The Apify alternative for crawling the same sites on a schedule
Four differences that show up after the first month
- You pay per page, not per minute of compute: Apify bills the memory and time an actor runs, plus proxy traffic. Here a page costs a set number of credits for how it was read, and every response says which.
- Failures and repeats cost nothing: a blocked page, a 404 or a page that has not changed since the last run is free. On compute billing, the minutes a run spends on a page that failed are minutes paid for.
- Change tracking comes with every crawl: each run is compared with the last: pages added, modified and removed, prices and dates diffed field by field, noise filtered out. On Apify that is a separate Store actor to pick, set up and run.
- The data lands where you use it: 18 destinations, from Postgres, BigQuery and Snowflake to Pinecone and Kafka, on every plan. Apify connects to vector databases directly and to warehouses through ELT tools such as Airbyte and Keboola.
Apify pricing and MeshArc pricing
Apify sells prepaid platform usage, spent on compute, proxies and paid actors. MeshArc sells credits, spent per page by how it was read.
| Apify | MeshArc | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | $0, with $5 of usage a month | $0, with 1,000 credits once and no card |
| Paid plans | Starter $19, Scale $199, Business $999 a month; 10% off paid yearly | Starter $29, Growth $99, Scale $349 a month; Enterprise from $1,500 |
| What a plan buys | Usage: compute units at $0.13–0.20 each, proxies, paid actors | Credits: 1 a plain page, 2 a protected site’s page once a session is earned, 4 a rendered page |
| Not charged | Compute is billed for the time a run takes | Blocked pages, 404s and unchanged pages |
| Per 1,000 pages | Apify | MeshArc Growth | MeshArc Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain HTML page | about $0.20 | $0.20 | $0.14 |
| Page that needs a browser | about $0.50–5 | $0.79 | $0.56 |
| Protected site | $1–1.50 with Apify’s Unblocker | $0.40 once a session is earned | $0.28 |
| Blocked page or 404 | the compute it took | free | free |
What each one does
| Apify | MeshArc | |
|---|---|---|
| Ready-made scrapers for particular sites | Yes, in the Apify Store | No: one crawler for any site |
| Write and host your own scraper code | Yes: actors, and Crawlee as open source | No: browser steps and JSON extraction, no code |
| Billing | Compute time and proxy traffic | Per page, by how it was read |
| Scheduled runs | Yes | Yes |
| What changed since the last run | Through Store actors | Built in, down to the field |
| Load into Postgres, BigQuery or Snowflake | Through ELT tools (Airbyte, Keboola) | Built in |
| Vector databases | Pinecone, Qdrant, Milvus | Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes, 17 tools |
Where Apify is the better choice
If you need a ready-made scraper for one platform, such as Google Maps, Instagram or Amazon, or you want to write and host your own crawler code, Apify’s Store and platform are the better fit. MeshArc is one crawler for any site, built for reading the same sites again and again.
Move a crawl over in an afternoon
- List what your actors crawl: the sites, the sections and how often.
- Make a project per site: with the same schedule. The first run reads the whole scope; every run after it reports what changed.
- Send the output where it goes now: to one of 18 destinations, or read it from the API.
- Retire the actors: once a run or two match what they produced.
Comparing with someone else?
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Apify alternative?
It depends on what you use Apify for. For a ready-made scraper of one platform, the Apify Store is hard to replace. For crawling the same sites on a schedule and knowing what changed, MeshArc is built for exactly that, and blocked pages, 404s and unchanged pages are free.
How much does Apify cost?
There is a free plan with $5 of usage a month, then Starter at $19, Scale at $199 and Business at $999 a month, 10% less when paid yearly. A plan is prepaid platform usage, spent on compute units ($0.13–0.20 each, by plan), proxies and paid actors. Figures from apify.com/pricing, read on 1 October 2026.
Is MeshArc cheaper than Apify?
For plain pages the two cost about the same, around $0.20 per 1,000. For pages that need a browser, MeshArc is $0.56–0.79 per 1,000 on the Growth and Scale plans, against Apify’s own estimate of $0.50–5 for its crawler. And here a blocked page, a 404 or an unchanged page costs nothing.
Apify or Firecrawl: which should I use?
Apify is a marketplace and a platform for running scrapers, ready-made or your own. Firecrawl turns pages into Markdown for language models and adds web search. If you re-crawl the same sites and need to know what changed, delivered to your database, MeshArc is the third option; the Firecrawl comparison is linked above.
Do I need to write or maintain actors on MeshArc?
No. A project is a site, a schedule and the formats you want. MeshArc picks how to read each page, cheapest first, and climbs only when a page needs it.
Try it on a site your actors crawl today
The second run is where the difference shows: only what changed.