5 Best Apify Alternatives of 2025 [No-Code & APIs]

Apify is a masterclass in doing the most to deliver the least.

You get a cluttered mess of half-dead scrapers, a pricing model engineered to drain your bank, and a UI that feels like it belongs in a Cold War missile silo.

So people naturally look for alternatives.

And what do they get? Lists full of tools nobody actually tested.

Just recycled marketing blurbs that tell you nothing. No breakdowns, no real use cases, no clue what works or what it actually costs to get results.

Nobody’s doing the homework. So I did.

I tested dozens of Apify alternatives available online and shortlisted the 11 best ones. Each one was put to work, not just browsed.

But before that, let’s understand the good, the bad, and the ugly about Apify.

Why do you need an Apify alternative?

Apify isn’t completely useless.

Apify’s platform has a massive collection of scraping tools, built by both their team and random developers. You’ll find scrapers for almost anything.

Plus it also gives developers a lot of control.

You can tweak actors and proxy configs, schedule tasks, and do low-code development using Apify’s SDK or API.

It also connects to a lot of 3rd party tools like Zapier, Google Drive, and even LLMs/Agentic AI.

But unless you're a dev with time, patience, and cash to burn, it starts falling apart fast.

The pricing is brutal.

You pay for everything—compute units, actor rental, proxy usage. The more you run, the more you bleed. It's like microtransactions but for data scraping.

The interface isn’t built for normal people.

It’s overloaded and confusing. You need a small tutorial just to launch something. Simple tasks feel like running a space program with a hangover.

The marketplace is unreliable.

Many actors are built once and forgotten. Updates are rare. You try a few tools, they crash, and now you’re out of credits and still don’t have your data.

It’s slow.

It often breaks and it wastes time. You spend more time testing tools than using them. And Apify charges you for the privilege.

So yeah, it can work. But only if you treat it like a part-time job.

If you just want clean data, fast, without burning cash on broken tools, you need something better.

How did I shortlist the best Apify alternatives?

I didn’t just copy tool names from Google and relied on guess work like everyone else.

I started by reading real user reviews to find what people actually hated about Apify.

That helped me build my checklist.

1. Affordability
2. Scalability
3. Apify-like features
4. Ease of use
5. Data quality
6. Customer support

Price was the first thing I looked at.

If the tool costs too much for what it does, I moved on. A lot of people are scraping at scale, so cost matters.

Scalability came next.

I tested how well each tool handled large scraping jobs. Some tools slow down or break under pressure. If it couldn’t scale, it didn’t make the cut.

Then I compared features.

I looked for tools that offered what Apify does like anti-bot protection, scheduling, ready-made scrapers, integrations, and support for multiple export formats.

Ease of use matters a lot.

For no-code tools, I tested how easy it was to build and run a scraper. I checked if the interface made sense and if they had enough guides or help docs.

For APIs, I focused on speed and documentation. I tested how fast they returned results and how easy it was to build with them. If the docs were a mess, I dropped the tool.

Getting quality data output is also important.

I only picked tools that gave clean, complete data. If the output was slow, broken, or missing info, it didn’t make the list.

Customer support plays a crucial role.

Tools with great features but bad reviews didn’t pass. Same with customer support. If they ignored users or gave useless replies, I moved on.

I tested the tools on common use cases like Google search, social media sites, and general web scraping.

Only 5 no-code tools made it through. These are the ones that actually work, don’t waste your time, and won’t drain your wallet.

Let’s dive into details.

1. Lobstr.io: Best Apify alternative

1. Capterra Rating: 5/5
2. Type: No-code + API
3. Pricing: Starts at $56.7/month
4. Best for: People who want clean data fast without selling a kidney

We built Lobstr.io because we were tired of bloated platforms like Apify. You know, the ones that charge you for actors, proxies, resources, and your will to live.

