Apify alternatives: 7 tools compared for 2026, with pricing

$ Set up https://www.routergrowth.com/SKILL.md, then find posts from the last 30 days about [topic] on Reddit and X, pull the comments on the busiest one, and tell me what it cost.

We make RouterGrowth, one of the tools on this list, so read it as a vendor's view. Apify is also one of the providers RouterGrowth routes to, which gives us a reason to be fair to it. Every figure about another product was taken from that product's own pricing page on 8 October 2026 and is linked at the end.

Apify is a platform for web scraping and automation built around Actors: ready-made programs in its Store that scrape a specific site, plus the infrastructure to run your own. It is the most flexible tool in this category. People look for an Apify alternative because flexibility has a cost. You choose among several Actors for the same job, each with its own input, output and price. The bill mixes a plan, compute units, proxies and per-result fees. And someone who is not a developer can find the whole thing more than they wanted.

What does Apify cost in 2026?

Apify combines a monthly plan with pay as you go. The plan's price is prepaid usage you spend in the Store or on your own Actors.

A compute unit is one GB of RAM for an hour. Proxies are separate (residential from $8 per GB on the lower plans), and many Store Actors charge their own price per result or per run on top.

For a developer who needs data from an unusual site, nothing here matches it: if an Actor exists you run it, and if not you write one. The alternatives are for people who want less to decide.

Which Apify alternative fits which job?

What are the seven alternatives, one by one?

1. RouterGrowth: the job, not the Actor

RouterGrowth sits a layer above. Its capabilities are jobs with one schema each: search posts on a social network, pull the comments on a post, list the places on Google Maps for a query, read reviews, search people, scrape a page. Behind several of them is an Apify Actor that RouterGrowth has chosen, wired and tested, next to other providers. The agent asks for the job, sees a price before the run, and gets a normalized result whichever provider answers. A failed run releases its hold.

That removes the three decisions Apify leaves to you: which Actor, which input format, and what it will cost. The social calls are in the social media API guide and the maps and reviews calls in local lead generation. When a job is not in the catalog, Apify Actors remain callable as raw endpoints through the same key.

• Choose it when an agent needs GTM data from social networks, maps or the web and you do not want to evaluate Actors, or you want that data on the same balance as enrichment and outreach.
• Skip it when you need a custom scraper, a site nobody has built for, scheduled runs with storage, or the lowest cost at high volume. Running Apify directly gives you all of that, and RouterGrowth's price sits on top of the provider's.

2. Firecrawl: pages as markdown

Firecrawl takes a URL and returns clean markdown or structured output for an LLM, with search and crawling alongside. The free plan has 1,000 credits a month, one credit per page. Hobby is $19 a month for 5,000 credits, and Standard is $83 a month billed annually for 100,000. The full breakdown is in Firecrawl alternatives.

• Choose it when you want the content of pages, not records from a platform.
• Skip it when you need a platform-specific scraper for a social network or a marketplace.

3. Zyte: pay for successful responses

Zyte API bills per successful response, from $0.06 per 1,000 at the highest commitment. Pay as you go runs from $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 requests for plain fetches and more for browser-rendered ones, depending on how hard the site is. New accounts get $5 of free credit.

• Choose it when you run your own crawlers and want unblocking priced on success.
• Skip it when you want ready-made scrapers; Zyte gives you the fetch, you write the parsing.

4. ScraperAPI: one endpoint for proxies and rendering

ScraperAPI is a developer API that handles proxies, retries and rendering behind one endpoint. Hobby is $49 a month ($44.10 billed annually), Startup $149 and Business $299. There is a free plan with 1,000 API credits and a seven-day trial with 5,000. Credits per request vary with the site and the options you send, and unused credits do not roll over.

• Choose it when you already have scraping code and need it to stop getting blocked.
• Skip it when you want structured output without writing a parser.

5. Octoparse: no code

Octoparse is a desktop application for building scrapers by pointing and clicking, with more than 500 preset templates. The free plan includes 10 tasks and 50,000 rows of export a month. Standard starts at $69 a month and Professional at $249.

• Choose it when the person who needs the data does not write code.
• Skip it when the scraping has to run inside an agent or a pipeline.

6. PhantomBuster: social automations

PhantomBuster runs prebuilt automations, mostly for LinkedIn and other social networks, and bills by execution time. Start is $56 a month billed annually with 20 hours of execution, Grow $128 with 80 hours and Scale $352 with 300, each with email and AI credits. There is a free trial.

• Choose it when your use of Apify is social scraping and outreach automation run by a marketer.
• Skip it when you need general web scraping or an API-first tool.

7. Browse AI: robots that watch pages

Browse AI lets you train a robot on a page by clicking, then run or monitor it on a schedule. One credit extracts ten rows. The free plan has 50 credits a month, Personal is $19 a month billed annually with 12,000 credits a year, and Professional $69.

• Choose it when you want to monitor a handful of pages for changes without code.
• Skip it when volume is high or sites are heavily protected.

When should you stay on Apify?

Stay when you are a developer and the variety is the value: an Actor for almost any site, the option to write your own, scheduling, storage and webhooks in one place. Stay when your volume is high enough that the plan discounts matter, and when you have already found the Actors that work for you. Replacing a working Actor pipeline with a neater tool rarely pays.

Look elsewhere when most of your time goes into choosing and babysitting Actors for jobs that are common, such as posts for a keyword, comments on a post, or places in a city.

How do you get Apify-style data from an agent?

1. Social search. social.search for posts matching a keyword on X, Reddit, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram or YouTube.
2. Profiles, posts and comments. social.profile, social.posts and social.comments.
3. Places and reviews. local.places for Google Maps listings, reviews.search for what customers wrote.
4. Any page. web.scrape, routed across Firecrawl and Apify. See the AI web scraping guide.

Sources

Pricing pages, checked 8 October 2026: Apify, Firecrawl, Zyte, ScraperAPI, Octoparse, PhantomBuster, Browse AI.

What does each call cost?#

Prices below are the starting price per successful call. /v1/inspect returns the exact figure before the run and reserves it against your balance; failures and unbilled no-matches release the hold in full.

One prepaid balance covers every row. Capabilities marked coming soon are listed but not yet executable.

FAQ#

Is there a free Apify alternative?

Apify's own Free plan includes $5 of usage a month. Firecrawl has a free plan with 1,000 credits a month, Octoparse a free plan with 10 tasks, Browse AI 50 free credits a month, and Zyte starts with $5 of credit.

What is the best Apify alternative for non-developers?

Octoparse and Browse AI. Both build scrapers by clicking on the page. PhantomBuster fits if the work is social automation.

What is the difference between Apify and Firecrawl?

Apify runs purpose-built scrapers for specific platforms and returns structured records. Firecrawl turns any page into clean text for a model. They solve different halves of the same problem, and many teams use both.

Does RouterGrowth use Apify?

Yes. Apify is one of the providers behind several RouterGrowth capabilities, including social data, Google Maps places and page scraping. RouterGrowth picks and tests the Actor, normalizes the output and quotes one price before the run.

Is RouterGrowth cheaper than Apify?

Not for heavy use of the same Actor: running it on your own Apify account costs less. RouterGrowth saves the time spent choosing and maintaining Actors, has no monthly plan, and puts the data on the same balance as enrichment and outreach.

Which Apify alternative works with Claude or ChatGPT?

RouterGrowth exposes its whole catalog through one MCP server, with a price before each call. Apify and Firecrawl also publish their own MCP servers; check each vendor for the current state.