Apify vs Bright Data

NodeMaven

Octoparse

ScrapingBee

NodeMaven offers a proxy service that prioritizes IP quality through advanced filtering algorithms, ensuring ninety-five percent of IPs have clean records. The service provides residential and mobile proxies with sticky sessions lasting up to twenty-four hours, significantly longer than industry standards. NodeMaven supports both HTTP and SOCKS5 protocols with coverage across more than one hundred fifty countries and fourteen hundred cities worldwide.

Octoparse is a no-code scraper tool that powers individuals who don't know about coding to extract web data with great ease. Within the point-and-click interface, users can find more than 500 ready-made scraper templates. Custom scraping is also available for advanced scraping needs!

Web scraping API. Supply a URL, and ScrapingBee will handle headless browsers, proxies, CAPTCHAs solving.

Founder

However, their support simply never got back to me even after I followed up with them.

Senior Software Engineer

Apify is a managed service that scales to the user needs, It's support team helped to navigate and setup the project it reduces our time to go to market.

IT Architect

Also, taking into account the great customer support, it makes it one of the best services I have ever tried.

Apify is a web scraping and automation platform featuring Apify Store, a marketplace of 10,000+ tools called Actors. Developers build and monetize them, while users run them to extract data and automate workflows. If there's data on the web, there's probably an Actor for it.

Access Controls/Permissions

Activity Dashboard

AI/Machine Learning

Auto Extraction

Batch Processing

Bot Mitigation

CAPTCHA Solving

Compliance Management

Customizable Fields

Customizable Forms

Customizable Reports

Customizable Templates

Customization

Dashboard

Dashboard Creation

Data Aggregation

Data Aggregation and Publishing

Data Capture and Transfer

Data Cleansing

Data Connectors

Data Extraction

Data Import/Export

Data Mapping

Data Mining

Data Security

Data Storage Management

Data Synchronization

Data Transformation

Data Verification

Data Visualization

Data Warehouse

Document Extraction

Email Address Extraction

Error Handling

Forms Management

Geotargeting

HTML Parsing

Image Extraction

Integration Management

Integrations Management

IP Address Extraction

IP Rotation

JavaScript Rendering

Job Scheduling

Machine Learning

Metadata Extraction

Metadata Management

Mobile Access

Mobile App

Multi-Channel Data Collection

Multi-Device Support

Multiple Data Sources

Multiple File Format Support

Natural Language Processing

Offline Response Collection

Optical Character Recognition

Phone Number Extraction

Pre-built Connectors

Pricing Extraction

Proxy Rotation

Query Builder

Real-Time Data

Reporting/Analytics

Reporting & Statistics

Rules-Based Workflow

Scalability

Scheduling

Search/Filter

Secure Data Storage

Third-Party Integrations

User Management

Version Control

Visual Analytics

Visual Discovery

Web Data Extraction

Website Crawling

Workflow Management

By industry, Apify reviewers are most commonly professionals in information technology and services (17%). The most frequent use case for Apify cited by reviewers is data extraction (72% of reviewers).

Users and use cases

Reviewers appreciate Apify’s flexible pay-per-use model and generous trial credits, which they find cost-effective for small projects. Some reviewers find the pricing confusing as usage scales, and users report unpredictable costs for larger projects.

Value for money

Apify is a data extraction program with key features that include web data extraction, data import/export, API access, and more.

Open Source

Apify

Web-based

Windows

Linux

Chromebook

Bright Data

PhantomBuster

Free

Starter Plan

Scale Plan

Enterprise Custom Plan

AI Automation Developer

Beyond that, it's a proper infrastructure platform, not just a scraper: schedules, datasets, key-value stores, proxies, and a clean REST API all sit behind the same account, so wiring it into an agent pipeline is straightforward.

Virtual Assistent

It saves me more than 70% of the time I used to spend on repetitive work, improves data accuracy, and allows me to scale my processes effortlessly.

Owner

Apify sits at the core of my data infrastructure — I use it both as a consumer of Store actors and as a developer building my own custom actors for niche data sources that don't expose official APIs.

Director

The marketplace of pre-built scrapers and automations means we can prototype fast, then harden solutions with our own code when the use case proves itself.

Business Developes

I evaluated building custom scraping infrastructure vs. using Apify, and the math was clear — maintaining proxies, handling browser automation at scale, and dealing with anti-bot measures would cost more in development time than Apify's subscription.

Beyond using existing actors, I can host my own APIs and custom services directly on Apify, which makes it much easier to centralize business logic and keep my entire stack running in one scalable environment.

