Best Open-source Scrapers on Apify (2026)
Open-source spans foundational scraping frameworks and fully open-source actors you can run, fork, or modify for custom extraction workflows.
While Apify hosts thousands of premium tools, its foundation is built on open-source web scraping libraries. The Apify Store provides hosted infrastructure to run popular open-source frameworks like Puppeteer and Playwright at scale.
Top Actors in This Category
1. Web Scraper — 106K users · 4.7 ⭐ · Pay-per-usage
The most popular tool on Apify with 106K users. A versatile browser crawler where you define a custom JavaScript function to extract data from the DOM while the actor handles the recursive link following. Try Web Scraper on Apify →
2. Cheerio Scraper — 13K users · 5.0 ⭐ · Pay-per-usage
Rated an incredible 5.0 ⭐. An ultra-fast HTML scraping framework using Cheerio (jQuery syntax). It doesn't load a full browser, making it up to 20x faster and cheaper than Puppeteer for static sites. Try Cheerio Scraper on Apify →
3. Puppeteer Scraper — 12K users · 4.9 ⭐ · Pay-per-usage
Full programmatic control over a headless Chrome browser. Use the standard Puppeteer API to handle complex logins, solve captchas natively, fill forms, and orchestrate advanced DOM interactions. Try Puppeteer Scraper on Apify →
4. RAG Web Browser — 15K users · 2.5 ⭐ · Pay-per-usage
An open-source pipeline built specifically for RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). Queries Google, fetches the top SERP results, and returns clean Markdown formatted for direct LLM consumption. Try RAG Web Browser on Apify →
5. LinkedIn Profile Scraper + Email (No Cookies)
An open-source approach to extracting LinkedIn profile intelligence. Returns public profile data (education, experience, name) and attempts to discover public email addresses without requiring a session cookie. Try LinkedIn Profile Scraper on Apify →
6. Download HTML from URLs List
A simple, open-source utility actor. Provide a massive list of URLs, and it will rapidly iterate through them, downloading the raw HTML source code of each page and saving it to your default Apify Key-Value store. Try Download HTML from URLs List on Apify →
7. LinkedIn Profile Posts Scraper (No Cookies)
Scrape the recent activity feed of specific LinkedIn profiles without needing a logged-in account. Extract post text, media links, and engagement metrics for public profiles. Try LinkedIn Profile Posts Scraper on Apify →
8. Playwright Scraper — 5.2K users · 2.4 ⭐ · Pay-per-usage
A hosted environment for Microsoft's Playwright framework. Scrape across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit to ensure cross-browser compatibility and bypass specific headless Chrome fingerprinting blocks. Try Playwright Scraper on Apify →
9. LinkedIn Post Comments Scraper (No Cookies)
Extract comment threads from public LinkedIn posts without authentication. Pull commenter names, headlines, and message text to build targeted lead lists from high-engagement posts. Try LinkedIn Post Comments Scraper on Apify →
Why These Tools Stand Out
These foundational scrapers allow developers to bring their own extraction logic (via JavaScript or TypeScript) while Apify handles the difficult infrastructure: scaling compute, rotating residential proxies, and managing storage.
Apify offers $5 in free monthly credits, enough to start building custom scrapers before you add a paid plan.
The Cheerio scraper only downloads the raw HTML and parses it, making it extremely fast and cheap. The Puppeteer scraper launches a full headless Chrome browser, allowing it to render JavaScript UI frameworks (React, Angular) and interact with the page.
Yes. While you can use the 'Web Scraper' actor to inject custom JavaScript into a pre-built crawler, you can also write your own Apify Actor from scratch using the open-source Crawlee framework and deploy it to the platform.
Yes, the open-source Playwright Scraper actor allows you to write custom Playwright scripts. The underlying Crawlee framework also has native support for Playwright testing and automation.