Apify vs Zyte
A side-by-side look at 2 AI & ML tools for 2026 — the verdict, pricing, ratings, features, and what readers think.
apify.com
Best for Developers and AI teams that want ready-made scrapers and automation tools, or a cloud platform to run their own.
A marketplace and platform of ready-to-run web scraping and automation tools for AI agents and apps.
Visit Apify
zyte.com
Best for Engineering teams that need reliable, high-volume scraping of hard websites, or finished datasets.
Web scraping API and managed data delivery that handles bans, rendering and extraction for you.
Visit ZytePricing compared
Apify
$19/mo
Zyte
$0.13/1K responses
Head to head
| Apify | Zyte | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $19/mo | $0.13/1K responses |
| Free tier | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Free plan with $5 of monthly usage, no credit card | $5 free credit, 30 days to try, no commitment |
| Platforms | Web · API · CLI | Web · API · CLI |
| Founded | 2015 | — |
| HQ | Prague, Czechia | Cork, Ireland |
Pros & cons
Apify
Pros
- Huge store of ready-made Actors covers many common scraping jobs.
- Free plan with no credit card makes testing easy.
- Includes proxies, anti-blocking tools and scheduling on the platform.
- MCP server and API let AI agents run Actors directly.
- Open-source Crawlee library reduces lock-in for custom scrapers.
Cons
- Costs vary by Actor and pricing model, so budgeting needs test runs.
- Unused prepaid usage expires at the end of each billing cycle.
- Free plan is blocked once monthly usage runs out.
- Store Actor quality depends on the individual developer.
Zyte
Pros
- One API covers proxy rotation, ban handling, headless rendering and extraction.
- You pay per successful response, with the price set by the difficulty of the target site.
- Every plan includes the full feature set, with no feature gating by tier.
- Zyte Data offers a fully managed option when you do not want to maintain crawlers.
- Maintains Scrapy, the widely used open-source crawling framework, and hosts it on Scrapy Cloud.
Cons
- Per-request pricing varies by site tier, so budgeting needs the cost calculator rather than a flat rate.
- Some advanced features carry additional usage-based costs.
- Compliance guardrails restrict logins and PII extraction, which can limit some use cases.
- Managed Zyte Data and Enterprise pricing is quote-only.
Features compared
| Apify | Zyte | |
|---|---|---|
| Plans & pricing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ Yes | — |
| Pricing model | Monthly subscription plus pay-as-you-go platform usage | — |
| Platforms & access | ||
| Web app | ✓ Yes | — |
| Integrations & extensibility | ||
| Public API | ✓ Yes | — |
| Native integrations | Zapier, GitHub, Google Sheets, Google Drive, Slack, n8n | — |
| Automation (Zapier/Make) | ✓ Yes | — |