# Crawl4AI vs Apify

Both get data from the web for code and AI. On Apify each tool in its store has its own price and its own rule for failures. Crawl4AI has one price list for every page, never charges a failed call, and comes from the team that wrote the open-source crawler.
Facts last checked 12 Nov 2026

Crawl4AI vs Apify: the short answer
Crawl4AI charges by the work each page needs ($0.10 per 1,000 plain pages, $0.50 with a real browser) and nothing for a failed or blocked call; Apify's Web Fetch costs $1.00 to $1.50 per 1,000 for any page, and each other tool sets its own price and failure rule. Google results with ads and AI overview cost $1.00 per 1,000 on Crawl4AI against $9.50 on Apify's Starter plan, and a LinkedIn profile costs 1 credit on a Crawl4AI recipe against $4.00 to $10.00 per 1,000 on third-party Apify tools. Crawl4AI's extra credits never expire and a first payment is refundable within 14 days; Apify's prepaid usage expires every month and its fees are non-refundable. Crawl4AI runs in the EU, Singapore and the US with teams and an audit log from the $99 Builder plan; Apify runs in one US region. Agents set Crawl4AI up from one message, and 17 MCP tools let them price a call first and manage their own budget.

## Which one fits

Different tools fit different jobs. Here is when each one is the better choice.

### Choose Apify if

- You want to host your own scraper code: write it in JavaScript or Python and deploy it, with storage, schedules and webhooks.
- You build no-code flows in Zapier, Make or n8n and want ready connectors for them.
- You write your own browser scripts in Playwright, Puppeteer or Selenium and want a place to run them.
- Almost every page you fetch is a hard site, where their Web Fetch at $1.00 to $1.50 per 1,000 costs less than a hard page on Crawl4AI.

### Choose Crawl4AI if

- You build with AI agents: one message sets Crawl4AI up in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Gemini CLI or OpenCode, and 17 MCP tools let the agent run recipes, price a call first and manage its budget.
- You want one price list for every page, and nothing to pay for a failed or blocked call.
- You need Google results as data: 1 credit a page with ads and AI overview inside. Apify charges for ads even when a page has none.
- You need named sites as rows from one vendor: 93 recipes, a LinkedIn profile for 1 credit. On Apify, most tools come from outside creators.
- You want money that stays yours: 14-day refunds and extra credits that never expire.
- You need data in the EU, Singapore or the US, and a team with an audit log from Builder.
- You want to run it inside your network on the same engine, Apache 2.0.

For enterprise teams

## The controls your security team asks for

Crawl4AI's Enterprise plan next to Apify's. Apify's side restates its own pages; click a line to see the quote.

| Control | Crawl4AI Enterprise | Apify Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| SSO (SAML, OIDC) | **✓ Yes** | Named; protocol and plan not published |
| SCIM user sync | **✓ Yes** | Not published |
| Teams, roles and audit log | **✓ From Builder ($99), no seat limit** | Teams on all plans; audit log not published |
| Zero data retention | **✓ Yes** | Not published |
| IP allowlist and key limits | **✓ Yes** | Scoped tokens; IP allowlist not published |
| Static exit IPs | **✓ Yes** | Not published for the account |
| Where data is processed | EU, Singapore or US, your choice | One US region (AWS us-east-1) |
| Deployment | Cloud, dedicated fleet, inside your network, managed pipeline; one engine | Apify cloud; self-hosted platform not published |
| DPA and invoice billing | **✓ Every Enterprise plan** | Public DPA, with transfer to the US |
| Refunds | 14 days, if no credits were used | None |
| Status page | Hourly uptime per service, public | 25 incidents since 31 Dec 2025 |
| Uptime and response SLA | Typical: 99.9% a month; service down: first answer within 1 hour, 24/7; part broken: 4 business hours; a question: 1 business day; 5% of the month's fee back if missed, 10% under 99% | "99.9% available"; terms not published |
| Support | A named engineer | Dedicated team; times not published |
| Security assurance | Controls monitored every day in Drata, with the evidence kept; dependencies watched for known vulnerabilities; SOC 2 audit by Sensiba under way, report target January 2027. Security pack on request: policies, audit status, DPA, questionnaire answers. | SOC 2 Type II |

