Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Apify VS Octoparse

Compare Apify VS Octoparse and see what are their differences

Apify logo Apify

Apify is a web scraping and automation platform that can turn any website into an API.

Octoparse logo Octoparse

Octoparse provides easy web scraping for anyone. Our advanced web crawler, allows users to turn web pages into structured spreadsheets within clicks.
  • Apify Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-30

Apify is a JavaScript & Node.js based data extraction tool for websites that crawls lists of URLs and automates workflows on the web. With Apify you can manage and automatically scale a pool of headless Chrome / Puppeteer instances, maintain queues of URLs to crawl, store crawling results locally or in the cloud, rotate proxies and much more.

  • Octoparse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-09

Extract web data in 3 steps

  1. Enter website URL you'd like to extract data from
  2. Click on the target data to extract
  3. Run the extraction and get data

Apify features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Apify provides a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for users of all technical levels to create and manage web scraping tasks.
  • Scalability
    Apify is built to handle tasks of various sizes, from small-scale projects to enterprise-level operations, making it a scalable solution.
  • Integration and API Support
    It offers extensive API support, allowing for seamless integration with other tools and systems to enhance automated workflows.
  • Customizability
    Users can customize their scraping bots (actors) with different settings and scripts to fit specific needs and requirements.
  • Cloud-based
    Being a cloud-based platform, Apify allows users to run their scraping tasks without needing local resources, which is convenient and efficient.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    Apify provides thorough documentation and tutorials, which help users get started quickly and solve issues efficiently.
  • Community and Support
    Apify has an active community and solid customer support to assist users with their needs and enhance their overall experience.

Possible disadvantages of Apify

  • Learning Curve
    While the interface is user-friendly, there may still be a learning curve for those new to web scraping and automation.
  • Cost
    Apify can be expensive compared to other web scraping tools, particularly for extensive use cases that require high volumes of data.
  • Dependency on External Factors
    Web scraping often depends on the stability of the target websites. Changes in website structures can break scripts, requiring ongoing maintenance.
  • Performance Limitations
    The performance of cloud-based scraping tasks can be affected by network latency and other external factors beyond user control.
  • Potential Legal Issues
    Web scraping can raise legal concerns, particularly when scraping data from websites that restrict such activities in their terms of service.
  • Resource Intensity
    Complex scraping tasks can be resource-intensive, potentially requiring higher-tier subscriptions and more computing resources, driving up costs.

Octoparse features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Octoparse offers a drag-and-drop interface, which makes it accessible even for users without any coding experience. This lowers the learning curve significantly.
  • Customizable Workflows
    The tool provides various options for customizing data extraction workflows, allowing users to tailor the extraction process according to their specific needs.
  • Cloud-Based Platform
    Octoparse runs in the cloud, enabling users to execute and schedule scraping tasks without the need for local resources, thus saving time and computational power.
  • Automatic IP Rotation
    Automatic IP rotation helps to prevent IP bans and CAPTCHAs, making the scraping process more efficient and reducing the risk of getting blocked by websites.
  • Data Export Options
    The platform offers various data export options, such as CSV, Excel, HTML, and JSON. It can also directly integrate with databases and APIs for seamless data transfer.

Possible disadvantages of Octoparse

  • Pricing
    While Octoparse offers a free plan, the advanced features and higher extraction limits are only available in the paid plans, which can be expensive for individual users and small businesses.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    Despite its user-friendly interface, mastering Octoparse's advanced features and capabilities can still require a steep learning curve for some users.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users have reported occasional performance issues, such as crashes and slowdowns, particularly with larger data extraction tasks.
  • Data Accuracy
    In some instances, the extracted data may have accuracy issues, requiring manual verification and cleaning, which can be time-consuming.
  • Limited Customer Support
    Customer support can be limited, especially for users on the free or lower-tier plans, making it difficult to resolve complex issues promptly.

Apify videos

Apify product news - 2019/01/30

Octoparse videos

Create your first scraper with Octoparse 7 X

More videos:

  • Review - Web Scraping Amazon Products with Octoparse - Basics (PSC5)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apify and Octoparse)
Web Scraping
58 58%
42% 42
Data Extraction
56 56%
44% 44
Data
56 56%
44% 44
Web Scraping API
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Apify and Octoparse

Apify Reviews

Top 15 Best TinyTask Alternatives in 2022
This is another tinytask alternative. For you to link various web services and APIs, Apify has provided many web integration options. You can add data processing and customised computation processes in addition to letting the data flow between them. With the data that is freely accessible on the web, you may provide crucial insights, and easy lead creation allows you to...

Octoparse Reviews

  1. I want to give this prodect a huge shout-out! It really works like a charm!

    I've been playing around with different scraping tools in the past month, trying to find the best one to help with my research project, and I have to say this new feature of auto-detection comes like a life-savor. I only need to give the software the link and it will auto-detect the content and build the crawler for me. I can even enjoy it with just a free plan!

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apify should be more popular than Octoparse. It has been mentiond 26 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Apify mentions (26)

  • How to scrape TikTok using Python
    For deployment, we'll use the Apify platform. It's a simple and effective environment for cloud deployment, allowing efficient interaction with your crawler. Call it via API, schedule tasks, integrate with various services, and much more. - Source: dev.to / 17 days ago
  • How to scrape Bluesky with Python
    We already have a fully functional implementation for local execution. Let us explore how to adapt it for running on the Apify Platform and transform in Apify Actor. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Web scraping with GPT-4o: powerful but expensive
    We've had the best success by first converting the HTML to a simpler format (i.e. markdown) before passing it to the LLM. There are a few ways to do this that we've tried, namely Extractus[0] and dom-to-semantic-markdown[1]. Internally we use Apify[2] and Firecrawl[3] for Magic Loops[4] that run in the cloud, both of which have options for simplifying pages built-in, but for our Chrome Extension we use... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Current problems and mistakes of web scraping in Python and tricks to solve them!
    Developed by Apify, it is a Python adaptation of their famous JS framework crawlee, first released on Jul 9, 2019. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Show HN: Crawlee for Python – a web scraping and browser automation library
    Hey all, This is Jan, the founder of [Apify](https://apify.com/)—a full-stack web scraping platform. After the success of [Crawlee for JavaScript](https://github.com/apify/crawlee/) today! The main features are: - A unified programming interface for both HTTP (HTTPX with BeautifulSoup) & headless browser crawling (Playwright). - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
View more

Octoparse mentions (3)

  • Thingiverse.com
    Octoparse.com might work, they have a very nice interactive tool + 14 day free trail. Source: over 3 years ago
  • How to Scrape and Export Products Data from Aliexpress
    These are no-code solutions for scraping websites. You don’t need any technical knowledge to scrape Aliexpress using these tools. Using advanced AI-powered click and scrape tools, you can get started scraping within seconds either locally or in the cloud. Choosing a good scraping tool can save you lots of money and time as well. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • Amazon web scraping
    I have always been able to extract data without any problems with Octoparse. It is also a very easy to use tool. Source: almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apify and Octoparse, you can also consider the following products

import.io - Import. io helps its users find the internet data they need, organize and store it, and transform it into a format that provides them with the context they need.

Scrapy - Scrapy | A Fast and Powerful Scraping and Web Crawling Framework

ParseHub - ParseHub is a free web scraping tool. With our advanced web scraper, extracting data is as easy as clicking the data you need.

Content Grabber - Content Grabber is an automated web scraping tool.

Zyte - We're Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub), the central point of entry for all your web data needs.

Bright Data - World's largest proxy service with a residential proxy network of 72M IPs worldwide and proxy management interface for zero coding.