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Best Developer Tools on Apify (2026)

· 5 min read
Yassine El Haddad
Yassine El Haddad
Software Developer & Automation Specialist

I build production AI agents, web scrapers, and automation pipelines. Most of what I publish here comes from the actual problems they run into: proxies that get banned, anti-bot stacks that fingerprint your client, RAG that drifts when the underlying data moves. Stack: Python, TypeScript, Go, FastAPI, LangChain, Crawlee, Playwright, deployed on AWS, GCP, and Cloudflare.

The developer tools category is verified with real user counts, live pricing, and data-extraction capabilities from the Apify Store.

For developers building data pipelines, AI training datasets, or automated monitoring systems, the Apify Store provides production-ready tools across every data source. Here are the top developer-facing actors.

Top Actors in This Category​

1. Website Content Crawler — 106K users · 4.6 ⭐ · Pay-per-usage​

Crawl entire websites and output clean Markdown for RAG pipelines, LLM knowledge bases, and vector database ingestion. Handles JavaScript rendering, sitemaps, and content deduplication automatically. Try Website Content Crawler on Apify →

2. Web Scraper — 106K users · 4.7 ⭐ · Pay-per-usage​

Versatile no-code browser crawler. Extract structured data from any website using a custom JavaScript page function and recursive link following with full Chromium support. Try Web Scraper on Apify →

3. Cheerio Scraper — 13K users · 5.0 ⭐ · Pay-per-usage​

Rated 5.0 ⭐ — the highest-rated official scraper on Apify. Ultra-fast jQuery-style HTML scraper — up to 20x faster and cheaper than full-browser scrapers for static HTML pages. Try Cheerio Scraper on Apify →

4. Puppeteer Scraper — 12K users · 4.9 ⭐ · Pay-per-usage​

Full programmatic Puppeteer control for complex logins, form filling, and advanced headless Chrome automation. Write a custom page function to interact with the rendered DOM. Try Puppeteer Scraper on Apify →

5. Mass Profile Posts Scraper for LinkedIn | No Cookies​

Batch-scrape LinkedIn posts from hundreds of profiles in a single run without authentication cookies. Returns all posts with full text, images, engagement metrics, and author details. Try Mass Profile Posts Scraper for LinkedIn on Apify →

6. YouTube Transcript Scraper — Captions & AI Fallback​

Extract transcripts from any YouTube video, playlist, or channel. Pulls native captions first; falls back to built-in Whisper AI when none exist — no external API key required. Returns timestamped JSON, plain text, LLM-optimised text (filler tokens stripped), SRT, and VTT. The transcript_llm field is ready to drop into LangChain, LlamaIndex, or any RAG pipeline without post-processing. Try YouTube Transcript Scraper — Captions & AI Fallback on Apify →

7. Reddit Scraper Pro​

Advanced Reddit scraper with deep comment support, multi-subreddit crawling, and search operator filtering. Returns full post and comment trees with scores, timestamps, and author metadata. Try Reddit Scraper Pro on Apify →

8. Profile Reactions Scraper for LinkedIn [No Cookies]​

Extract who reacted to any LinkedIn post — reaction type (Like, Love, Insightful), reactor name, and profile URL — without requiring authentication. Useful for audience and engagement analysis. Try Profile Reactions Scraper for LinkedIn on Apify →

9. Playwright Scraper — 5.2K users · 2.4 ⭐ · Pay-per-usage​

Multi-browser scraper supporting Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. Best for SPAs and complex automation scenarios that require cross-browser compatibility beyond what Puppeteer provides. Try Playwright Scraper on Apify →

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Why These Tools Stand Out​

Every actor in this category is built and maintained by the Apify team or top community developers. They run on managed cloud infrastructure with automatic proxy rotation, retry logic, and built-in scheduling.

Free Credits

Apify offers $5 in free monthly credits, so you can start using these tools on the free tier.


Start scraping for free →

Frequently Asked Questions

Cheerio Scraper (5.0 ⭐, 13K users) is the fastest — it uses HTTP requests and Cheerio parsing without a browser, making it up to 20x faster than Puppeteer or Playwright for static HTML sites. For JavaScript-heavy sites, use Puppeteer Scraper (4.9 ⭐) or Web Scraper.

Yes. Web Scraper, Puppeteer Scraper, and Playwright Scraper all support custom page functions written in JavaScript. You can access the full DOM, execute async code, interact with the page, and pass structured data to the output dataset.

Yes, every Apify actor has an auto-generated REST API. Trigger runs, fetch results via webhook, and export data to JSON, CSV, or push directly to Google Sheets, databases, or any HTTP endpoint using the Apify API.