Product manager

The combination of the massive Apify Store (24,000+ high-quality Actors), powerful Crawlee SDK for custom Node.js/Python solutions, rock-solid residential proxies, and strong anti-bot protection makes it incredibly reliable and efficient.

The combination of automation, infrastructure, scheduling, monitoring, and custom deployment capabilities makes it much more than just a scraping tool—it’s become an operational backbone for our business.

project manager

I really like the flexibility to build custom Actors for complex websites, the cloud execution with scheduling and proxies handled automatically, and the easy integrations with our automation stack.

Manager

Currently, I am using apify to review the linkedin posts and figure out some automations and we are finding more and more ways to use apify and is really helping in the productivity where our employees are spending no time finding listings, posts, and doing research or creating outreach plan.

Full Stack Automation Architect

There is a learning curve for non-technical users, especially around actors, datasets, and mapping results. When you manage many actors, the UI can feel a bit crowded, and I would like stronger built-in dashboards and alerting.

Growth Engineer

I use Apify daily as part of my growth engineering stack — primarily the HarvestAPI LinkedIn actors integrated via MCP into my automation workflows.

Data Engineer

We use it to build, deploy, manage, and sell scrapers, so it directly supports both our technical workflow and business goals.

It’s a reliable, well-designed platform that makes web scraping and data automation far easier than building everything from scratch. Once workflows are set up, they run consistently with very little maintenance, and the combination of actors, scheduling, logs, and API integrations fits perfectly into our automation stack.

I like Apify a lot because of the variety of scrapers and the cost per scrape is very cheap compared to other alternatives and the variety that I get is absolutely phenomenal because it has so many things packed into one platform that I don't need to purchase 3-4 subscriptions of other platforms

I can confidently run authenticated scrapers knowing the environment is secure, and the data comes out in perfectly clean JSON or CSV formats ready for our database.

Founder - Owner

Apify is the best platform that I've used for my backend so far, their API endpoints for each actor makes experimentation and scaling much easier and faster for my products!

Ready-made actors and the visual builder let me scrape websites, Instagram, or YouTube in minutes without writing code or fighting anti-bot walls.

It lets me pull and enrich lists from multiple platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram, which is huge for my lead gen setup.

Overall Apify has been a great experience and intuitive user interface, also has a huge library of scrapers, and other utility tools (actors) on their actor store, and it's just a thing that speeds up my product's development.

It seamlessly handles the heavy lifting of my day-to-day operations, giving me the bandwidth to focus on high-level strategy and scaling.

The library of pre-built Actors saves a massive amount of time, and the ability to deploy custom Node.js or Python code directly to the cloud is a developer's dream.

It is strong for information collection, structured inputs and outputs, scheduling, and turning scrapers into products you can actually offer to users.

The pre-built Actor Store covers most common targets out of the box — we had Scout pulling structured listings off freelance boards within an hour of signing up.

The platform is mature in the ways that matter: schedules, run history, dataset storage, and observability all come out of the box.

Software Engineer

I particularly liked using it for Twitter and Instagram because I could get structured, ready-to-use data without wrestling with rate limits or the stricter rules of the official APIs.

Backend Developer

Managed scrapers for hostile targets — Facebook Events, Instagram Posts, and Website Content Crawler (for Cloudflare-protected sites like Resident Advisor) absorb maintenance we'd never manage ourselves.

It is a robust, professional-grade tool that handles the hardest parts of web scraping (proxies and headless browsers) so we don't have to.

AI Data Specialist

The pre-built Actor marketplace means we can go from "we need leads in a new vertical" to a clean, usable list within hours rather than days.

Actor Store quality is also wildly inconsistent: pre-built actors are a strength when they work, but there's no clear signal of which ones are actively maintained vs abandoned, and we've had selectors silently break mid-pipeline.

The plan caps are punishing for spiky workloads. Once you hit the monthly compute limit, everything stops dead — no soft overage, no pay-as-you-go top-up that doesn't push you up a whole tier.

Apify is a remarkably versatile web scraping and automation platform that makes it easy to build, deploy, and scale data extraction workflows with minimal setup.

Chief Data Officer

It integrates cleanly with cloud services, supports automation well, and offers strong visibility into runs and outputs.

Actor Store saves days of work pre-built scrapers for almost every major platform mean you're extracting data in under an hour instead of building from scratch.

This list I get from apify, the actor allows me to export it as a file that I can then export into Microsoft excel and even Google sheets which is very useful.