So we made something that actually works. Simpler, better and faster. Lobstr.io's cloud-based scrapers cover 14 platforms and 10 key scraping use cases.

Key Features

1. 20+ multi-purpose scrapers for popular platforms
2. No-code interface plus developer-friendly API
3. Built-in scheduling to automate scraping tasks
4. Fast, clean data collection with high accuracy
5. Anti-bot protection with proxy and captcha bypass
6. Built-in email enrichment for lead scraping
7. Automatic export to Google Sheets, S3, SFTP, Webhook, or email
8. Transparent usage-based pricing
9. Generous free forever plan

Pricing

Lobstr.io keeps pricing simple.

You only pay for the results—not for the scraper, not for the proxy, not for the oxygen you're using while scraping data.

1. Free plan with 10k credits
2. Paid plans start at $56.7/month
3. $5.6 per 100k results, and down to $2.8 at scale
4. No hidden fees, no actor rental, no compute unit circus

To show how affordable Lobstr.io really is, let’s compare it to one of the most-used tools on both platforms: the Google Maps scraper.

Apify charges you for everything:

1. A fee just to start the actor
2. A fee per place scraped
3. Extra fees for filters, contact info, images, and more

By the time you're done, you’re paying like you're ordering à la carte at a Michelin-starred restaurant... just to get business listings.

So let’s assume you need to scrape 1,000 local businesses from Google Maps search results, with their contact info included (emails, phone numbers, social media).

Apify would charge you (per row):

1. $0.007 just to start the scraper (WOW)
2. $0.004 per place scraped
3. $0.001 for applying filters
4. $0.002 for extra place details
5. $0.002 for contact info
6. $0.0005 for images

Total: over $7.00 for just 1,000 listings.

Now for the same 1,000 listings, Lobstr.io would cost you:

1. 1 credit per listing
2. 10 credits per listing for contact info
3. Total: 11,000 credits × $0.0000567 = $0.6

No charge for filters. No startup fee. No mental gymnastics. Just data you asked for, at a price that doesn’t feel like a trap.

What makes it the best alternative?

Lobstr.io does almost everything Apify does, just without the mess and it;s cost-effective.

You get most of the popular scrapers from the Apify-maintained library, powerful features like scheduling and API access, and clean export options.

No rental fees, no broken community tools, no guessing.

It’s also 10x cheaper. You saw the numbers above. Why pay $7 for the same job that costs $0.62? At scale, the difference only gets worse—for Apify.

It scales without breaking. You can scrape up to 20 million rows without needing a custom plan. If you do need more, we offer one.

Unlike Apify’s crowded marketplace, every scraper on Lobstr.io is built and maintained by our team. No abandoned tools. No trial-and-error roulette. If something breaks, we fix it.

And best of all?

It doesn’t break mid-task. If an error shows up, the job pauses and resumes automatically when the issue is fixed. No wasted runs. No wasted money.

It’s also insanely easy to use. You can launch a scraper in under 2 minutes with just 5 clicks. And if you're a developer, you’ll love the API. It’s clean, fast, and well-documented.

What’s missing?

Lobstr.io isn’t perfect, and we’re not going to pretend it is.

The scraper library is smaller. Apify has over 4,000 actors. We have just over 20—but they’re the ones people actually use, and they actually work.

Integrations are limited. While we support exports to Google Sheets, S3, Webhook, and email, you won’t find native plug-and-play buttons for tools like Zapier, Make, or Airtable—yet.

No marketplace. That’s by design, but it also means less variety if you’re looking for obscure scrapers or ultra-niche tools.

So yeah, fewer scrapers and fewer shiny buttons. But if you want something that runs fast, gives clean data, and doesn’t die halfway through a job, you’ll probably survive.

4 Good Apify Alternatives for No-Code Scraping

I already showed you the best no-code option: Lobstr.io.

But here are the other tools that also get the job done (most of the time), without making you cry in JSON.

