--- title: "Apify Custom Web Scraping & RPA Solutions Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra" description: "Is Apify Custom Web Scraping & RPA Solutions the right Data Extraction solution for you? Explore 623 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice." source_url: "https://www.capterra.com/p/150854/Apify/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" publication_date: "2026-11-01" --- Apify Custom Web Scraping & RPA Solutions 4.8 (628) [View alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/150854/Apify/alternatives/) Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/our-story/) * * * Last updated November 1st, 2026 # Reviews of Apify Custom Web Scraping & RPA Solutions Ease of use 4.7 Customer Service 4.6 ## Pros and Cons in Reviews MH Mayuka H OwnerInternet, Self-employedUsed the software for: Less than 6 months. “It gives me a structured environment where I can test ideas, check logs, review results, and improve my Actors step by step before using them in a larger project.“ June 18, 2026 AS Akshat S Research AssistantEducation Management, 2 - 10 employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “Pricing transparency is poor with no real-time spend alerts, the Actor Store feels cluttered making it hard to identify the most reliable options, and some advanced features like custom proxy configuration have a steep learning curve for newer users.“ July 17, 2026 PB Pietro B MDAlternative Medicine, Self-employedUsed the software for: Less than 6 months. “The platform provides a large ecosystem of ready-to-use Actors that make it possible to start collecting data almost immediately, while still offering the ability to build highly customized solutions when needed.“ June 14, 2026 AS Asher S Software DeveloperInformation Technology and Services, Self-employedUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “The automated quality testing system that flags actors as "under maintenance" is poorly documented, it took multiple failed attempts to learn that input schema default values are required for the tests to pass.“ June 5, 2026 PB Pietro B MDAlternative Medicine, Self-employedUsed the software for: Less than 6 months. “The scheduling features, APIs, integrations, and managed infrastructure make it easy to automate recurring tasks and connect collected data with downstream analytics and AI systems. While there is a learning curve for some of the more advanced capabilities, the benefits far outweigh the challenges.“ June 14, 2026 Jeferson C Head of contentEducation Management, 2 - 10 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months. “Building your own custom Actors also has a learning curve, and debugging failed runs through the logs can be tedious. Since many Store Actors are community-built, their quality and maintenance vary, and some break when the target site changes.“ June 27, 2026 Jv Jigar v Working StudentCivil Engineering, 1,001 - 5,000 employeesUsed the software for: I used a free trial. “The platform is scalable, offers useful integrations, and makes it easier to manage recurring data extraction workflows. While there is some initial learning required, the time savings and flexibility make it a valuable tool for research and data-driven projects.“ June 6, 2026 HQ Huy Q Data Analyst InternConsumer Services, 2 - 10 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months. “Secondary to that is the fragility of community-maintained Actors — when a platform changes its page structure, third-party Actors break and I'm left waiting on a fix or debugging someone else's code.“ June 11, 2026 ## Showing most helpful reviews Showing 1-25 of 628 available reviews Sort by: Most Helpful Rating Company Size Reviewer's Role Length of Use Frequency of Use Cristian H. Marketing Manager Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Helpful AI, Great Actor Selection, and an Intuitive Platform" November 4, 2026 4.0 I struggled with understanding where demand was in my market, a market that's dominated by hundreds of products, some of which seem appealing but hardly move. With Apify, it's helping me automate data collection and gather a large amount of intelligence without having to spend a completely unrealistic amount of time performing a task that would otherwise be impossible. I now have a much better picture of what the market looks like. With this data that Apify helps provide I can make much better business and financial decisions and see a better return on my investment and save dozens of hours. Pros Helpful AI, and the starter credit is a great way to help you choose a good actor. There’s a wide selection of actors, the team provides regular updates, and integration with AI services is straightforward. Established actors provide great performance for a good price and overall the platform is easy to use and intuitive. Cons Their AI, while helpful, runs out extremely fast, often times before I've had time to make a decision, and there are a plethora of small, obscure agents that are not very good and are pricy. Overall prices do seem to be creeping up slowly. Review Source Caspar A. Consultant Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Essential infrastructure for web automation and feeding clean data into LLM pipelines." November 6, 2026 5.0 Apify solves the hardest parts of web scraping—proxy rotation, anti-bot bypass, browser fingerprinting, and containerized scheduling—out of the box. Rather than managing headless Puppeteer/Playwright clusters on custom infrastructure, Apify provides a stable, serverless execution environment with structured