Picking a scraping platform is a commitment — you'll build pipelines on it, so switching costs real time. After running lead-gen, price-monitoring, and SERP pipelines on all three, here's the honest breakdown.
TL;DR
- Apify — best all-rounder: 4,000+ ready-made actors, free tier, agent-friendly. Where I'd start.
- Bright Data — best raw proxy network and enterprise compliance. Pricier, heavier.
- ScraperAPI — simplest "give me HTML" endpoint. Good for one-off projects, thin on coverage.
Apify
Model: actor marketplace + platform credits. You rent pre-built scrapers ("actors") or run your own on their infra.
Strengths
- 4,000+ maintained actors — Google Maps, Amazon, LinkedIn, Instagram, SERP... someone already built it
- Free tier with monthly credits — genuinely enough to test real pipelines
- Built-in scheduling, datasets, webhooks, proxies included
- Best fit for AI agents — actors are basically APIs with documented inputs
Weaknesses
- Credit pricing can confuse beginners (costs vary per actor)
- Heavy custom crawls need some platform learning
Verdict: if you need leads, products, reviews, or SERP data this week, Apify's free tier gets you there fastest. It's what I use for the pipelines below.
Bright Data
Model: premium proxy network + dedicated scraper APIs + datasets.
Strengths
- Largest residential/mobile proxy pool — unmatched geo coverage
- Enterprise-grade compliance documentation (KYC, legal review)
- Web Unlocker handles brutal targets
Weaknesses
- Pricing is enterprise-oriented — minimum commits sting for solo builders
- More moving pieces; steeper setup
- Overkill if your target isn't heavily protected
Verdict: the serious option when you're scraping at volume against hard targets, or when legal/compliance sign-off matters.
ScraperAPI
Model: single endpoint — send a URL, get HTML. They rotate proxies and render JS for you.
Strengths
- Dead simple — one API call
- Predictable per-request pricing
- Quick to bolt onto existing code
Weaknesses
- You still write and maintain the parsing logic
- No ready-made extractors; weaker for JS-heavy marketplaces
- Costs climb on protected targets
Verdict: great for DIY scrapers who just want the unblocking layer. Less great if you want structured data out-of-the-box.
Head-to-head
| Apify | Bright Data | ScraperAPI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ready-made scrapers | 4,000+ actors | API per site | none |
| Free tier | ✅ monthly credits | trial | trial |
| Proxy network | included | best-in-class | included |
| Fit for AI agents | ✅ skills + API | partial | partial |
| Best for | leads, ecommerce, social, SERP | enterprise scale | DIY unblocking |
What I'd pick
Solo dev / lead-gen / affiliate projects: Apify — the marketplace saves weeks, and the free tier is real.
Enterprise with compliance requirements: Bright Data.
You already have parsers and just need unblocking: ScraperAPI.
Try it yourself
Concrete pipelines I run on Apify, all documented with copy-paste code:
- Scrape Google Maps leads — phones, emails, websites at scale
- Scrape job postings — hiring signals as sales leads
- Amazon affiliate feed — live prices for affiliate sites
- Google SERP tracker — rank tracking without $100/mo SaaS
- Website → markdown for RAG — LLM-ready pipelines
More tools, proxies, and niche actors in awesome-web-scraping, plus agent skills that run these pipelines from a prompt.
What are you scraping? Comments open.
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