Apify vs. Octoparse: $19 of Prebuilt, or $69 of Point-and-Click
Apify's cheapest paid plan is $19 a month and gives you 70,000+ pre-built scrapers you run by filling in a form. Octoparse's cheapest paid plan is $69 a month and gives you a point-and-click builder that can scrape a site nobody has written a scraper for yet. Pick Apify when an Actor already covers your target site. Pick Octoparse when none does and you would rather click than code.
Prices verified 2026-09-09 at apify.com/pricing and octoparse.com/pricing. The Actor count is Apify's own phrasing on apify.com/store: "70,000+ ready-to-run tools called Actors."
Which is easier to use if you don't code?
It depends on whether the scraper you need already exists. On Apify you pick an Actor, fill three or four input fields, and press start. On Octoparse you open the target site inside Octoparse's browser and click the fields you want, then teach it pagination and loops.
Octoparse is the easier tool for building a scraper. Selector training in a GUI beats reading someone else's input schema when the site is odd, internal, or behind a login you control. That is Octoparse's home turf and it is a real advantage.
Apify is faster when someone has already done the building. Filling a form is not a skill; training selectors is. Our most popular Actors list covers Maps, Amazon, TikTok, Indeed and X, and for those targets there is nothing to design.
If your target site is obscure and you have no engineer, Octoparse will get you data sooner.
Which sets up faster?
For a common target, Apify. For an uncovered target, Octoparse.
- Apify, covered target. Search the Store, open the Actor, paste your URLs or search terms, run. No install. The Google Maps walkthrough is four input fields.
- Apify, uncovered target. You are now writing an Actor, or paying someone to. That is an engineering task, not an afternoon.
- Octoparse, any target. Install the desktop app, open the site, click fields, define pagination, test, then schedule. Slower to first run, but the ceiling does not depend on what the Store happens to stock.
What does each one cost?
| Apify | Octoparse | |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, $5 of monthly credit, runs in Apify's cloud | $0, 10 tasks, 1 device, local extraction only, 50K rows/month export |
| Entry paid | Starter $19/mo subject to change · verified 2026-09-09 ($17 billed annually), $19 of included usage | Standard $69/mo subject to change · verified 2026-09-09 ($58 billed annually), 100 tasks |
| Next tier | Scale $199/mo ($179 annual), $199 included usage | Professional $249/mo ($209 annual), 250 tasks |
| Top published tier | Business $999/mo ($899 annual) | Enterprise, custom quote |
| Billing unit | Compute units at $0.20/CU on Free and Starter, $0.16 on Scale, $0.13 on Business | Flat plan fee, capped by task count |
| Concurrency, entry paid | 32 concurrent runs | 3 cloud processes |
| Charges on top | Per-Actor result or pay-per-event fees, billed against your included usage | Residential proxies $3/GB, CAPTCHA solving $1–1.5 per thousand |
Both columns read from the vendors' own pricing pages on 2026-09-09.
The structural difference matters more than the $50 gap. Octoparse sells you a flat plan with a task cap. Apify sells you metered usage, and most Store Actors add a per-result or pay-per-event charge on top of compute. That is the line that surprises first-time Apify buyers, and it is the line Octoparse's marketing aims at.
Is Octoparse really 9x cheaper at scale?
Octoparse publishes a direct cost attack on Apify: "Save up to 97% at scale — $83/month flat vs $3,035 on Apify for 50k records" (octoparse.com/alternatives/apify-alternatives, read 2026-09-09). It is worth taking seriously, so we rebuilt it from Apify's public Actor API.
Two things to know before the numbers. First, "50k records" means 50,000 records from each of six different scrapers, 300,000 records in total; their per-1,000 row sums to $60.70 and $60.70 × 50 is exactly $3,035. Second, the column is Apify's Free-plan Actor rates, which are the highest of six volume tiers.
