How to Use Apify for Web Scraping & Automation in 2026

by Fahim Joharder | Last updated Aug 13, 2026

Quick Start

This guide covers every Apify feature:

Getting Started — Create account and basic setup
How to Use AI Web Scraper — Pull structured data from any page with plain English prompts
How to Use Apify Store — Find ready-made Actors for thousands of scraping tasks
How to Use Actors — Run small cloud programs that automate data collection
How to Use Integrations — Send scraped data straight to the tools you already use
How to Use AI agents — Feed live web data to LLMs through the Apify API
How to Use Anti-blocking — Keep runs alive past captchas and IP bans
How to Use Proxy — Serve each request from rotating IP addresses
How to Use Crawlee — Build custom crawlers with a free open-source library
How to Use Code templates — Start new Actors from Python and JavaScript boilerplate

Time needed: 5 minutes per feature

Also in this guide: Pro Tips | Common Mistakes | Troubleshooting | Pricing | Alternatives

Why Trust This Guide

I’ve used Apify for eight months and tested every feature covered here.

This step by step tutorial comes from real hands-on runs — not marketing fluff or vendor screenshots.

Apify is one of the most powerful web scraping and automation tools available today.

But most users only scratch the surface of what it can do.

This guide shows you how to use every major feature.

Step by step, with screenshots and pro tips.

Apify Tutorial

This complete How to Use Apify tutorial walks you through every feature, from first login to advanced tips.

By the end, you’ll understand how each piece fits together.

Apify

Turn any website into structured data. Apify gives you thousands of ready-made Actors, plus the tools to build and even sell your own. Start free — no credit card required.

TRY APIFY NOW →

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APIFY ALTERNATIVES →

Getting Started with Apify

Before using any feature, complete this one-time setup.

It takes about 3 minutes.

Watch this quick video overview first:

Apify Tutorial For Beginners | How To Use Apify

Now let’s walk through each step.

Step 1: Create Your Account

Go to apify.com and click Sign up for free.

Enter your email and a password, or continue with Google or GitHub.

Every Apify account starts on the Free plan by default.

✓ Checkpoint: Check your inbox for a confirmation email.

Step 2: Open the Apify Console

Apify runs fully in your browser, which keeps setup easy — nothing to download.

This dashboard is where you manage Actors, runs, and datasets.

Here’s what the dashboard looks like:

✓ Checkpoint: You should see the main dashboard.

Step 3: Complete Initial Setup

Follow the short onboarding prompts and tell Apify what you want to build.

No worries if you skip something — every setting can change later.

✅ Done: You’re ready to use any feature below.

Try Apify for free

How to Use Apify AI Web Scraper

AI Web Scraper lets you pull structured data from any page using plain English prompts.

Here’s how to use it step by step.

Step 1: Open AI Web Scraper

Find AI Web Scraper in the Apify Store and click Try for free.

Step 2: Describe the data you need

Paste the website URL, then type what you want in plain English.

For example, ask for product names, prices, and review scores.

Here’s what this looks like:

✓ Checkpoint: The preview shows extracted fields matching your prompt.

Step 3: Save and start

Click Save & Start, then watch the run collect your data.

✅ Result: Structured data from any page — no selectors, no code.

💡 Pro Tip: Specific prompts beat vague ones — name the exact fields you want extracted.

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How to Use Apify Store

The Apify Store lets you find ready-made Actors instead of coding from scratch.

Here’s how to use it step by step.

Step 1: Browse the Store

Open apify.com/store or click Store in the console.

Search for the website you want to scrape — Google Maps, for example.

Step 2: Choose an Actor

Compare ratings, user numbers, and pricing on each listing.

Here’s what this looks like:

✓ Checkpoint: You see the Actor detail page with docs and input examples.

Step 3: Try it free

Click Try for free and the Actor gets added to your Apify account.

✅ Result: You have a working scraper without writing a line of code.

💡 Pro Tip: The Store is a good place to check first — with thousands of Actors, someone probably built it.