Freelancer

The most valuable aspect is the extensive Actor Marketplace combined with the robust cloud infrastructure, which allows for instant deployment of complex, scalable scrapers without managing proxies or servers.

Developer

Apify allows us to create scalable web scrapers and integrations without worrying about infrastructure management or IP rotation, which saves significant time and resources.

Growth

I've used this tool for multiple purposes: scraping tiktok profiles, emails from websites, enriching people information, scraping comments from many sites like twitter or instagram, getting information from linkedin profiles, etc.

There are a lot of actors which are of less quality so it will be good if Apify team checks them and vets them based on more quality standards to remove non working or not useful actors from marketplace.

Its cloud infrastructure makes scaling effortless, and integrations with tools like Zapier, Airtable, and Google Sheets streamline our workflows.

Occasionally the free tier runs out of compute units quicker than expected when scraping large sites, so I have to upgrade sooner than I’d like for heavier jobs.

Apify has allowed me to scale data collection for my agency without worrying about maintaining a private proxy infrastructure.

It saves our team hundreds of engineering hours, enables us to scale projects faster, and lets us focus on applying insights instead of maintaining scrapers.

GTM Engineer

As a GTM Engineer, I rely heavily on Apify for data extraction and workflow automation — and it has quickly become a cornerstone in how I support sales, marketing, and operations.

Additionally, the pricing model can be a bit opaque for high-volume tasks. If you aren't careful with your Actor settings, you can burn through your compute units faster than expected.

Head IT Developer

It has enabled us to collect structured data from various sources and stream it directly into our internal AI pipeline for brand sentiment analysis.

Director AIML

For more technical users who want to build their own scrapers, the platform provides a point-and-click tool to create extraction logic, which is far easier than writing complex scripts from scratch.

Consultant

The pre-built Actor library is the standout feature — it covers most of the sites I target without needing to build anything from scratch.

Product Manager

Apify has been useful for me to integrate into my core automation pipeline by giving me access to a wide array of tools.

It’s a reliable platform that makes web scraping and automation much more accessible, even for people without advanced coding skills. While there are occasional issues with certain actors, the flexibility and value it provides far outweigh the drawbacks.

Actors

Web Scraping

Proxy Management

Pricing

Workflow Integration

Automation

Among reviewers who comment on Apify's automation, 88% feel positive. Users say Apify streamlines web scraping with ready-made tools, workflow integration, and reliable automation features. They highlight its flexibility, scalability, and ease of use. However, they mention a learning curve, occasional actor issues, and pricing concerns for large-scale jobs.

Productivity

Time Savings

Security and Access Control

Small Business

Large Enterprises

Mid-size Business

Freelancers

Reviewers appreciate that Apify offers a flexible pay-per-use pricing model, allowing them to only pay for what they actually use, which they find cost-effective for small or occasional projects. They indicate that the availability of a free tier and generous trial credits helps them test features and explore use cases without immediate financial commitment. Some users say the platform’s pricing is reasonable compared to alternatives, especially considering the time and cost savings over manual work. They find value in the fine-grained pricing structure, which lets them optimize costs based on their specific needs, and note that discounts or special offers, such as student or NGO pricing, add to its appeal. However, some reviewers find the pricing structure confusing or opaque, especially as usage scales or when dealing with resource-based billing, leading to unpredictable costs. Users report that costs can rise quickly for large-scale or high-volume projects, and some feel the jump between pricing tiers is too steep for casual or new users. They mention that limitations on the free plan and lack of clear cost calculators can make budgeting difficult, and some would prefer more transparent or customizable pricing options.

Parsio

Parsio is a data extraction tool that helps businesses extract any information from emails including order and customer details. The platform enables managers to highlight data required to extract and Parsio automatically processes all similar incoming emails. Teams can download files in Excel, CSV, and JSON formats, sync with Google Spreadsheet and send it to respective servers.

Scrapfly

Effortlessly scale your web scraping projects with our data collection APIs, engineered for the highest success rates on the market. Handle any scraping workload without worrying about infrastructure — our solution orchestrates all from managing proxies, headless browsers, to antibot bypass.

The #1 platform for scraping web data. Businesses of every size rely on Bright Data's solutions to overcome obstacles and extract valuable public web data in the most efficient and reliable manner. 

Bright Data provides proxy infrastructure, web scraping software, and complete website datasets.


Apify vs Bright Data Comparison (2026)

Apify

Bright Data

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives