in the Store, or write your own with Crawlee, and let the platform host and run it. EveryInfra works on a one-endpoint-for-every-platform model: the same POST /api/v1/social call, with a different platform and action name, returns fixed fields from another platform. The two models fit different jobs.
Put it on Apify when the target site is not among the 91 EveryInfra platforms, when you need to control the crawl yourself (for example multi-step flows after a login), or when you want to publish your own scraper in the Store and charge for it.
Put it on EveryInfra when the target is a Chinese content platform. WeChat Official Account articles and read counts, Xiaohongshu notes and comments, Bilibili videos and danmaku and Zhihu Q&A all bill against one USD balance, and failed or empty calls are free.
A global brand researching the Chinese market can use both: Apify crawls its own store and overseas media, EveryInfra pulls the Chinese discussion from WeChat articles and Xiaohongshu, and the results merge into one table by brand name. Teams on Claude or Cursor can add both MCP servers and let the assistant pick per task; this guide shows how to connect EveryInfra.
What to try first on Apify
The Apify Free tier needs no credit card. Find a tool in the Apify Store that matches your target site, run it once, and check whether its fields and billing suit you. Tier prices are on the Apify pricing page. Service terms are set on the Apify website; this page is written from its public material.