Try Apify for free

How to Use Apify Actors

Apify Actors are small cloud programs that perform specific tasks, like scraping one website.

Here’s how to use them step by step.

Step 1: Create a new task

Pick an Actor and click the Create a new task button.

Step 2: Configure the input options

Set start URLs plus any input values and options the run needs.

The Link selector and Pseudo URLs control which links get added to the queue.

Advanced Actors run a pageFunction — JavaScript that executes on every page visited.

Here’s what this looks like:

✓ Checkpoint: The input form validates with no red warnings.

Step 3: Run and monitor

Click Start and follow progress in the run details.

Apify lets you run Actors in the cloud without keeping your computer on.

✅ Result: Your data waits in a dataset, ready to export as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

💡 Pro Tip: One Actor can power many tasks — create a separate task for each website you scrape.

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How to Use Apify Integrations

Integrations let you send scraped data straight to the apps you already use.

Here’s how to use them step by step.

Step 1: Open the Integrations tab

Inside any task, click Integrations.

Step 2: Choose an integration

Pick Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, or a plain webhook.

Here’s what this looks like:

✓ Checkpoint: The integration shows as connected on your task.

Step 3: Set the trigger

Webhooks can ping you when a task starts, finishes, or fails.

✅ Result: Fresh data lands in your other tools automatically.

💡 Pro Tip: Set a webhook on failed runs so silent errors never slip past you.

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How to Use Apify AI Agents

AI agents let you feed live web data to LLMs and agent frameworks.

Here’s how to use them step by step.

Step 1: Get your API token

Open Settings in the Apify Console and copy your personal API token.

Step 2: Connect your framework

Install the Apify client for Python or JavaScript.

Point LangChain, LlamaIndex, or your own agent at the Apify API.

Here’s what this looks like:

✓ Checkpoint: Your agent can call any Actor programmatically.

Step 3: Let the agent pull live data

Have the agent run an Actor, then read results from the dataset.

✅ Result: Your LLM answers with fresh web data instead of stale training data.

💡 Pro Tip: Pair your agent with the RAG Web Browser Actor to give any LLM live search.

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How to Use Apify Anti-Blocker

Anti-blocking lets you scrape at scale without captchas killing your runs.

Here’s how to use it step by step.

Step 1: Turn on browser fingerprinting

Open your Actor input and enable the anti-blocking options.

No matter which website you target, defaults handle most blocks.

Step 2: Tune concurrency and retries

Lower max concurrency so your traffic looks human.

Here’s what this looks like:

✓ Checkpoint: Requests succeed without captcha pages in the log.

Step 3: Test on a small batch

Run 20 pages and watch the success rate before scaling up.

✅ Result: Runs finish cleanly instead of dying behind captcha walls.

💡 Pro Tip: If blocks continue, switch the proxy group before you throw more retries at it.

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How to Use Apify Proxy

Apify Proxy lets you route requests through rotating IP addresses.

Here’s how to use it step by step.

Step 1: Open proxy settings

In your task input, scroll to the Proxy section.

Step 2: Pick a proxy type

Datacenter proxies are cheap and fast.

Residential proxies serve requests through real-user IPs for stubborn sites.

Here’s what this looks like:

✓ Checkpoint: The proxy field shows your selected group.

Step 3: Set country and sessions

Choose a country if the site shows location-based content.

✅ Result: Requests rotate through fresh IPs, so you look like many real users.

💡 Pro Tip: Start with datacenter proxies — upgrade to residential only when sites still block you.

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How to Use Apify Crawlee

Crawlee lets you build custom crawlers in JavaScript or Python.

Here’s how to use it step by step.

Step 1: Install the package

Run npx crawlee create my-crawler, or pip install crawlee for Python.

Step 2: Write your crawler logic

Define a request handler that extracts data and enqueues new links.

Here’s what this looks like:

✓ Checkpoint: Your crawler runs locally and prints scraped data.

Step 3: Deploy to Apify

Run apify push to turn your crawler into a cloud Actor.

