7 Best Apify Alternatives in 2026 (and How to Switch)

The best Apify alternatives in 2026 are Scrape.ly, Firecrawl, Bright Data, ScraperAPI, Zyte, Browserless and ScrapingBee. Scrape.ly comes first because it is the only one on this list that runs your existing Apify Actors and apify-client code: you change an import, a base URL and a token, and your scrapers keep working.

The other six are good tools for narrower jobs, and we say which job each one fits. Every price and limit below was checked on 22 October 2026 on the vendor's own pricing page or docs.

Why teams look for Apify alternatives

Apify defined the Actor model and runs the Apify Store. Most reasons to look elsewhere show up on the bill, and Apify's own pricing page shows where they come from. The last one is about what a move costs:

• Residential proxy traffic costs $7 to $8 per GB. It's $8 per GB on Free and Starter, $7.50 on Scale and $7 on Business. Datacenter proxies are sold per IP: each plan includes 5 to 500 IPs, and extra IPs cost $1 down to $0.60 each.
• Overage goes on the next invoice. Every plan includes prepaid usage equal to its price ($5 on Free, then $19, $199 and $999). On a paid plan, usage above the prepaid amount is added to your next invoice, up to the usage limit you set.
• Store prices depend on your plan tier. Many Store Actors charge tiered prices. The Apify Store's Google Maps Scraper (compass/crawler-google-places) charges $4.00 per 1,000 places on the Free tier and $3.00 on Bronze (Starter), and on Free each filter you apply adds another $1.00 per 1,000 places.
• Leaving usually means a rewrite. Scraping APIs don't run Actors, so moving to one means rebuilding every scraper against a new API. That's why the compatibility column in the table below matters most.

None of that is hidden. It just adds up once you run proxy-heavy scrapers every day.

What to look for in an Apify alternative

If you already have Actors on Apify, these are the criteria that decide how painful and how worthwhile a move is:

1. It runs the code you already have. Rewriting twenty scrapers for a new API costs more than any plan saves. Look for Apify SDK compatibility and a drop-in API client.
2. Ready-made scrapers for the sites you use. A Store with per-result prices means you don't have to build or maintain the common ones.
3. Proxy priced per GB, for residential and datacenter. Per-GB pricing is easy to predict from your traffic. Per-IP datacenter pricing is not.
4. Spending control on every run. A dollar cap per run is the simplest way to keep a broken loop from burning your budget.
5. Agent access. In 2026 your scrapers should be callable from Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT over MCP without glue code.
6. A free plan without a card. You should be able to test real runs before you pay.

Apify alternatives compared

Sources and dates for every cell are in the vendors' pricing pages linked in each section below.

1. Scrape.ly: the Apify-compatible alternative

Scrape.ly speaks the same Actor model as Apify. The JavaScript SDK is API-compatible with the Apify SDK (parts of it are derived from the Apify SDK under Apache-2.0), and the Python SDK mirrors the Apify Python SDK on Crawlee for Python. Builds accept apify/actor-* base images and swap them for the matching Scrape.ly image. The API clients export ApifyClient as an alias, so a script that uses apify-client today needs three changes: the import, the base URL and the token.

That's the part no other tool on this list can claim. Everything else is where Scrape.ly beats Apify on price and control:

• A Store of 568 ready-made Actors from six publisher studios, each with a pay-per-event price on its page. The Google Maps Scraper charges $3.60 per 1,000 places, and filters don't add a fee. The Website Content Crawler charges $0.50 per 1,000 crawled pages. Browse them all in the Store.
• Proxies priced per GB. Residential traffic costs $4 per GB on Free, $3.50 on Starter, $2.75 on Scale and $2 on Business. Datacenter traffic costs $1 per GB, down to $0.75 on Business. The settings are also exposed as APIFY_PROXY_* variables, so existing proxy code works.
• A prepaid balance and a maximum charge per run. Usage draws from your balance, and maxTotalChargeUsd caps everything a run can cost: compute, storage, data transfer, proxy, browser and the Actor's fee. When the cap is reached, the run stops. No surprise invoices.
• Plans that raise limits. Free gives you $5 of usage every month with no credit card. Starter ($19), Scale ($199) and Business ($999) include their price as usage credit and raise concurrency (2, 32, 128, 256 runs), memory (8, 64, 256, 512 GB) and data retention (2, 31, 60, 90 days).
• A hosted MCP server at https://api.scrape.ly/mcp with OAuth or a token, for Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT and other clients. Agents can search the Store, run any Actor and read the results. Give them a scoped API key with a daily charge limit.
• The Scrapely browser for sites that block headless Chrome: hosted Chromium with anti-bot fingerprints, Cloudflare Turnstile solving and its own residential proxy, at $0.45 per browser hour.
• Creators keep 80% of event fees, and the run's usage is billed to the user, not deducted from you. Payouts are on request: crypto or PayPal from $25, bank transfer from $500.

