Product overview
What is Apify?
Apify is a platform and marketplace for tools that collect web data and automate browser-based tasks. Its marketplace contains ready-to-run tools called Actors, while developers can also build their own Actors as serverless programs. The platform serves teams that need current web data for AI applications, sales research, competitive monitoring, market analysis, and other automated workflows.
Actors can be run through the Apify platform and connected to applications through APIs, SDKs, the command line, or MCP. Apify also provides infrastructure for scheduling and operating these jobs, including proxies and anti-blocking capabilities. Developers who need custom crawlers can use Crawlee, Apify's open-source web scraping and browser automation library.
Core Features
- Actor marketplace: Offers ready-to-run tools for extracting data and automating tasks on many websites.
- Serverless Actors: Lets developers create reusable programs in Python, JavaScript, or TypeScript and run them on managed infrastructure.
- AI and app integrations: Connects Actors through APIs, SDKs, CLI tools, and MCP for use by agents and applications.
- Web data infrastructure: Supports scheduled runs, datasets, proxies, and anti-blocking requirements for collection jobs.
- Crawlee framework: Provides an open-source library for building custom web crawlers and browser automations.
- Marketplace publishing: Allows developers to publish Actors for other users and earn from their usage.
Use Cases
- AI data pipelines: Developers can supply agents or generative AI products with current information collected from public websites.
- Lead generation: Sales teams can gather structured company and prospect data for qualification and outreach.
- Competitive monitoring: Businesses can track product, pricing, or market changes across relevant sites.
- Market research: Analysts can collect repeatable datasets from multiple web sources for further analysis.
- Application automation: Engineering teams can connect browser-based tasks to internal tools and production workflows.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an Apify Actor?
An Actor is a serverless program that performs a web data or automation task and can be run, scheduled, or connected to other systems.
Can developers build their own tools on Apify?
Yes. Apify supports Python, JavaScript, and TypeScript templates and provides APIs, SDKs, and command-line access for custom development.