## Same job, two calls

6 jobs an agent does every day. The call on each side, and the price of 1,000 of them at list. The label marks the side that costs less for that job.
**01 · One page to Markdown**a plain page
**Crawl4AI costs less$0.10/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com","format":"md"}'
```

0.1 credit. $0.08 per 1,000 on Builder.

**Apify $1.00–$1.50/ 1,000

```
curl "https://web-fetch.apify.actor/?url=https://example.com&formats=markdown,links&token=$TOKEN"
```

Web Fetch: one price for any page, $1.50 on Starter, $1.00 on Business.

**02 · A whole site**1,000 plain pages
**Crawl4AI costs less$0.10/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/site \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://docs.example.com"}'
```

/site: 0.5 credit for the call, then each page at its /scrape price. Up to 500 pages a call; /scan lists up to 50,000 URLs.

**Apify ≈ $0.10–$0.16/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apify~website-content-crawler/runs?token=$TOKEN" \
  -d '{…}'
```

Website Content Crawler is priced by compute: "approximately" $0.2 per 1,000 at $0.25 a unit, so $0.10 to $0.16 at plan rates, before proxy and storage. With a browser: $0.5 to $5.

**03 · A site that blocks bots**proxies and a real browser
**Crawl4AI $2.00/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://hard-site.example",
       "proxy":"extra"}'
```

2 credits for a hard page. A page we cannot get costs nothing.

**Apify costs less$1.00–$1.50/ 1,000

```
curl "https://web-fetch.apify.actor/?url=https://hard-site.example&wait=2000&token=$TOKEN"
```

Same Web Fetch price with a real browser, and nothing for a failed fetch.

**04 · Google results with ads**one results page, ads and AI overview
**Crawl4AI costs less$1.00/ 1,000

```
curl "https://api.crawl4ai.com/serp?q=best+crm+software" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY"
```

1 credit a page from /serp: organic, ads, maps and AI overview in one answer. A failed answer costs nothing.

**Apify $6.30–$9.50/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apify~google-search-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$TOKEN" \
  -d '{"queries":"best crm software",
       "maxPagesPerQuery":1}'
```

Google Search Results Scraper: $2.50 a page, AI overview +$2.00, ads +$5.00 per 1,000 on Starter, ads charged even with no ads.

**05 · A LinkedIn profile as rows**name, title, company, history
**Crawl4AI costs less$1.00/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/recipes/linkedin-profile \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"profile":"satyanadella"}'
```

A recipe: 2 units × 0.5 credit. The same named columns every time; one of 93.

**Apify $3.20–$10/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/harvestapi~linkedin-profile-scraper/runs?token=$TOKEN" \
  -d '{…}'
```

No Apify-built LinkedIn tool; the top results are third-party, such as $4 per 1,000 profiles, and up to $10 per 1,000 on others.

**06 · Structured JSON from a page**your schema, filled by a model
**Crawl4AI costs less$1.87/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/extract \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://news.ycombinator.com",
       "instruction":"the top stories",
       "schema":{…}}'
```

Median of real calls this week: 0.5 credit for the page plus the model's tokens.

