Apify Official Resources
Apify maintains six free courses that cover scraping fundamentals through production-scale Actor development. They're vendor-first (Apify-specific tooling) but the underlying techniques (selectors, Crawlee patterns, anti-bot handling) apply to any stack. This page maps them into a sequence that prevents the common "I took three courses and can't build anything" outcome.
Start with one language track (JavaScript or Python), add Platform Fundamentals in parallel once Milestone 1 is shipping, then go deep on API scraping and anti-bot handling in that order.
Best For
- Teams that want an official, vendor-maintained learning baseline.
- Builders who prefer a clear beginner-to-advanced sequence.
- Readers who want companion guides before committing to each course.
Course Overview
| Course | Level | Language | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web Scraping Basics with JavaScript | Beginner | JavaScript | Read guide |
| Web Scraping Basics with Python | Beginner | Python | Read guide |
| Apify Platform Fundamentals | Beginner | Any | Read guide |
| API Scraping Strategies | Intermediate | Any | Read guide |
| Anti-Scraping Protections | Intermediate-Advanced | Any | Read guide |
| Expert Scraping with Apify | Advanced | Any | Read guide |
Recommended progression
- Pick a language track: JavaScript (Cheerio + Crawlee) or Python (Beautiful Soup + HTTPX). Finish one end-to-end scrape before moving on; don't take both in parallel.
- Platform Fundamentals: once you have a working scraper, learn how to schedule it, store outputs, and use Apify Proxy. This is where local scripts become runnable infrastructure.
- API Scraping: before investing in browser automation, learn to find and use the hidden JSON APIs that most modern sites actually run on. Faster, cheaper, and more stable than DOM scraping for a wide class of targets.
- Anti-Scraping Protections: add this when (not before) you've hit real blocks. The techniques make more sense with a target in mind.
- Expert Scraping: Docker, CI/CD, Actor publishing, and scale patterns. This is the production-readiness layer.
Official Course Links
Common mistakes and fixes
I am not sure which course to start with.
Pick by language first: JavaScript or Python, then add Platform Fundamentals in parallel.
I finish courses but cannot build a real workflow.
Choose one target website and complete an end-to-end project with schedule plus export.
My runs fail when moving from local to cloud.
Verify environment variables, memory limits, and input schema before deployment.