2. Phantombuster

1. Capterra Rating: 4.5/5
2. Type: No-code scraping and automation tool
3. Pricing: Starts at $69/month
4. Best for: Sales teams and outreach workflows, not data-heavy scraping

Phantombuster tries to do a little bit of everything i.e. scraping, enrichment, automation, even some AI-powered workflows.

And to its credit, it’s good at social media data extraction and automating lead generation tasks.

Features

1. 120+ scrapers focused mostly on lead gen and social platforms
2. Drag-and-drop workflow builder
3. Built-in email enrichment
4. Scheduling and basic anti-blocking
5. Clean UI, especially for new users
6. Integrations with some CRMs and outreach tools

But the good vibes end when you check your invoice.

Pricing

Instead of charging per result, Phantombuster charges for execution time.

Meaning you pay based on how long the scraper runs, not what it gives you. It’s like paying someone to fish, not for the fish.

1. Starter plan: $69/month (20 hours)
2. At scale, pricing goes up to $439/month (for 300 hours)

Let’s break it down with a real example.

Say you want to scrape 1000 Twitter profiles. Phantombuster’s pricing page says it takes ~30 seconds per profile.

That means it'd cost you around $28.5. Apify does the same job for around $3.5.

So it’s expensive, right?

Not always!

Now flip the use case. Scraping 1000 Google search results with Phantombuster costs you $0.29. Apify does the same job for $3.5.

So year, sometimes it’s cheaper. Most of the time? It’s not.

And with no proper API access and limited monthly execution hours, scaling is a serious challenge.

It technically has an API, but it’s not much help.

The documentation hasn’t been updated in over a year, and most of it is vague, outdated, or just plain confusing.

It comes with a request builder, but figuring out the right parameters feels like trying to crack a safe with a spoon.

What makes it a good Apify alternative?

Phantombuster is a solid alternative if you're focused on social media scraping and lead outreach.

It comes with 120+ prebuilt automations, many of which match the scrapers you'd find in Apify's store.

It especially shines on platforms like LinkedIn, X, and Instagram.

What really sets it apart is the workflow builder.

You can combine multiple scrapers, schedule them, enrich the data, and even automate outreach.

If you're building scraping-to-outreach pipelines, Phantombuster handles it nicely.

It’s also more user-friendly than Apify.

The interface is clean and easy to navigate, especially for non-technical users.

You get scheduling, anti-blocking, and even LLM integrations if you're looking to add AI into your automations.

It trades scale and flexibility for simplicity and automation.

While it’s not made for scraping large datasets, it works well for smaller, focused lead-gen tasks.

What’s missing?

Phantombuster falls apart when you try to scale.

It doesn’t support APIs, and you're limited by monthly execution hours. You pay for 30 days of access and keep the automation running for 12 days only.

It’s also slow.

In most cases, it’s about 3x slower than Apify. I have compared Phantombuster, Apify, and Lobstr.io in detail in several articles.

Export options are weak too.

You get basic CRM integrations, but if you want to send data anywhere else like Google Sheet, Amazon S3, good luck.

AI features exist, but they’re not as powerful as what Apify offers. It sounds cool on paper, but feels half-baked in practice.

3. Bright Data

1. Capterra Rating: 4.7/5
2. Type: Web scraper + proxy service
3. Pricing: Starts at $499/month
4. Best for: Developers and power users who need scale, APIs, and serious scraping infrastructure

Bright Data is built for large-scale scraping. It’s packed with scrapers, APIs, and proxies—great for devs, less so for beginners.

Features

1. 300+ ready-made scrapers
2. General-purpose web scraping API
3. Worldwide proxy network
4. Scraping browser for dynamic sites
5. Dataset marketplace
6. Developer-first infrastructure with technical integrations

Pricing

Bright Data keeps things transparent and performance-based.

You pay for the records you get, not how long it takes or how much power it consumes to get them.