✅ Result: A custom crawler you fully control, hosted on the platform.

💡 Pro Tip: The same Crawlee code runs on your computer and in the cloud, unchanged.

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How to Use Apify Code Templates

Code templates let you start new Actors from working boilerplate.

Here’s how to use them step by step.

Step 1: Open the templates page

Click Develop new in the console and pick View templates.

Step 2: Choose a template

Options cover Playwright, Puppeteer, BeautifulSoup, Scrapy, and more.

Here’s what this looks like:

✓ Checkpoint: A ready project opens with sample scraping code inside.

Step 3: Build and deploy

Edit the boilerplate, design your input schema, and run apify push.

✅ Result: A published Actor built in minutes, not days.

💡 Pro Tip: Interested in earning from your code? Share your Actor in the Store — more people are buying scrapers there every month.

Try Apify for free

Apify Pro Tips and Shortcuts

After testing Apify for eight months, here are my best tips.

Command Line Shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
Log in from the terminal	apify login
Start an Actor from a template	apify create
Run an Actor locally	apify run
Push an Actor to the cloud	apify push

Hidden Features Most People Miss

Schedules: Open any task and add a schedule — runs repeat automatically and keep datasets up to date.
Storage tab: Every dataset, key-value store, and request queue lives here with its own API endpoint.
Actor monetization: Publish your scraper and get paid — the platform serves more than 25k customers, and the web scraping market is expected to grow at 14.20% CAGR through 2030.

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Apify Common Mistakes to Avoid

Mistake #1: Coding everything from scratch

❌ Wrong: Spending days writing a custom scraper before checking what exists.

✅ Right: Search the Apify Store first — thousands of Actors already handle common websites.

Mistake #2: Launching huge runs untested

❌ Wrong: Pointing an Actor at 50,000 URLs on the very first run.

✅ Right: Test with 10 to 20 pages, check the output, then scale up.

Mistake #3: Ignoring usage limits

❌ Wrong: Letting one heavy run burn through your monthly platform credits.

✅ Right: Watch your usage numbers in the console and cap memory per run.

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Apify Troubleshooting

Problem: Your Actor run fails right away

Cause: Broken input — usually a malformed start URL or invalid JSON.

Fix: Open the run log and view the line where it throws an error. Fix that input value and restart.

Problem: The dataset comes back empty

Cause: The page loads content with JavaScript, or your selectors miss the target.

Fix: Switch to a browser-based Actor. Then check your Link selector and pageFunction logic.

Problem: The website blocks your requests

Cause: Too many requests from one IP address in a short window.

Fix: Enable Apify Proxy, lower concurrency, and add small delays between requests.

📌 Note: Still stuck? Post in the Apify community forum — developers usually reply fast — or contact Apify support.

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What is Apify?

Apify is a web scraping and automation platform that turns websites into structured data.

Think of it like an app store for scrapers — pick a tool, run it, download the results.

Apify handles the heavy lifting of web scraping, so you can focus on the data.

Watch this quick overview:

How to scrape ANY website with Apify’s Web Scraper API

It includes these key features:

AI Web Scraper: Pull structured data from any page with plain English prompts
Apify Store: Find ready-made Actors for thousands of scraping tasks
Actors: Run small cloud programs that automate data collection
Integrations: Send scraped data straight to the tools you already use
AI agents: Feed live web data to LLMs through the Apify API
Anti-blocking: Keep runs alive past captchas and IP bans
Proxy: Serve each request from rotating IP addresses
Crawlee: Build custom crawlers with a free open-source library
Code templates: Start new Actors from Python and JavaScript boilerplate

For a full review, see our Apify review.

Try Apify for free

Apify Pricing

Wondering what Apify costs in 2026? Here’s the full breakdown:

Plan	Price	Best For
Free	$0	Testing Actors and small personal projects
Starter	$35	Freelancers and solo developers
Scale	$179	Growing teams with regular scraping needs
Business	$899	Large-scale data operations

Free trial: Yes — the $0 Free plan includes monthly platform credits, so you can test real runs.

