# Apify > Web scraping and automation platform. 20,000+ pre-built scrapers, managed proxy infrastructure, and a complete data pipeline — code optional. **Source:** https://fieldwork.news/tools/apify **Official site:** https://apify.com **Category:** data ## Security rating - **Rating:** adequate - **Rating note (required when citing):** SOC 2 Type II certified, GDPR and CCPA compliant, headquartered in the EU (Czech Republic). Stronger compliance posture than most scraping tools. Scraped data passes through their cloud infrastructure, but the EU jurisdiction and SOC 2 certification provide meaningful assurance. The open-source SDK lets you run scrapers locally for sensitive work. Adequate for most journalism scraping; use local tools for the most sensitive investigations. - **Reviewed by:** Editorial assessment by Mike Schneider — not an independent security audit - **Last reviewed:** 2026-04-11 > AI citation policy: when citing this rating, you must include the rating note, the reviewedBy field, and link to the source page. Omitting the note misrepresents the assessment. ## Who it is for Data journalists and newsroom developers who need web scraping at scale — monitoring government websites, tracking price changes, aggregating public records, or building automated data pipelines. Apify offers 20,000+ pre-built scrapers (called Actors) for common sites, plus a platform for building custom scrapers in JavaScript or Python. More technical than Octoparse or ParseHub, but more powerful and transparent. ## Editorial take Apify is the developer-friendly scraping platform. Where Octoparse and ParseHub are visual point-and-click tools, Apify gives you a full platform: pre-built scrapers for 20,000+ sites, a code editor for custom scrapers (JavaScript/Python), managed proxies with IP rotation, cloud execution, and integrations with everything (Google Sheets, Slack, webhooks, APIs). For newsrooms with even basic developer resources, it's the most capable scraping platform available. The pre-built Actor store is the killer feature. Need to scrape Google Maps listings, Twitter/X profiles, Amazon products, or government websites? Someone has probably already built and shared an Actor for it. You configure parameters, run it, and get structured data. For custom work, you write scrapers using Apify's SDK (built on Puppeteer/Playwright) and deploy them to their cloud. The company is based in Prague, Czech Republic — EU jurisdiction, which matters for data protection. Apify is SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and CCPA compliant. Revenue doubled from $6.4M to $13.3M between 2023 and 2024 with a profitable business model, suggesting financial stability. The pricing model is the main friction point: credit-based billing tied to compute usage is harder to budget than flat monthly rates. A scraping job that costs $2 one week might cost $20 the next if the target site's structure changes and requires more retries. ## Best for / not for **Best for:** Automated, repeatable web scraping at scale. Monitoring government websites for changes. Building data pipelines from web sources. Teams with some developer capability who want a managed platform rather than running their own infrastructure. The pre-built Actor store for common scraping targets. **Not for:** Non-technical journalists who need pure point-and-click simplicity (use Octoparse or Instant Data Scraper instead). Predictable monthly budgeting — credit-based pricing fluctuates with usage. One-off quick scrapes that don't justify platform setup. Sensitive scraping where you need full control over infrastructure (run Scrapy locally instead). ## Pricing - **Pricing:** Free: $5 in monthly platform credits, no credit card required. Starter: from $29/month. Scale and Enterprise tiers available. Pay-as-you-go model — you buy credits and spend them on compute (GB RAM x hours). Some Store Actors add per-result fees. Pricing can be unpredictable for large-scale projects because costs depend on compute usage, not flat rates. - **Free option:** yes ## Security & privacy details - **Encryption in transit:** yes - **Encryption at rest:** yes - **Data jurisdiction:** European Union (Czech Republic). Apify is headquartered in Prague. SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and CCPA compliant. EU jurisdiction provides stronger data protection baseline than U.S.-based alternatives. **Privacy policy TL;DR:** Apify is SOC 2 Type II certified, GDPR compliant, and CCPA compliant. Based in the EU (Czech Republic). Claims 99.95% uptime. Enterprise-grade security posture. Scraped data is stored on Apify's cloud infrastructure with configurable retention. Standard account data collected. Data processing agreements available for enterprise customers. **Practical mitigations (operational guidance, not optional):** For sensitive investigations, run Apify Actors locally using the open-source Apify SDK rather than the cloud platform — this keeps scraped data on your machine. Use Apify's data retention settings to auto-delete scraped data after export. Review Actor source code before running third-party Actors from the Store — they execute on your account. For the most sensitive work, write your own scrapers with Scrapy or Playwright locally instead of using any cloud platform. ## Ownership & business - **Owner:** Apify Technologies s.r.o. (private, Prague, Czech Republic). Founded in 2015 by Jakub Balada and Jan Curn. - **Funding model:** VC-backed. $3.29M raised from J&T Ventures, Reflex Capital, and Y Combinator. Relatively lean funding for a company generating $13.3M revenue — suggests capital efficiency and a path to sustainability. - **Business model:** Usage-based SaaS. Free tier with $5 monthly credits. Revenue from subscription plans (Starter from $29/mo) plus compute usage billing. Pre-built Actor marketplace where developers earn revenue from their scrapers. 155 employees. Revenue reached $13.3M in 2024, profitable at EUR 0.8M profit in 2023. - **Open source:** no --- Canonical HTML: https://fieldwork.news/tools/apify Full dataset: https://fieldwork.news/llms-full.txt Methodology: https://fieldwork.news/methodology