**Apify $20–$25/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apify~ai-web-scraper/runs?token=$TOKEN" \
  -d '{…}'
```

AI Web Scraper: $0.025 a page on Starter, $0.02 on Business.

## Crawl4AI vs Apify, side by side

Each Apify cell restates Apify's own pages, read on 12 Nov 2026. Click it to see the quote and the page. "Not published" means those pages say nothing about it, not that it is missing.

|  | Crawl4AI Cloud | Apify |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing |  |  |
| How you pay | Credits in every plan: Free, Starter $10, Builder $99, Scale $499 | Free, Starter $19, Scale $199, Business $999; each tool has its own price |
| 1,000 plain / browser / hard pages | $0.10 / $0.50 / $2.00 | Web Fetch: $1.50 each on Starter, $1.00 on Business |
| Failed calls | Free, blocked pages included | Each tool sets its own rule |
| A page already cached | Half price | Not published |
| Unused credit | Extra credits never expire | Prepaid usage expires every billing cycle |
| Refunds | 14 days, if no credits were used | Failed runs paid back as usage, not money |
| What you get back |  |  |
| Formats | Markdown, HTML, links, media, metadata, tables; engine and cache on every answer | Web Fetch: Markdown, HTML, text, links, raw |
| Whole site | /site deep crawl (500 pages a call); /scan up to 50,000 URLs | Website Content Crawler, priced by compute |
| Google results as data | /serp 1 credit; ads, maps and AI overview inside | $2.50 per 1,000 pages; ads +$5.00, AI overview +$2.00 |
| Named sites | 93 recipes from one team; a LinkedIn profile 1 credit | 114,028 store tools, most by outside creators |
| Extraction | /extract by schema or plain words; median 1.87 credits | AI Web Scraper: $25 per 1,000 pages on Starter |
| Documents | PDF, Word and Excel; a PDF costs one page | Web Fetch reads PDF text only |
| Change monitoring | Watch (beta) | Not published as an Apify tool |
| Hard sites |  |  |
| Proxies | standard and extra levels; country choice; included in the page price | Residential billed by traffic, $8 a GB on Starter |
| Bot checks | Gets past bot checks and CAPTCHA pages on hard sites; a page we cannot get costs nothing | Unblocker, $1.50 per 1,000 requests |
| Agents |  |  |
| MCP | Hosted, no install; key or OAuth; 17 tools | Hosted and local; OAuth or token |
| Setup | One message sets it up in 7 coding agents | A CLI command per client |
| Agent budget | Estimate, balance, spend cap and top-up as tools; cost on every answer | A cap the agent sets on each run |
| Results | In the answer | Run status first; results by a second tool |
| Open source |  |  |
| License | Apache 2.0, 87,236 GitHub stars | Crawlee library: Apache-2.0 |
| Self-host | The same engine as the Cloud | Libraries only; platform self-host not published |

Crawl4AI's prices come from its live price list, GET /v1/prices. Prices change; check each product's own pricing page before you decide.

The trade-off

## What each one does better

### Where Apify does best

1. **Your own code in the cloud.** Write a scraper in JavaScript or Python and run it there, with storage, schedules and webhooks.
2. **No-code connectors.** Ready links to Zapier, Make, n8n and similar tools.
3. **Browser scripts you write.** Templates for Playwright, Puppeteer and Selenium for click-and-fill jobs.
4. **One flat fetch price.** Web Fetch charges the same for a hard page as for a plain one.

### Where Crawl4AI is the better choice

1. **Pay for the work, not the attempt.** 0.1 credit for a plain page, nothing for a failed or blocked call, half price for a page we already hold.
2. **Made for agents.** One message sets it up; 17 MCP tools cover recipes, jobs, cost estimates and the budget.
3. **Ready data from named sites.** 93 recipes from one team, LinkedIn included, return fixed columns for about 1 credit.
4. **Built for enterprise.** Three regions, teams and an audit log from Builder, SSO and SCIM, and 14-day refunds.

Switch in one prompt

## Move your Apify calls in minutes

Paste this into Claude Code, Cursor or Codex in your project. It finds your Apify calls and moves them to Crawl4AI, one endpoint at a time, and keeps both working until you check the results.
