You check competitor prices, build prospect lists or gather reviews by copying and pasting from websites, and by the time you finish the data is already stale. Apify is a cloud platform for running 'Actors', scraping and automation programs. You can use an existing one or write your own, schedule it to run on its own, store the results and export them to other formats.
Who this is NOT for
If you need data from two or three pages once a month, do not build anything: copy it by hand and be done. And if nobody on your team codes, keep in mind these docs are written for developers (API, SDK, CLI). You could run a ready-made Actor, but building or tweaking one will require code. If the site you want to read blocks bots, Apify having proxies to get around that does not mean the site allows it; check its terms first.
What sets it apart is the Actor model: you do not buy a scraper, you browse a catalog where others publish theirs (and can charge for them), and you run the one that fits. The mistake almost everyone makes is writing their own scraper first when one probably already exists. The second thing people forget is that extracting the data is only half the job: if you do not set it up with Schedules and connect it to where you will use it, you end up with a file nobody opens. Worth it even if you never use the platform: the Academy courses are free and teach scraping from scratch.
Your first step
Open docs.apify.com, go to 'Run an existing Actor' and write down which data from a public website would save you an hour of copy-pasting each week.
The Apify implementation guide
The project belongs to docs.apify.com and it is free: the link beside asks for nothing. The guide to set it up without getting lost is ours: step by step, common mistakes and a checklist. Leave your email and we will send it.
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