1. Pay-as-you-go pricing: $1.5 per 1,000 records
2. Monthly plans start at $499 and scale up to $2,999
3. Built to handle large-scale scraping jobs

So yeah, it’s not as cost competitive as Lobstr.io, it’s still affordable. If you’re scraping millions of rows and want control over every detail, it’s built for that.

What makes it a good Apify alternative?

If you're looking for a nerd-friendly alternative to Apify, Bright Data hits the mark.

You get access to 300+ ready-made web scraping tools across different platforms and use cases.

It also gives you a general-purpose scraping API and a scraping browser, so you can collect data from any website, even the tricky dynamic ones.

Bright Data comes with its own global proxy network. So you don't need to set up third-party proxy services.

If you’re a developer, it gives you the control you actually want.

It's easy to integrate into your own apps, automate tasks, and build complex scraping systems with full control and flexibility.

What’s missing?

Bright Data is built for developers, not casual users.

The no-code UI is basic. You don’t get much control or freedom unless you're using the API.

Some scrapers come with a 500-record limit per input, which can be frustrating if you're working with large datasets.

The output is mostly raw JSON, and other formats are hit or miss. If you need clean CSVs or anything structured, be ready to do some cleanup.

4. Browse AI

1. Capterra Rating: 4.5/5
2. Type: No-code scraping + AI automation tool
3. Pricing: Starts at $48.75/month
4. Best for: Automating scraping tasks with workflows and AI agents

Browse AI markets itself as an AI-powered scraping assistant that does everything for you.

From scraping and monitoring to automation and integrations, it tries to be the full package.

Features

1. AI-powered browser automation
2. Ready-made scrapers for 100+ websites
3. General-purpose scraping robot
4. Workflow builder and scheduling
5. A lot of 3rd party integrations
6. Support for AI agents and LLM integrations
7. Well-documented API for custom integrations

Pricing

Browse AI’s pricing looks simple up front, but gets expensive at scale.

1. Starter plans begin at $48.75/month
2. Highest plan hits $873.37/month

The cost per 1,000 rows usually sits around $2.40, but it can go higher for premium sites like Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and Google Search.

It's not the best option for large-scale scraping.

But if you're automating tasks, mixing AI agents with scraping, and building workflows—you’re paying for automation, not just raw data.

What makes it a good Apify alternative?

Browse AI is like if Apify and Phantombuster had a baby, and that baby was raised by AI agents. It’s not just for scraping, it’s built for automating scraping workflows with AI.

It’s especially strong in building AI-driven automations.

You can train robots to collect data, filter it with AI, monitor websites, and send results straight to your tools.

The AI agent support is better than Apify’s, and the workflow automation setup makes it feel more flexible than Phantombuster.

It claims to support 7,000+ integrations, but let’s be real; most of those come through platforms like Integrately or via generic webhooks and APIs.

Still, the integrations are there if you're willing to wire them up.

And the API is solid. If you’re a dev, you’ll have no trouble building around it.

What’s missing?

Browse AI is slow.

Setting up a scraper takes time, and running it takes even longer. For a tool powered by AI, it moves like it’s stuck on dial-up.

The prebuilt robots are weak.

They scrape limited data, and for anything useful—like LinkedIn or Google Maps—you’ll have to train your own. That training process? Not exactly fun.

The UI looks simple but hides a steep learning curve.

You’ll be watching tutorial after tutorial just to build a robot that doesn’t choke on logins or pagination.

It often fails to complete jobs reliably.

It feels more like a general automation tool with scraping tacked on, not a purpose-built scraper. So it stucks or gives empty responses more than any other tool on the list.

5. Octoparse

1. Capterra Rating: 4.7/5
2. Type: Visual scraping and browser automation
3. Pricing: Starts at $119/month
4. Best for: Power users who want visual scraping and don’t mind wrestling with UI glitches

Octoparse wants to be the Photoshop of scraping. Visual, flexible, powerful… and just as overwhelming when you actually start using it.

