Apify: web scraping, data extraction, and automation tools for AI

What do you like best about the product?

The actor marketplace. I needed a LinkedIn scraper that returned specific fields like the About section, recent roles, and posts in a clean structured format. Instead of building one myself, I found a maintained actor, configured the inputs, and had it running in minutes. For a solo operation without engineering resources, that is the difference between having a daily lead pipeline and not having one. The pay-per-usage pricing also means I only pay for what I actually scrape, which at my volume works out to a fraction of a cent per profile.

What do you dislike about the product?

Rate limit guidance is missing. I had to figure out through failed runs that LinkedIn scrapes need to go out in small batches with gaps between them, and the platform never told me that upfront. Also, different LinkedIn actors return different fields and there is no clear comparison showing which actor pulls what before you spend credits testing them. I wasted runs discovering that some actors do not return recent posts or activity data, which are the most valuable fields for my use case.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Manual lead sourcing did not scale. I consult across five geographies and need to review 15 to 20 new profiles daily to keep my outreach pipeline running. Before Apify, that meant browsing LinkedIn one profile at a time and copying details manually, maybe 8 to 10 on a good morning. Now I run a batch in 30 minutes and get clean structured data I feed directly into my outreach workflow. More profiles reviewed means more personalized connection notes sent, which means more conversations started. One converted lead per month covers my entire annual Apify spend several times over.

What do you like best about the product?

I use Apify for scraping information for outreach, such as LinkedIn job scrapers, reviews, email verification, and ad lookups. I like that it provides one platform with a huge variety of different scrapers, allowing me to choose the most affordable and suitable ones for each task, and pay for all with a single bill. Most I like the fair billing and, most importantly, the extensive integrations via API and MCP, which let a Claude Code agent perform work on my behalf. These integrations are a game changer because I can instruct it to scrape job postings on LinkedIn and look up local documents like what filters to use, and then run the scrape on Apify and automatically pull results.

What do you dislike about the product?

The biggest problem is that many scrappers provide poor results, often needing to try a few scrappers before finding one that works correctly and perfectly. Although reviews help with that, they aren't always reliable. It would also be great to see an output preview for each scrapper because currently, I need to run the scrapper and spend money just to see the output, only to realize that it doesn't have the necessary columns I need. Additionally, it was a bit difficult to understand how it works at first. The onboarding process isn't too easy, with many confusing specific terminologies, but once I learned it, it became easy.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use Apify for scraping various data like LinkedIn jobs and reviews. It offers many scrapers on a single platform, providing flexibility with cost-effective options. Integrations with API and MCP allow automated operations with tools like Claude Code, simplifying my workflow.

What do you like best about the product?

The Google Maps actor that allows me to collect data about business in the certain area. Tried to do it myself years ago with Google Apis, painful to maintain, was happy to find this service. Especially like the generous free tier

What do you dislike about the product?

Nothing really. Of course would have loved to have a way more generous free-tier but that would be greedy

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I need to collect geographical data without having to deal with expensive APIs or spend time optimizing algorithms.

What do you like best about the product?

Big choice of api services, easy API integration

What do you dislike about the product?

Pricing model based on subscription, I would rather use pay as you go pricing

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We use it do automate our research for marketing campaign - audience painpoints, competitors ads

What do you like best about the product?

What I like best about Apify is the massive library of ready-to-use Actors combined with a robust cloud infrastructure. It completely eliminates the need to build scrapers from scratch and saves our team hours of development and maintenance time every week.

What do you dislike about the product?

There isn't much to dislike, but the learning curve for advanced custom actors can be a bit steep at first. More out-of-the-box workflow templates for third-party integrations would also be a nice addition.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We struggled with manual data collection and maintaining custom scrapers, but now we can use Apify's pre-built actors and reliable cloud automation to extract structured data seamlessly, which has resulted in significantly faster project execution and saved our team dozens of hours each month. For instance, we specifically use it to automatically scrape and structure product data and contact lists for our web development and automation projects, replacing tedious manual copy-pasting with clean JSON and CSV exports.

What do you like best about the product?

What I like most is how easy it is to automate repetitive web data collection. The large library of Actors, reliable infrastructure, and straightforward API make it simple to build workflows without spending time managing scraping infrastructure. It saves time and scales well.

What do you dislike about the product?

The learning curve can be a bit steep when working with more advanced workflows, especially for new users. However, the documentation and community resources make it much easier to get up to speed.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Apify solves the challenge of collecting information from websites and social platforms at scale. I use it to automatically monitor selected social media accounts for new content and extract YouTube transcripts, which saves hours of manual work. Having this data available in a structured format lets me track trends faster, analyze content more efficiently, and build reliable automated workflows.

What do you like best about the product?

The best part is that most of the scraping infrastructure is already handled. I can configure an Actor, schedule it, store the output in a dataset and connect the results to another system without setting up separate servers. For recurring work such as price checks, competitor monitoring and collecting public business data, this saves a lot of routine maintenance. The API is straightforward, and the ready-made Actors are useful when I need to test an idea quickly before building something custom.

What do you dislike about the product?

The learning curve is the main downside. There are many settings around proxies, storage, request handling and compute usage, so the first stable workflow took some trial and error. When a site changes or blocks requests, the logs help, but finding the exact cause can still take time. I would also like clearer cost estimates before a large run, especially for proxy traffic and compute units. Better troubleshooting guidance and a simple pre-run cost forecast would make the platform easier for new users.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Before using Apify, collecting public web data meant maintaining separate scripts and checking results manually. We use it for recurring price and availability monitoring, competitor research, and building structured datasets from public directories. Scheduled Actors now run these jobs automatically and send the output to our internal database, so the information is more consistent and up to date. The main benefit is less time spent on infrastructure and repetitive data collection. It also lets us test new research ideas quickly without committing engineering resources to a full custom scraping system.

What do you like best about the product?

Easy and inexpensive to use, great for GTM strategy

What do you dislike about the product?

Nothing at all to dislike, it works well all round

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We are a franchise with a set area to which we can market. Apify has been fantastic in building a Go to market strategy in our specific area. We were able to create a polygon in which to search in order to get our very specific area. We are primarily using Google Maps scraper with an AI enhancement for LinkedIn and other social media and contact info.

What do you like best about the product?

Apify greatly facilitates data extraction and web automation. The integration with MCP and AI works quickly and very efficiently. It has excellent documentation and ready-to-use actors that save a lot of time.

What do you dislike about the product?

It could improve the interface a bit for beginner users, but overall the documentation makes up for it quite well.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It allows us to automate large-scale web data extraction without having to worry about infrastructure or scraper maintenance. It saves us dozens of hours of manual work and facilitates seamless integration with our Artificial Intelligence agents.

What do you like best about the product?

Simplicity in design. I love how easy it is to use the API key from Apify to pull data from the internet.

What do you dislike about the product?

I’m not always sure which actor is working and which isn’t. It can be unreliable, since I have to test each one individually.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We were lacking quality data. With Apify, I can scrape the web to gather the information we need and make better decisions about our product.