# Apify — Marketplace and cloud platform of ready-to-run web scraping and automation tools, callable over API or MCP. > Source: The Agents Index — https://theagentsindex.com/apify (structured, researched, re-verified) Apify is a cloud platform and marketplace of thousands of serverless programs called Actors that scrape websites, extract structured data and automate web tasks. Agents and applications call them over a hosted MCP server, a REST API or official clients. **Best for:** Developers and data teams that need maintained web scrapers instead of building their own | Fact | Value | | --- | --- | | Website | https://apify.com | | Category | Web search & scraping APIs | | Open source | Partly | | Price | Free | | Price source | https://apify.com/pricing.md | | Price checked | 26 October 2026 | | MCP server | Yes | | API | Not stated | | Self-host | Partly | | Facts | 18 facts from 11 sources | | Facts checked | 26 October 2026 | Screenshot of Apify: https://theagentsindex.com/img/1920/screenshots/apify.webp, captured 28 October 2026 **What we checked** - Pages last read: 26 October 2026 - Facts checked: 18 facts (From 11 sources) - AI answers: Named in 2 of 151 (Our October check) ## What we checked on Apify ### How much it does unattended **Agent permissions** · Yes — Actors declare one of two permission levels and the platform enforces them at runtime; limited-permission Actors see only their own storages, and a full-permission Actor needs the owner's one-time approval in Console before any run. > Limited permissions (default): An Actor has access to its own storages, the data it generates, and resources that it's given an explicit access to. It can't access any other data in your Apify account. > — https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/permissions.md · Permission levels section, first bullet, checked 26 October 2026 ### Whose machine it runs on **Self-hosted** · Partly — Actors are built with open SDKs and the vendor says they can be run locally as well as in the cloud, but the platform itself, its storages and its proxy are a hosted service with no self-hosted edition documented. > Web data automations that power your AI and operations. Run them in the cloud or locally to scrape websites, process data, or connect APIs without managing infrastructure. > — https://apify.com/ · Main pages list, Apify Actors entry, checked 26 October 2026 **Open source** · Partly — Apify maintains open-source libraries around the product, including Crawlee, the fingerprint suite, impit, proxy-chain and the Actor specification, but the platform and Console themselves are not in that inventory. > Apify open source. Tools and libraries maintained by the Apify team. > — https://docs.apify.com/open-source.md · Apify open source, heading and lead line above the project list, checked 26 October 2026 ### Building with it **SDK languages** · Yes — Actor SDKs are published for Python and TypeScript/JavaScript, and the docs index additionally lists API clients for Go, Java, C# and Rust, with the latter group marked experimental alongside PHP. > Apify API client for Go. Install with `go get github.com/apify/apify-client-go`. > — https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt · Experimental API clients section, client list, checked 26 October 2026 **Tracing and evals** · Yes — Console monitoring charts run statuses and metrics for the last 200 runs and sends email, Slack or in-app alerts on thresholds; it is free on every plan and consumes no extra usage. > The monitoring system is free for all users. You can use it to monitor as many Actors and tasks as you want, and it does not use any additional resources on top of your usage when running them. > — https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/monitoring.md · Built-in monitoring section, checked 26 October 2026 ### What it costs to run **How it meters** · Yes — Billing is a monthly plan fee that buys prepaid platform usage, with metered consumption on top: compute units, proxy traffic, storage, and per-event charges set by each Actor's own developer. > Flexible plans with pay-as-you-go usage on top of the monthly fee. > — https://apify.com/pricing.md · Apify Pricing, intro line above the plan table, checked 26 October 2026 **Cost of one job** · Yes — On the Free and Starter plans compute costs $0.2 per compute unit, where one unit is 1 GB of RAM for an hour, so the Free plan's $5 monthly credit buys roughly 25 such hours before any Actor or proxy charges. > Compute is measured in compute units (CUs). 1 CU = 1 GB of RAM running for 1 hour. > — https://apify.com/pricing.md · Actor runs section, paragraph above the CU price table, checked 26 October 2026 **Price per 1,000 requests** · Yes — $1.50 per 1,000 requests in Unblocker (Free and Starter), its cheapest mode. > | Free | $8 / GB | 5 IPs included | $2.5 / 1,000 SERPs | $1.5 / 1,000 requests | > — https://apify.com/pricing.md · Proxy table, Free and Starter rows, Unblocker column, checked 26 October 2026 **Free credit** · Yes — $5 of free usage, a month. > | Free | $0 | $0 | $5 | No Apify Store discount | Community support | > — https://apify.com/pricing.md · Plans table, Free row, Included usage / month, checked 26 October 2026 **Free tier** · Yes — A standing free plan renews $5 of platform usage credit each month with no credit card, and access pauses rather than bills when the credit runs out. > Creating an account is free and requires no credit card: the free plan renews $5 of usage credit every month, and if that credit runs out, access pauses until the next month instead of being billed. > — https://apify.com/agents.md · Connect over MCP section, account paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 **MCP server** · Yes — A hosted MCP server at mcp.apify.com lets agents search, inspect and run Actors and read results; four discovery tools work with no account, while running Actors needs OAuth or a token. > The Apify's MCP server (mcp.apify.com) allows AI applications and agents to interact with the Apify platform using Model Context Protocol (MCP). > — https://docs.apify.com/mcp.md · Apify MCP server, opening paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 ### Buying it for a team **A company can buy it** · Yes — An organization account with centralized billing and member roles is available on all plans, and a personal account can be converted into one; Enterprise plans are quoted through sales. > The organization account is available on all plans. > — https://docs.apify.com/account/collaboration/organization.md · Availability and pricing section, checked 26 October 