A marketplace of community scrapers vs managed, SLA-backed data APIs.
By Mohammad Shakir, Co-founder & CEO · Published 26 Oct 2026 · Updated 26 Oct 2026
Apify is a platform plus a marketplace: thousands of community-built 'actors' you rent, run and combine, with a free $5 credit and paid plans from roughly $29-49 a month (as of October 2026). Usage is metered in compute units, residential proxy traffic bills around $8/GB, and Store actors add their own per-result fees. It is a flexible model - and a variable one: actor quality and upkeep depend on each author. ScrapeGuys takes the opposite bet: fewer targets, built and operated in-house, with one accountable SLA.
| ScrapeGuys | Apify | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | In-house built and operated per-target APIs | Platform + marketplace of community actors |
| Who maintains the scraper | We do - monitored 24/7, fixes before your pipeline notices | The actor's author; quality and response time vary by actor |
| Reliability | 99%+ success in production, SLA-backed | Depends on the actor; you switch actors when one breaks |
| Cost structure | Flat success-based plans - no compute units, no proxy metering | Plan + compute units + ~$8/GB residential proxies + per-actor fees (Oct 2026) |
| Pricing (Oct 2026) | 1,000 calls free, then $15 / $79 / $319 per month | Free $5 credit; plans from ~$29-49/mo; usage billed on top |
| Hotel-rate specifics | Per-room rates, Genius/MMT Black member contexts, tax-split, rate-shop grids | Community Booking.com actors with varying fields and upkeep |
| Custom workflows | New fields, wrapper APIs, quote flows in 48-72h | You build or commission a custom actor |
| Best for | Revenue-critical feeds on specific platforms | Developers who enjoy assembling and tuning scrapers |
1,000 free API calls today, or a 20-minute scoping call for your targets - compare freshness, accuracy and latency on your real workload.