Vendor comparison

ScrapeIt vs Apify

Apify and ScrapeIt solve the same problem from opposite directions. Apify is a developer platform with a marketplace of thousands of ready-made scrapers, called Actors, that you run yourself on published pricing from 29 US dollars a month. ScrapeIt is a managed service where an engineering team builds a scraper for your target list and delivers the data, with nothing for you to run.

Choose Apify if

An Actor already exists for your exact target
You have developers who enjoy this
Your needs change constantly

Choose ScrapeIt if

No Actor covers your target, or it is unmaintained
You cannot absorb the operational load
The data has to be right, not merely present

What each company actually is

Apify

Based in Prague, Czech Republic, running since 2015. The platform hosts Actors: containerised scrapers published by Apify and by the community, covering thousands of popular targets. You pick one, configure it, schedule it and pay for the compute it uses. Published plans run at 0, 29, 199 and 999 US dollars a month, each including matching platform usage, with pay-as-you-go overage. There is also an enterprise tier with custom solutions and SLAs.

ScrapeIt

Scrapeit Sp. z o.o., registered in Bialystok, Poland and trading since 2021. No marketplace and no console. An engineer scopes your target list and field requirements, builds the scraper, and the data arrives on the schedule and in the format you specified. When a target site changes, ScrapeIt repairs it. Plans run from EUR 199 for a one-time extract to EUR 549 per month for three deliveries a day.

Side by side

Dimension	ScrapeIt	Apify
Service model	Managed. ScrapeIt operates everything.	Self-serve platform. You operate the Actor. Enterprise tier available.
Coverage of your target	Built to order, any target.	Excellent for popular targets with an existing Actor, thinner for the long tail.
Published pricing	EUR 199 one-time, EUR 169 to EUR 549 per month.	0, 29, 199 and 999 US dollars per month, plus usage overage.
Cost model	Fixed tier against a stated row ceiling.	Compute units consumed. Variable with target difficulty and volume.
Who fixes a broken scraper	ScrapeIt, inside the monthly fee.	The Actor's author, on their own schedule, or you.
Quality assurance on output	Manual checks before delivery, monitoring for schema drift.	Depends on the Actor and its maintainer.
Engineering time required from you	Effectively none after scoping.	Real. Configuration, scheduling, monitoring and data cleanup are yours.
Delivery targets	CSV, JSON, JSONLines, XML, XLSX, SFTP, FTP, cloud storage, email, your API or database.	Dataset storage, API, webhooks and integrations you wire up.
Jurisdiction	Poland, EU.	Czech Republic, EU.
Trading since	2021	2015

When Apify is the better choice

An Actor already exists for your exact target. This is the strongest argument for Apify and it is often true. Running an existing Actor is faster and cheaper than commissioning a build.
You have developers who enjoy this. The platform is genuinely good, the documentation is strong, and a competent engineer will get results the same day.
Your needs change constantly. Swapping between dozens of targets ad hoc suits a marketplace far better than a scoped managed contract.
You want to start at zero cost. The free tier is real and sufficient for evaluation.
You want to publish your own scrapers. ScrapeIt has no equivalent to that.

When ScrapeIt is the better choice

No Actor covers your target, or the one that does is unmaintained. Marketplace coverage is excellent at the head and thin at the tail. Regional property portals, national marketplaces and heavily defended sites are where custom work wins.
You cannot absorb the operational load. Someone has to notice when an Actor silently starts returning half the rows. On a managed service, that someone is not you.
You need a predictable invoice. Compute-unit billing moves with how hard the target fights back. A fixed tier does not.
The data has to be right, not merely present. Manual quality checks, deduplication and normalisation before delivery are part of the managed service.
You need a single accountable counterparty. With a community Actor, the maintainer owes you nothing.

The honest summary

For a popular target and a team with engineers, Apify is very likely the cheaper and faster option, and it would be dishonest to claim otherwise. Its marketplace is the strongest in the industry and its free tier makes evaluation trivial.

The case for a managed service starts where the marketplace stops: unusual targets, sites that fight back, output that has to be clean enough to load straight into a system of record, and teams with no spare engineering capacity. Those conditions are common in exactly the industries that buy data seriously, which is why both models continue to exist.

A practical way to choose

Search the Apify store for your actual targets. If every one of them has a maintained Actor with recent updates, start there.
Count how many of your targets are missing or stale. Each gap is either an engineering project for your team or a job for a managed vendor.
Estimate who monitors output quality week to week and put a name on it. If there is no name, the self-serve route will fail quietly.

Keep reading

Frequently asked questions

Is ScrapeIt an Apify alternative?

Yes, for teams that do not want to operate the scraper themselves. Apify is a self-serve platform with a marketplace of ready-made Actors you configure and run. ScrapeIt builds the scraper, runs it and repairs it, and you only receive data.

Does ScrapeIt have Actors or a marketplace?

No. There is no catalogue and nothing to configure. Every scraper is built for a specific customer brief. That is a disadvantage when a maintained Actor already covers your target, and an advantage when none does.

Which is cheaper, Apify or ScrapeIt?

For a popular target with an existing Actor and an engineer to run it, Apify is usually cheaper. Its published plans are 0, 29, 199 and 999 US dollars a month plus usage. The comparison changes when no Actor exists, when the Actor is unmaintained, or when nobody on your side has time to monitor output quality. ScrapeIt charges a fixed tier from EUR 169 to EUR 549 a month with the maintenance included.

What if no Apify Actor exists for my target?

Then you either write one, which is a real engineering project with ongoing maintenance, or commission a managed vendor to build and run it. Marketplace coverage is strong for popular international sites and much thinner for regional portals and heavily defended targets.

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