2026 **Pooled budget** · Yes — An organization holds one subscription and one prepaid usage balance for all its members, and each run is charged to whichever account it was started from rather than to a per-seat allowance. > Actor and task runs are billed to the account they are started from. Always make sure you start your runs from the correct account to avoid having an organization's runs billed to your personal account. > — https://docs.apify.com/account/collaboration/organization.md · Billing section, checked 26 October 2026 **Admin controls** · Yes — Organization owners assign per-member roles from a documented permission list covering Actors, storages, tokens and billing, and account settings control whether full-permission Actors need approval. > Organization accounts allow groups to collaborate on projects. It enables you to manage your team members' permissions and to centralize your billing without having to share the credentials of a single personal account. > — https://docs.apify.com/account/collaboration/organization.md · Organization account, opening paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 **Single sign-on** · Yes — The shared responsibility model lists SSO among the identity controls Apify provides alongside 2FA, scoped tokens and organization roles; the pages read do not name the SAML or OIDC protocol or any plan gate. > Apify provides the controls: two-factor authentication, SSO, scoped tokens, organization roles, and per-resource access rights. > — https://docs.apify.com/security/shared-responsibility.md · Shared responsibility, Identity and access management section, checked 26 October 2026 ### What happens to your code **Data residency** · Yes — There is one region and no residency choice: the platform runs on AWS us-east-1 across availability zones, while the contracting entity is Czech and EU sub-processor transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses. > Apify operates the platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the us-east-1 region and is responsible for the security of the underlying data centers, networking, compute, and operating systems, including hardening, monitoring, and availability. > — https://docs.apify.com/security/shared-responsibility.md · Apify responsibility, Physical, network, and host layers, checked 26 October 2026 **Getting out** · Yes — Datasets export to JSON, CSV, Excel and XML and everything is readable over the API, but prepaid usage credit is forfeited: unused credit does not roll over and expires at the end of each billing cycle. > Note that unused usage credits are not rolled over to the next billing cycle, and they expire at the end of the billing cycle. > — https://apify.com/pricing.md · FAQ, What is the prepaid platform usage, and how much do I need?, checked 26 October 2026 **Certifications** · Yes — The platform holds a SOC 2 Type II report, available on request through the Trust Center, and Apify documents GDPR compliance as an EU-based controller and processor; no ISO 27001 certificate is named on the pages read. > The Apify platform is SOC 2 Type II compliant. An independent audit verified that Apify's information security practices, policies, procedures, and operations comply with SOC 2 standards for security, availability, and confidentiality of customer data. > — https://docs.apify.com/security.md · SOC 2 Type II compliance section, checked 26 October 2026 ## Apify price and terms **Terms** - Free plan: Yes — Free plan: $0 a month with $5 of platform usage credit renewed monthly, no credit card, max 16 GB Actor RAM, 5 concurrent runs, community support, no Apify Store discount; access is blocked until the next cycle once the credit is spent, and the 10 most recent runs are retained for 4 months. ## For AI agents - MCP server: Yes Read on https://apify.com/pricing.md, 26 October 2026. ## Apify alternatives - [ProofFetch](https://theagentsindex.com/prooffetch) · Free plan, then $5 per pack of 500 extractions: Paid web extraction API returning cited paragraphs, SHA-256 receipts and prompt-injection indicators. - [Exa](https://theagentsindex.com/exa) · Free plan, then $4 per 1000 requests: Web search, contents and agentic research APIs built for AI agents, billed per request. - [Bright Data](https://theagentsindex.com/bright-data) · Free plan, then $1.50 per 1000 requests: Web unlocking, SERP and 1,200+ pre-built scrapers on a 400M-IP proxy network, billed per successful record. - [Oxylabs](https://theagentsindex.com/oxylabs) · From $30 a month: Live web search, page scraping and a cloud browser on one 177M-IP proxy network, with MCP servers for agents. All 4 publish a price. [All 4 alternatives](https://theagentsindex.com/apify/alternatives/) ## Questions about Apify ### How much does Apify cost? Apify is free to use. From apify.com/pricing.md, checked 26 October 2026. ### Does Apify have an API or an MCP server? It has an MCP server. ### Is Apify open source, and can you host it yourself? Part of it is open source. You can host part of it yourself. ### What have we checked on Apify? 18 facts, under these headings: How much it does unattended, whose machine it runs on, building with it, what it costs to run, buying it for a team, what happens to your code. ### How do we check Apify? We hold 18 facts on Apify, quoted from 11 pages. Facts and price last checked 26 October 2026. How we check every listing: https://theagentsindex.com/methodology/ ## Sources and changes Last changed 28 October 2026 **Sources** (11) - https://apify.com/pricing.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://docs.apify.com/account/collaboration/organization.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://docs.apify.com/security/shared-responsibility.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://apify.com/, read 26 October 2026 - https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/monitoring.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/permissions.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://apify.com/agents.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt, read 26 October 2026 - https://docs.apify.com/mcp.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://docs.apify.com/open-source.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://docs.apify.com/security.md, read 26 October 2026 ## Is this yours? AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude opened The Agents Index pages 2,746 times in September. Claim Apify: https://theagentsindex.com/claim/apify Report an error if a fact is wrong: hello@theagentsindex.com, subject "Report an error: Apify (apify)".