Move this project's Apify calls to Crawl4AI Cloud. Read https://crawl4ai.com/llms.txt first. 1. Find every call to the Apify API or SDK. 2. Map each one: apify/web-fetch → POST /scrape · apify/rag-web-browser → GET /search + POST /scrape/batch · apify/website-content-crawler → POST /site · /scan + /scrape/jobs · apify/google-search-scraper → GET /serp · apify/ai-web-scraper → POST /extract · Store tools for LinkedIn, Amazon, Maps → POST /recipes/{name} · Batch run + get-dataset-items → POST /scrape/jobs · maxTotalChargeUsd → /v1/estimate · spend_cap. 3. Read the key from CRAWL4AI_API_KEY (YOUR_CRAWL4AI_API_KEY). 4. Keep the old path behind a flag; compare 20 real URLs on both; show me the diff.

| Apify |  | Crawl4AI |
|---|---|---|
| apify/web-fetch | → | POST /scrape |
| apify/rag-web-browser | → | GET /search + POST /scrape/batch |
| apify/website-content-crawler | → | POST /site · /scan + /scrape/jobs |
| apify/google-search-scraper | → | GET /serp |
| apify/ai-web-scraper | → | POST /extract |
| Store tools for LinkedIn, Amazon, Maps | → | POST /recipes/{name} |
| Batch run + get-dataset-items | → | POST /scrape/jobs |
| maxTotalChargeUsd | → | /v1/estimate · spend_cap |

From both products' docs, 12 Nov 2026.

## Using both

Not either-or. Both speak MCP, so one agent can hold both. A team could keep its own scraper code and no-code flows on Apify and use Crawl4AI for pages, Google results, recipes and EU data.

## Frequently asked questions
How much does Apify cost per 1,000 pages?

It depends on the tool. Apify's Web Fetch costs $1.50 per 1,000 pages on Starter and $1.00 on Business, for any page; Website Content Crawler is priced by compute at "approximately" $0.2 to $5 per 1,000. Crawl4AI costs $0.10 per 1,000 plain pages and $0.50 per 1,000 browser pages.
Do I pay for failed Apify runs?

It depends on the tool. Web Fetch charges "nothing for failed requests", but Apify's guide tells tool developers to "Charge for inputs that seem valid but lead to errors, such as URLs that return a 404". On Crawl4AI a failed call costs nothing, a blocked page included.
Does Apify roll over unused credit or give refunds?

No to both, by its own pages: unused usage credits "expire at the end of the billing cycle" and fees are "non-cancellable, non-refundable". On Crawl4AI extra credits never expire, and a first payment or a credit purchase is refundable within 14 days if no credit was used.
Does Apify have EU data residency?

Apify "operates the platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the us-east-1 region", in one region. Crawl4AI runs in the EU, Singapore and the US, and keeps account and billing data in the EU.
How much does Apify charge for Google search results?

Apify's Google Search Results Scraper charges $2.50 per 1,000 result pages on Starter, plus $2.00 per 1,000 AI overviews and $5.00 per 1,000 pages for ads, charged "regardless of whether ads are found". Crawl4AI /serp is 1 credit ($1.00 per 1,000) with ads, AI overview and maps in the answer.
What is a good Apify alternative for LinkedIn?

Crawl4AI has LinkedIn recipes for profiles, companies, jobs, people search and posts, from the same team; a profile costs 1 credit ($1.00 per 1,000). On Apify the top LinkedIn profile tools are third-party, at $4.00 to $10.00 per 1,000.
Is Crawl4AI a library you run yourself, at $0.50 per 1,000 pages?

No. Apify's alternatives page calls Crawl4AI "a library you run for yourself", and an Apify blog post prices 1,000 plain pages on Crawl4AI Cloud at $0.50; neither is correct. Crawl4AI Cloud is live in three regions with a public price list: a plain page is 0.1 credit, so 1,000 cost $0.10, with proxies and browsers included. The open-source engine is Apache 2.0, not MIT as another Apify post says, with 87,236 GitHub stars (GitHub, 2026-11-12).

Sources and method

1. [Apify pricing ↗](https://apify.com/pricing.md)
2. [Apify Web Fetch ↗](https://apify.com/apify/web-fetch.md)
3. [Apify Google Search Results Scraper prices ↗](https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apify~google-search-scraper)
4. [Apify AI Web Scraper prices ↗](https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apify~ai-web-scraper)
5. [Apify Website Content Crawler ↗](https://apify.com/apify/website-content-crawler.md)
6. [Apify terms ↗](https://docs.apify.com/legal/general-terms-and-conditions.md)
7. [Apify security: shared responsibility ↗](https://docs.apify.com/security/shared-responsibility.md)
8. [Apify MCP server ↗](https://docs.apify.com/mcp.md)
9. [Apify status ↗](https://status.apify.com)
10. [Crawl4AI prices ↗](https://crawl4ai.com/v1/prices)
11. [Crawl4AI legal ↗](https://crawl4ai.com/legal/)

We read these pages on 12 Nov 2026. Crawl4AI's facts come from its live price list, docs and terms. Something wrong or out of date? Write to hello@crawl4ai.com and we fix it.