Five of their six rows check out. One does not.
| Actor | Octoparse's Apify Free rate / 1,000 | Live Apify Free rate / 1,000 |
|---|---|---|
| Google Maps Scraper | $4.00 | $4.00 |
| Tweet Scraper V2 | $40.00 | $0.40 |
Indeed Scraper (misceres/indeed-scraper) | $6.00 | $6.00 |
Contact Details Scraper (vdrmota/contact-info-scraper) | $2.00 | $2.00 |
TikTok Scraper (clockworks/tiktok-scraper) | $3.70 | $3.70 |
Amazon Product Scraper (junglee/Amazon-crawler) | $5.00 | $5.00 |
| Total | $60.70 | $21.10 |
Live rates read from api.apify.com/v2/acts/<actor> on 2026-09-09. The Tweet Scraper row is stale: on 2026-06-09 its Free-tier price dropped from $0.04 to $0.0004 per tweet, so Free now pays the same $0.40 per 1,000 as every paid tier. That single row carries 66% of the $3,035.
Rerun their own arithmetic at the live rate and Apify Free comes to $1,055, not $3,035. Octoparse's own table puts its Standard plan at $316 for the same 300,000 records.
So Octoparse still wins that comparison, by about 3.3x rather than 9.6x. At 300,000 records a month a flat plan beats metered billing, and no amount of tier discounting closes that. If your volume looks like that, Octoparse is the cheaper platform and you should buy it.
Two caveats on the other side. Their own table's Apify Scale column comes to $685 against Octoparse's $316, a 2.2x gap rather than 97%, and $685 is what an actual 300,000-record buyer would be paying. And the $83 flat price in their headline does not match octoparse.com/pricing, which listed Standard at $69/month, or $58 billed annually, on the same day. Trust the pricing page.
Where does Apify win on cost?
Below the crossover, which is lower than most people expect.
Apify's Free plan gives $5 of credit against cloud runs. At the Free-tier Maps rate of $0.004 per place that is 1,250 places a month at $0, with scheduling and webhooks working while your laptop is shut. Octoparse's free tier runs locally, so the equivalent job needs the $69 Standard plan before it can run unattended at all.
Starter at $19 includes $19 of usage, which is at least 4,750 Maps places at the Free-tier rate and more on the volume tiers paid accounts get. The Actor API lists six tiers for that scraper, from $0.004 down to $0.000756 per place.
If you are pulling under roughly 10,000 records a month, or you need a handful of small scheduled jobs rather than one big one, Apify costs $0 to $19 where Octoparse costs $69. Full arithmetic in the Apify pricing breakdown and what $5 of free credit buys.
How much can each one run at once?
Octoparse's entry paid plan allows 3 concurrent cloud processes, and Professional at $249 allows 20 (octoparse.com/pricing, 2026-09-09). Apify's Starter allows 32.
Apify's Free plan is the one number nobody can pin down. Its two official pages disagree. apify.com/pricing lists 5 max concurrent runs on Free; docs.apify.com/platform/limits lists 25 for the same plan. Both checked 2026-09-09, both first-party, neither dated. Plan a schedule assuming 5, and confirm on your account's Limits page before you depend on it.
Which MCP server should an AI agent use?
Both vendors run a hosted MCP endpoint, so Claude, Cursor and similar clients can trigger scrapes.
| Apify MCP | Octoparse MCP | |
|---|---|---|
| Endpoint | https://mcp.apify.com | https://mcp.octoparse.com |
| Auth | OAuth in the browser, or an Authorization: Bearer token header | Authorize your Octoparse account, no API token |
| What the model reaches | Apify Actors and platform tools | Octoparse templates, task creation, cloud extraction, CSV export |
| Vendor's setup claim | OAuth "authorizes the server without putting your API token in the client configuration" | "about 3 minutes" |
Sources: docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp and octoparse.com, both read 2026-09-09.
Note the shape of the difference. Octoparse exposes its own template catalogue, so the model picks from a menu Octoparse curates. Apify exposes the Store, so the model can reach far more tools and can also reach badly maintained ones. Octoparse's own comparison argues that Apify "often throws errors that take time to fix"; on a Store this size, some of that is true, and picking the Actor yourself instead of letting a model pick is the fix. Setup steps for the Apify side are in use MCP servers.
If nobody on your team wants to manage an API token, Octoparse MCP is the shorter path.
What changed recently
- 2026-06-09 — Tweet Scraper V2 dropped its Free-tier price from $0.04 to $0.0004 per tweet (
api.apify.com, verified 2026-09-09). Most third-party cost comparisons, including Octoparse's, still quote the old rate. - Apify Starter is $19, not $29. This page said $29 until 2026-09-09. So do most comparison pages still ranking for this query, including one that prices Apify at $39.