dataset storage. The slight deduction comes from compute unit cost spikes that can occur if a scraper encounters an unexpected infinite loop or recursive redirect chain. Pros The Apify Store allows you to skip writing scrapers from scratch for major platforms (Google Maps, e-commerce, social feeds) and jump straight to data consumption. Cons Maintenance: While official Apify-maintained Actors are reliably updated, third-party community Actors occasionally break when target websites modify their DOM or class names, requiring you to fork or write custom logic. Review Source R Reviewer Founder Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "Public data on autopilot, without the scary bills" November 5, 2026 5.0 I use the self-serve Apify platform, not the custom service, as the data layer for lead systems I build on n8n. The best example is a daily lead radar for my brother’s sapphire business. It reads Instagram hashtag feeds every morning, pulls the profiles of jewellers who look like buyers, and sends him the five best leads. I built and tested the whole thing on one saved run, so development cost almost nothing. A few rough edges, but I’d recommend it to anyone automating with public data. Pros Hooking it into my n8n workflows was easy. One HTTP call and the data comes straight back, so there’s no waiting around for a run to finish. I can put a spending cap on every run, so a mistake on my end can’t blow through the budget, and that’s a big deal when I’m building for small businesses. The Instagram actors I use for lead generation have been reliable, and paying per result keeps it cheap. Reading 30 full profiles cost me about eight cents. Cons Free-tier datasets disappear after about a week, and I nearly lost my test data before I figured that out. Some actors also have their own run limits on top of your account limits, and it took me a while to work out why a run got refused. And once something runs every day, you outgrow the free tier faster than you’d think, so price it out early. Review Source Esat B. Founder Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Reliable scraping platform we build our product on" November 4, 2026 5.0 We've been using Apify in our own projects, including our ad-automation platform, and we're very satisfied. The scrapers we need run reliably, the data comes back clean, and integration through the API took only a few days. It has become a core part of our stack and saved us months of development work. Pros Large library of ready-made actors that work out of the box. We use Google Maps, website content, ad library and X scrapers, and they return clean, structured data without proxy or blocking headaches. Clear API, good documentation, and the ability to cap spending per run. The Starter plan is fairly priced for a small team. Cons Pricing differs a lot between actors (pay-per-event, per result, compute units), so estimating the monthly cost takes some effort. A few actors have minimum charge limits that can cause rejected runs if you set a lower budget. The free plan is too restricted for production use. Review Source jean-paul A. Founder Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Reliable TikTok data without building our own scrapers" November 3, 2026 5.0 Apify handles all the TikTok data for my startup, an AI product for social media. It lets us get profiles, videos and creator data at scale without building our own scrapers, which saves a lot of engineering time and lets me focus on the product itself. Overall a great experience. (Disclosure: Apify offered a $20 gift card for leaving a review.) Pros Apify's ready-made TikTok scrapers plug straight into our backend through a clean API and return structured data, so we never had to build or maintain scrapers ourselves. It has been one of the most dependable parts of our stack, and the pay-as-you-go Starter plan fits a solo founder who only wants to pay for what he uses. Cons Big TikTok scraping runs can take a while to finish, and credits go fast once you scale up research. Clearer cost estimates before starting a run would make budgeting easier. Review Source Žanek N. Editor Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Saves hours of manual data collection" November 3, 2026 5.0 I run a small video agency and use Apify to collect public data from Instagram, so I can find the right accounts and Reels for outreach. It saves me hours of manual work every week. Disclosure: I received a reward from Apify for writing this review. Pros Ready-made scrapers (Actors) that work without coding, clear pricing per result and a quick setup. The results go straight into my own tools, and it connects well with Claude through the MCP server. Cons Costs can grow with large runs, so I always set a limit on each run first. It also took me a little time to learn which Actor fits which task best. Review Source Jack R. Founder Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Reliable scraping for content research and lead lists" November 2, 2026 5.0 Great overall. I make content about startups, AI and tech and run an AI consultancy, and Apify handles both my content research (Instagram and X data) and my lead lists. Very little I'd change apart from pricing. Pros I use Apify multiple times a week. The ready-made actors for Instagram and X let me pull posts, profiles and engagement data in minutes without building or maintaining my own scrapers. I also use it to build lead lists, which saves hours of manual research. It's reliable enough that it's part of my regular workflow. Cons Pricing is the main downside. It adds up when you run a lot of