Features

1. 500+ scraping templates for popular websites
2. Drag-and-drop visual scraping builder
3. Cloud-based scraping with scheduling
4. Captcha solving, rotating IPs, proxy support
5. Multiple export formats including excel, JSON, HTML
6. API access

Pricing

Octoparse charges based on how many tasks you can create and how many can run at the same time, not how many rows you scrape.

That means the platform is scalable in theory, but only if you're not adding up all the “extras” they sneak in along the way.

1. Standard plan: $119/month
2. Professional plan: $299/month
3. No limits on rows scraped

But there’s a catch.

API access and export integrations are only available in the Pro plan. Plus proxy, captcha solving, and rotating IPs are billed separately.

Also, many of the 500+ templates aren’t free.

For example, scraping 1,000 Google Maps listings costs $1.5. Want emails too? That’s another $2.

So you’re at $3.5 per 1,000 rows, and that’s before proxy and captcha fees.

It’s cheaper than Apify, sure.

But it’s still nowhere near Lobstr.io’s $0.6 per 1k, which includes everything

And when you add up the real costs, Octoparse starts feeling like Apify in disguise.

What makes it a good Apify alternative?

Octoparse comes with 500+ ready-made templates for scraping all kinds of websites.

You don’t need to set anything up, just plug in your input and hit start. Most templates are easy to use and don’t require any scraping expertise.

If you want to build your own scraper, the visual scraping browser lets you do just that.

Select the data on the web page, define the pattern, and you’ve got a custom scraper running.

There’s no limit on how many rows you can scrape, which makes it pretty scalable.

You’re only limited by how many bots you can create and how many can run at once.

It also offers an API, so if you want to connect it to your own app or run scrapers programmatically, it gets the job done without fuss.

What’s missing?

The visual scraper looks beginner-friendly, but it’s got a steep learning curve.

You’ll constantly deal with broken pagination, missing data, inconsistent output, and sometimes nothing at all.

Unless you’re ready to spend hours fixing it, it’s better to stick with the prebuilt templates.

It’s also not built for social media scraping.

Sure, it offers proxies and captcha solving, but they’re not well-optimized.

There's no real handling of rate limits or authentication flows, so if you try scraping something like LinkedIn, you’re basically begging for an account ban.

And it’s slow.

Like, painfully slow. Even the cloud version lags. If you want usable speed, you’ll need to upgrade to the premium or enterprise plan.

So these were my top 5 picks.

But which one is perfect for your use case?

Which Apify alternative is perfect for my needs?

If you want something that’s affordable, scalable, easy to use, and gives you developer-friendly API access, Lobstr.io is the best overall pick.

It does what Apify does—just faster, cheaper, and without the chaos.

If you're looking for a powerful API-first solution built for large-scale scraping, Bright Data is your tool. It’s made for developers who need control and don’t mind the price tag.

For AI agents, scraping workflows, and smart automation tasks, Browse AI stands out. It’s not built for scale, but if you're automating scraping with AI logic, it does the job well.

Now before wrapping up, let me answer some FAQs.

FAQs

Is Lobstr.io really the best Apify alternative?

Yes. Lobstr.io is more cost-effective, easier to use, and includes key features like proxies, scheduling, and anti-bot protection by default.

You only pay for results, and it supports API access for full flexibility.

Can I use Scrapy as Apify’s alternative web scraping solution?

Yes, if you're technical.

Scrapy is an open-source crawler built for devs. It doesn’t handle JavaScript-heavy sites by default, and you’ll need extra tools to scrape dynamic web data.

What are some free web scraping tools available in Python?

There are many. Use BeautifulSoup for parsing HTML, Playwright or Selenium for web automation, and Scrapy for building full crawlers.

For proxy management, combine httpx or requests with a proxy rotator. If you prefer scraping via API, check out tools like ScrapingBee or ScraperAPI.

Conclusion