What a run costs in practice: our Google Maps run on 22 October 2026 returned 10 restaurants in 5.7 seconds and was charged $0.0369 in total, place fees and platform usage included (full run and log).

Best for: anyone who already has Apify Actors or apify-client scripts, and anyone whose bill is driven by proxy traffic. See the full Scrape.ly vs Apify comparison for every feature side by side.

2. Firecrawl

Firecrawl is an API that turns websites into LLM-ready Markdown and JSON. It has fixed endpoints for scrape, crawl, map, search, interact and agent jobs, and it bills in credits: 1 credit per page for scrape and crawl, 4 more credits per page for JSON extraction, 2 credits per 10 search results.

The free plan has 1,000 credits a month. Hobby costs $19 a month for 5,000 credits, Standard $99 a month for 100,000, Growth $399 for 500,000 and Scale $749 for 1,000,000 (less if billed yearly). Plan credits reset each month; only Scale and Enterprise roll unused credits over.

Best for: turning a known list of URLs into Markdown for an LLM app with one API call. Firecrawl doesn't run Actors, so moving Apify code there means rewriting it. If page-to-Markdown is all you need, Scrape.ly's Website Content Crawler does it per page without a monthly plan; we compare the two in Firecrawl alternatives.

3. Bright Data

Bright Data is a proxy network with scraping APIs, pre-built scrapers, a remote browser and datasets on top. Its residential proxies list at $8 per GB pay as you go. Monthly plans start at $499 for 141 GB. On 22 October the page also advertised a 50% coupon for the first three months.

Its MCP server includes 5,000 free requests a month, then $1.50 per 1,000 results for search and scraping and $8 per GB for browser navigation.

Best for: teams that buy proxy traffic in bulk on monthly commitments. If you want Actors and per-GB proxies without a commitment, Scrape.ly's residential traffic starts at $4 per GB on the free plan and drops to $2.

4. ScraperAPI

ScraperAPI is a scraping API: you send a URL, it handles proxies, JavaScript rendering and anti-bot bypassing, and it bills credits per request. A standard page costs 1 credit. Amazon costs 5, Google and Bing 25, LinkedIn 30, and sites behind Cloudflare, DataDome or PerimeterX add 10 credits per request.

Plans start with Hobby at $49 a month for 100,000 credits and Startup at $149 for 1,000,000 (10% off yearly). There is a 7-day trial with 5,000 credits and a free plan with 1,000 credits. Unused credits reset when the subscription renews.

Best for: sending individual URLs through one endpoint and parsing the HTML yourself. It doesn't run your Actors or give you a Store of site-specific scrapers.

5. Zyte

Zyte sells Zyte API, one API that bundles datacenter and residential IPs, rendering and anti-bot handling, priced per 1,000 successful responses. Each website is placed in one of five tiers. Pay as you go, an HTTP response costs $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 and a browser-rendered response $1.01 to $16.08 per 1,000. Monthly commitments of $100, $200 or $500 lower those rates. New accounts get $5 of free credit to use within 30 days.

Best for: teams that want one API with per-response prices and know which tier their target sites fall into. Your Apify Actors would need rewriting against Zyte's API.

6. Browserless

Browserless hosts Chrome, Firefox and WebKit browsers that your own automation code connects to, plus its BrowserQL language. It bills in units: one unit is up to 30 seconds of browser time, residential proxy traffic costs 6 units per MB and a solved CAPTCHA 10 units.

The free plan has 1,000 units a month, 2 concurrent browsers and 2-minute sessions. Prototyping costs $35 a month ($25 yearly) for 20,000 units, Starter $200 for 180,000 and Scale $500 for 500,000.

Best for: teams that already write browser automation and only want somewhere to run the browsers. On Scrape.ly the same scripts run as Actors, with the Scrapely browser available when a site blocks headless Chrome.

7. ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee is a scraping API billed in credits per request. A request costs 1 credit without JavaScript and 5 with JavaScript rendering, which is the default. Premium proxies cost 10 or 25 credits, stealth proxy with JavaScript 75, and AI extraction adds 5. New accounts get 1,000 free credits without a card.

Best for: fetching single pages with JavaScript rendering through one endpoint. It has dedicated APIs for a handful of sites (Amazon, Walmart, Google, YouTube), not a Store of hundreds of scrapers.

How to switch from Apify to Scrape.ly

Moving is mostly configuration. Your Actor code, Dockerfile and input schema stay the same.

1. Create an account and a token. Sign up for free (no card), then create an API token under Settings → API & Integrations. Apify tokens don't work on Scrape.ly.

2. Install the CLI and push your Actor unchanged. In the folder of an existing Actor:

npm install -g scrapely-cli
export SCRAPELY_API_URL=https://api.scrape.ly
scrapely login
scrapely push

The build accepts your apify/actor-* base image and swaps it for the matching Scrape.ly image. To publish in the Store, switch to a scrapely/actor-* base image.

3. Point your apify-client code at Scrape.ly. In Node.js, install scrapely-client and change the import and the client options:

// Before: import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
import { ApifyClient } from 'scrapely-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({
  token: process.env.SCRAPELY_TOKEN, // a Scrape.ly token
  baseUrl: 'https://api.scrape.ly',
});

const run = await client.actor('username/my-actor').call(
  { startUrls: [{ url: 'https://example.com' }] },
  { maxTotalChargeUsd: 2 }, // stop the run if it would cost more than $2
);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

In Python, install scrapely-client-python and do the same:

# Before: from apify_client import ApifyClient
import os
from scrapely_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["SCRAPELY_TOKEN"], api_url="https://api.scrape.ly")

run = client.actor("username/my-actor").call(run_input={"startUrls": [{"url": "https://example.com"}]})
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

The JavaScript client docs list the details: ApifyClient and ApifyApiError still work as aliases, and endpoints Scrape.ly doesn't implement return an error.

4. Check your proxy groups. Residential and datacenter groups are available. Other groups, such as GOOGLE_SERP, are refused, never rerouted or billed. For Google results, use a Store Actor like the Google Search Scraper instead.

5. Or skip your own code for common sites. If your Apify setup mostly ran Store Actors, find the equivalent in the Scrape.ly Store, run it from the console or the API, and compare one run's cost against your Apify invoice. The Apify pricing breakdown has the numbers for that comparison.

6. Connect your agents. Add https://api.scrape.ly/mcp to Claude Code, Cursor or VS Code so an agent can run the same Actors. The setup for each client is in Best MCP servers for web scraping.

FAQ

What is the best Apify alternative?

Scrape.ly, if you already use Apify. It runs most Apify Actors unchanged and works with apify-client code after an import, base URL and token change. It also charges $2 to $4 per GB for residential proxy traffic, against Apify's $7 to $8.

Is there a free Apify alternative?

Yes. Scrape.ly's free plan gives you $5 of usage every month without a credit card, enough for roughly 1,300 Google Maps places at $3.60 per 1,000 plus usage. Firecrawl, ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee each offer 1,000 free credits. Crawl4AI and Scrapy are free open-source libraries you run yourself.

Can I run my Apify Actors on Scrape.ly?

Most Actors build and run without code changes, and builds accept apify/actor-* base images. Publishing to the Scrape.ly Store requires a scrapely/actor-* base image. Proxy groups other than residential and datacenter are not available.

Apify vs Firecrawl: which should I use?

They solve different problems. Apify and Scrape.ly run full scrapers (Actors) with site-specific logic. Firecrawl turns pages into Markdown through fixed endpoints. If you want both in one place, Scrape.ly runs Actors and has crawler Actors that return Markdown per page.

Who are Apify's main competitors?

Actor platforms (Scrape.ly), scraping APIs (ScraperAPI, ScrapingBee, Zyte), AI crawling APIs (Firecrawl), proxy networks with scraping products (Bright Data) and hosted browsers (Browserless). Only Scrape.ly runs Apify's Actor format.

Do Apify tokens work on Scrape.ly?

No. Create a Scrape.ly token in the dashboard and use it with the CLI, the API clients and the MCP server.