jobs each week, and it's not always easy to know upfront what a run will cost. Clearer cost estimates before running an actor would help. Review Source Hassimiou D. Amazon seller Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "SCRAPER DES DONNEES REELS EN TOUTE CONFIANCE " November 2, 2026 4.0 j ‘ai voulu bâtir un workflow N8N capable de scraper, catégoriser et analyser les avis clients pour mieux concevoir des offres .En essayant Apify j 'ai obtenu une tres bonne satisfaction Pros j ‘ai voulu bâtir un workflow N8N capable de scraper, catégoriser et analyser les avis clients pour mieux concevoir des offres . Un élément central dans ce dispositif est Apify qui me permet en un temps record de collecter à la source les avis réels sur Amazon . Il me donne une tres bonne satisfaction.Vivement recommandé Cons L’inconvénient est qu’Apify ne permet de collecter qu’un maximum de 100 avis par concurrent. Cela peut limiter la possibilité d’obtenir un échantillon réellement représentatif d’une niche de marché Review Source Ion B. Founder Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "Apify is the best marketplace for data extraction" October 30, 2026 5.0 Very good. I just find an actor I need on their marketplace, run it, export my data and that is it, in just a few minutes. Or I easily integrate it in the API Pros The ease of using the platform. Very friendly UX and UI. Also the API is easy to integrate and the docs are very well done. Cons It's a bit pricy. The packages also have way to much distance from each other. For example if I get the cheapest plan at 19$, but I consume on average 40$ of usage, I have to upgrade to a 200$ plan which is way to much. Review Source LS Lokesh S. Engineering Manager Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Turned app-store research into a repeatable weekly workflow" October 29, 2026 5.0 We use Apify for competitive app tracking, review sentiment analysis, and keyword research. It replaced ad-hoc manual collection with a weekly dataset that covers more competitors, and the whole team can run the actors without engineering help. Pros Apify gave us a repeatable way to collect Android and iOS app details and app reviews. The actors are ready to run, the inputs are simple, and the output is clean JSON or CSV that drops straight into our analysis. Scheduling means the data is waiting for us every Monday instead of someone spending a day copying listings and reviews by hand. Keyword Explorer is a useful bonus for our ASO work. Cons Pay-as-you-go pricing is fair for occasional runs but can add up when we scrape large review volumes. Custom scraping still has a learning curve. Review Source Volodymyr M. Founder & CEO at carbazar.lviv.ua 4.0 November 6, 2026 AI summary based on a full review Apify provides a cost-effective solution for identifying trending content, significantly reducing the time spent on topic selection for the SMM team. A limitation is that runs returning no results are still charged, which can lead to unexpected costs during hashtag scans. Log in to unlock the full review, detailed ratings, and pros & cons Reviewer seo analyst 4.5 November 6, 2026 AI summary based on a full review Apify significantly streamlines the process of web scraping and data collection, which is beneficial for project management. Despite its strengths, the user interface and experience could be improved for better usability. Log in to unlock the full review, detailed ratings, and pros & cons Ronald F. PM Used the software for: I used a free trial 4.5 November 6, 2026 AI summary based on a full review Apify streamlines job searching by incorporating Claude AI, which aids in search and ranking. The only limitation encountered was during the initial setup, where some jobs were overlooked, but this was resolved with proper configuration. Log in to unlock the full review, detailed ratings, and pros & cons Sanvi K. FOT 5.0 November 4, 2026 AI summary based on a full review Apify's all-in-one scraping tool simplifies data collection from multiple sources, which is a significant advantage for users. However, the process of discovering and choosing the right actors can be time-consuming and challenging. Log in to unlock the full review, detailed ratings, and pros & cons Igor E. AI Consultant Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Eliminated Web Scraping DevOps and Streamlined Our Data Pipelines" October 7, 2026 5.0 Apify transformed how we extract and enrich market intelligence, from custom directory crawlers to structured lead enrichment workflows. We no longer worry about IP bans, CAPTCHAs, or infrastructure scaling bottlenecks during batch jobs. Data lands directly into structured storage with dependable schemas that feed straight into downstream analytics. It provides a reliable data collection backbone that lets us focus entirely on insight delivery rather than browser maintenance. Pros Deploying custom Playwright crawlers directly through the CLI eliminated our need to manage self-hosted browser clusters and residential proxy pools manually. We frequently chain specialized Store actors with our custom Python scrapers using the SDK, which cut our pipeline delivery time from weeks to days. The native MCP server also lets our AI agents discover actors and inspect schemas directly during development. It consistently saves our team around 20 engineering hours each month on scraping infrastructure. Cons Parameter schemas and input naming conventions vary across third-party Store actors, which requires extra schema verification during pipeline setup. We would also benefit from stricter platform-wide