Money-back guarantee: Not advertised. You can cancel anytime, and the Free plan lets you test first.

💰 Best Value: Starter — $35 buys enough platform credits for most solo scraping projects.

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Apify vs Alternatives

How does Apify compare? Here’s the competitive landscape:

Tool	Best For	Price	Rating
Apify	Full-stack scraping platform	$35/mo	⭐ 4.5
Scrapy	Developers who code	$0	⭐ 4.4
Bright Data	Enterprise-scale scraping	$499/mo	⭐ 4.6
Octoparse	No-code beginners	$99/mo	⭐ 4.3
ScrapingBee	Simple API scraping	$49/mo	⭐ 4.5
ScrapeGraphAI	AI-first extraction	$20/mo	⭐ 4.2

Quick picks:

Best overall: Apify — cloud runs, a huge Store, and code options in one platform
Best budget: Scrapy — completely free if you host it yourself
Best for beginners: Octoparse — visual point-and-click scraping
Best for AI extraction: ScrapeGraphAI — prompt-based scraping built around LLMs

🎯 Apify Alternatives

Looking for Apify alternatives? Here are the top options:

🔧 Scrapy: Free, open-source Python framework for developers who want full control. No cloud costs, but you host and maintain everything yourself.
🏢 Bright Data: Enterprise proxy networks and ready datasets for scraping at serious scale. Powerful, but pricing suits big budgets.
👶 Octoparse: No-code visual scraper for beginners. Point, click, and extract without touching code — though complex sites can push its limits.
⚡ ScrapingBee: Simple scraping API that hides headless browsers and proxies behind one endpoint. Great when you just want clean HTML back fast.
🧠 ScrapeGraphAI: AI-powered extraction that turns natural language prompts into structured data. Young platform, but the LLM-first approach feels ahead of the curve.

For the full list, see our Apify alternatives guide.

⚔️ Apify Compared

Here’s how Apify stacks up against each competitor:

Apify vs Scrapy: Scrapy wins on price — it’s free. Apify wins on everything hosted: scheduling, proxies, storage, and a marketplace of ready Actors.
Apify vs Bright Data: Bright Data leads for massive proxy pools and compliance tooling. Apify offers a friendlier console, lower entry price, and an Actor marketplace.
Apify vs Octoparse: Octoparse is simpler for pure no-code users. Apify scales further with code options, cloud scheduling, and thousands of pre-built Actors.
Apify vs ScrapingBee: ScrapingBee is leaner for one-off API calls. Apify adds storage, scheduling, monetization, and a Store full of finished scrapers.
Apify vs ScrapeGraphAI: ScrapeGraphAI focuses purely on AI extraction. Apify covers AI scraping plus proxies and automation — the broader platform wins for most users.

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Start Using Apify Now

You learned how to use every major Apify feature:

✅ AI Web Scraper
✅ Apify Store
✅ Actors
✅ Integrations
✅ AI agents
✅ Anti-blocking
✅ Proxy
✅ Crawlee
✅ Code templates

Next step: Pick one feature and try it now.

Most people start with the AI Web Scraper.

It takes less than 5 minutes.

Try Apify for free

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Apify used for?

Apify is used for web scraping, automation, and data extraction. You run Actors — small cloud programs — that pull structured data from websites, then export it as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Is Apify free to use?

Yes. The Free plan costs $0 and includes monthly platform credits. Paid plans start at $35 for Starter when you need more capacity.

How do I use Apify for web scraping?

Create a free Apify account, pick an Actor from the Store, configure the input options with your target URL, run the task, then download your data.

Is web scraping with Apify legal?

Scraping publicly available data is generally legal. Respect each website’s terms, avoid personal data, and follow privacy laws like GDPR. When in doubt, ask a lawyer first.

Can Apify scrape Instagram?

Yes. The Apify Store has Instagram scrapers that collect public profiles, posts, comments, and hashtags. They handle blocking for you, so no workarounds are needed.