- The Store is at 70,000+ Actors.
Which should you pick?
- If you need data from a site the Store already covers, and you want it running in the cloud today, use Apify.
- If your target has no Actor and you have no engineer, use Octoparse. Building visually beats waiting.
- If you are pulling hundreds of thousands of records a month from a small set of sites, price Octoparse's flat plan against Apify's metered bill. Octoparse usually wins that one.
- If you expect to graduate from a form to custom code, stay on Apify. A Crawlee Actor runs on the same platform and the same bill; Octoparse has no equivalent path.
- If you want to look wider before choosing, see Apify alternatives or the ParseHub comparison.
Run a Store Actor on Apify's free $5 credit →
The usual objection: metered billing feels riskier than a flat plan. It is, above the crossover. Below it you pay nothing, and the Free plan needs no card, so the test costs an afternoon rather than $69.
Apify is a cloud platform where you run pre-built scrapers called Actors, by form or by API, with schedules, datasets and a code path through Crawlee. Octoparse is a visual builder: you open a site inside its app and click the fields you want, then run locally or in Octoparse's cloud on a paid plan. Apify is faster when a scraper already exists for your target. Octoparse is better when none does.
Apify's Starter plan is $19 a month, or $17 billed annually, and includes $19 of platform usage, with overage at $0.20 per compute unit. Octoparse's Standard plan is $69 a month, or $58 billed annually, for 100 tasks and 3 concurrent cloud processes. Both verified on the vendors' pricing pages on 2026-09-09. Apify adds per-result or pay-per-event Actor fees on top of compute; Octoparse adds residential proxies at $3/GB and CAPTCHA solving at $1 to $1.50 per thousand.
Usually yes. Octoparse publishes a comparison claiming $83 a month flat against $3,035 on Apify for 50,000 records. Rechecked against api.apify.com on 2026-09-09, five of its six Actor rates are correct but the Tweet Scraper V2 row uses $40 per 1,000 tweets, a Free-tier rate Apify retired on 2026-06-09 in favour of $0.40. Rerunning their own arithmetic at live rates gives $1,055, not $3,035, against $316 for Octoparse Standard at the same volume. Octoparse is still cheaper there, by roughly 3.3x rather than 9.6x.
Yes. Octoparse Free covers 10 tasks on 1 device with local extraction only and 50,000 rows of export a month; cloud extraction, IP rotation and API access are not included. Apify's Free plan is $0 with $5 of monthly credit and runs in Apify's cloud, so schedules and webhooks keep working when your machine is off. For unattended recurring jobs, Apify's free tier does more.
Apify describes its Store as "70,000+ ready-to-run tools called Actors" (apify.com/store, checked 2026-09-09). Quality varies across that catalogue, so check an Actor's last build date, user count and pricing model before committing a scheduled job to it.
Apify's own sources disagree. apify.com/pricing lists 5 maximum concurrent runs on the Free plan; docs.apify.com/platform/limits lists 25 for the same plan. Both checked 2026-09-09. Plan for 5 and confirm on your account's Limits page before you depend on it. Starter is 32 on both pages, against 3 concurrent cloud processes on Octoparse Standard.
Yes, if you need to build a scraper for a site nobody has covered. Clicking the fields you want is more approachable than reading someone else's input schema. But a beginner scraping Google Maps, Amazon or TikTok will finish faster on Apify, because an Actor already exists and there is nothing to design.
Yes, a hosted endpoint at mcp.octoparse.com. You add it as a custom connector, authorize your Octoparse account, and the model can search templates, create tasks, run cloud extraction and export CSV. No API token is required. Apify's equivalent is mcp.apify.com, which uses OAuth or a bearer token and exposes Store Actors.
Octoparse MCP is the shorter setup and the model picks from a curated template catalogue. Apify MCP reaches far more tools, which helps when your agent needs a platform-specific scraper, and hurts when the model picks a poorly maintained Actor. If nobody on your team wants to manage an API token, start with Octoparse.
Yes. Map the fields your Octoparse task produces to a Store Actor's output, or to a custom Crawlee Actor if no Actor matches. Run it against the Free plan's $5 credit first and compare the row counts before you move a production schedule. Budget the comparison on real volume, since Apify's metered billing and Octoparse's flat plan cross over as volume rises.