input standardization and automated pre-flight cost caps before executing large community runs. In addition, documentation around actor-to-actor calling patterns could feature more end-to-end Python SDK examples. These are minor friction points, but addressing them would make developer onboarding even smoother. Review Source R Reviewer Director Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "Apify is highly recommended" September 30, 2026 5.0 Pros Apify is fantastic, i use apify directly, as well as the Apify MCP with chatgpt/claude, I use it for different use cases, for social media competitor research, lead generation, email verification and validation, i have also used it for getting data from search engines for analysis, there are lots of useful actors available that you can utilize for different business use cases. Cons Some times the requests get timed out and you have to restart the query again to finish the tasks, its annoying but mostly gets fixed in 1-2 attempts. Review Source R Reviewer Manager Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "Good for extraction but customer support is pathetic" May 19, 2022 3.0 Overall good platform for data extraction but customer support is pathetic even when you are paid subscriber Pros \- Powerful data extraction - Scalable infrastructure - Scheduling & feature rich Cons \- Customer support is worst nightmare with them - Pricing is unfair (They even don't have clarification on how you billed certain amount) - It has bugs which are lasting months even after reporting. Actor gets stuck forever causing you billing - Reporting is not integrated part of dashboard Review Source Mahmoud D. Founder, TastePass Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Thousands of verified places per run, no scraper to build" June 26, 2026 5.0 As a solo founder, Apify removed the single biggest technical blocker in building my product: getting real, verified restaurant data at scale instead of the invented places generic AI tools produce. Rather than hiring a data engineer or maintaining my own scrapers, I run a proven Actor per city and get thousands of structured venues back in an afternoon. It has built verified catalogues for nine cities at a modest cost. Keep an eye on usage billing and vet each Actor, and it is an excellent tool. Pros The ready-made Actors are the standout. The Google Maps Actor pulled thousands of verified venues per run (some of mine returned over 5,000 places), with proxies and anti-blocking handled for me, so I never had to build or maintain a scraper. The output is clean, consistently structured data that drops straight into my pipeline, and the console makes launching, monitoring and exporting a run straightforward once you know it. Value for money has been excellent: a modest pay-as-you-go spend produced verified catalogues for nine cities. Every run I launched completed successfully, so it has been reliable too. Cons Two things. First, usage-based billing needs active watching: costs can climb on big runs, the spend controls are not front and center, and I would prefer a clear cost estimate before a run and spend limits on by default. Second, Actor quality varies across the marketplace, some are excellent while others break when the target site changes or differ from their documentation, so you need to vet an Actor before relying on it. The first-run setup, configuring inputs and proxy options, also took some trial and error. I never needed customer support, so I cannot speak to it. Review Source R Reviewer Individual Developer Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Affordable and Practical for Individual Developers" October 6, 2026 4.0 My overall experience with Apify has been very positive. I use it for a personal travel web application called Travel Compass, mainly to retrieve flight and hotel search data. Apify is easy to use, reasonably priced, and does not require a complicated approval process. The variety of Actors also makes it practical for an individual developer to access useful data without building a scraping system from scratch. Pros Easy to use even for a small personal development project. The cost is reasonable, there is no complicated approval process, and the variety of Actors makes it easy to access useful travel data such as flight and hotel search results. Cons I would like clearer information about how individual Actors are maintained over time. I would also appreciate more transparency about whether data access methods are officially supported or recognized by external services such as Google. Review Source R Reviewer Excellent tool Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Excellent tool" September 14, 2026 5.0 Pros It’s an excellent tool; I’ve been using it for two months to find data for betting on sporting events like tennis and baseball, and it has yielded great results. I recommend it. Review Source Oaida A. Frontend developer Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Adrian's Review" September 4, 2026 5.0 Overall, it's been a genuinely good experience. I came for the price tracking, stayed because the platform took a whole category of annoying work off my plate. The scheduled runs are dependable, the marketplace saves me from rebuilding scrapers that already exist, and the API means the data lands where I actually need it. The MCP server was the surprise bonus — wiring live web data into AI agents was the easiest integration I've done in a while. It's not perfect. The pricing took time to understand and I had to learn to set limits, and you do have to vet marketplace actors before depending on them. But those are manageable quirks, not dealbreakers. Support has been responsive, the documentation is solid, and for a solo developer the cost is easy to justify against the hours it saves. I'd recommend it to anyone who collects web data more than once — and I have, to people at work and friends building side projects. It's one of those tools that quietly becomes part of how you work. Pros What I liked most is how much of the scraping work is already done for you. The actor marketplace covers most of the sources I need — e-commerce sites, company registries, social platforms — so I rarely have to build a scraper from scratch anymore. And the stuff I do build slots into the same system: scheduling, retries, storage, and the API all just work together. It's reliable in a way my own scripts never were — jobs run on schedule, failures are visible, and I don't spend my evenings fixing selectors. The free tier was also generous enough that I could properly test it before spending anything. Cons The credit system took me a while to get used to. It's usage-based, which is fair, but it's genuinely hard to estimate what a run will cost before you launch it — prices differ from actor to actor and there's a compute component on top. I learned the hard way once, watching a badly configured job burn through credits faster than I expected; budget alerts exist, but they feel like a safety net rather than a planning tool. The marketplace is also a bit of a lottery sometimes. Anyone can publish an actor, and while the variety is great, some popular ones aren't maintained well — I've had an actor break after an update and only noticed when my pipeline started failing. A clearer maintenance signal would help a lot. Review Source Dheeraj T. Database Manager Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "Easy Web Scraping and Automation with Apify" September 8, 2026 5.0 My overall experience with Apify has been positive. It makes web scraping and automation easier, offers many ready-to-use Actors, and saves a lot of development time. Once you get familiar with the platform, it is quite flexible and useful for handling data collection tasks. Pros What I like most about Apify is how easy it makes web scraping and auomation. There are many ready made Actors, and I can quickly colect and process data without building everything from scratch. Cons The learning curve can be a little high at first, especially when setting up more advanced Actors and workflows. Some features also require technical khowledge to use affectively. Review Source R Reviewer Web Engineer Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "A great platform for turning scrapers into real products" September 28, 2026 5.0 Overall, I’ve had a really positive experience with Apify. I’m a solo developer and built a scraper that I published as an Actor. It now brings in a small amount of revenue, which is pretty cool considering I didn’t have to build my own platform around it. For me, Apify is a great combination of development infrastructure and distribution. I can focus on building the actual scraper instead of worrying about servers, scheduling, storage, and all the other stuff around it. I’m still relatively small on the platform, but the fact that I’ve already been able to turn one of my side projects into something that generates revenue is a big plus. Pros What I like most is how easy it is to turn a scraper into an actual product. I built my own scraper, published it as an Actor, and now it generates a small amount of revenue for me. I didn’t have to build all the infrastructure around it myself, which is a huge advantage as a solo developer. The Actor concept is simple and works really well. I also like the Store because it gives independent developers a place to publish their tools and potentially find users. Cons here is a lot to learn at first, and some parts of the platform can feel a bit overwhelming when you’re just getting started. I’d also like to see more ways to help new Actors get discovered. Building the product is one thing, getting the first users is another. Review Source Ayoub E. fullstack developer Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "great user experience" October 1, 2026 5.0 ive been using apify for more than a year as a user and a published and i really like the apify familly i love the way they do work and also simplicity of their products. Pros the platform has good user experience and the support are very helpfull. i use apify actors for data scraping. and also apify proxies. Cons the compute and proxies prices are high compared to other competitors other than that i like everything about apify. Review Source Future Frame S. Director Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "The Absolute Goat" May 11, 2026 5.0 Integrating Apify into my business has been an absolute game-changer for our growth. It seamlessly handles the heavy lifting of my day-to-day operations, giving me the bandwidth to focus on high-level strategy and scaling. What I love most is how intuitive and adaptable it is—it genuinely feels custom-built for my workflow. My productivity has skyrocketed, and the impact on my bottom line was almost immediate. If you are serious about taking your business to the next level and streamlining your systems, Apify is absolutely worth the investment 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. Review Source Similar Products Featured ## Send me user reviews about this product ### Fill out the form and we'll send a list of the top-rated software based on real user reviews directly to your inbox.