Best Free & Low-Cost Web Scraping APIs on Apify in 2026

Apify's marketplace now has over 20,000 actors — automated tools that handle everything from web scraping to AI data extraction. The best part? Many of the most useful ones cost less than a cent per run.

I've spent the last few weeks building and testing Apify actors across multiple categories. Here are the ones worth your time in 2026.

{{domain-intel}}

Need to know everything about a domain in one API call? This actor pulls WHOIS records, DNS resolution (A, AAAA, MX, NS, TXT), SSL certificate details, and technology stack detection — all in structured JSON.

Use it for lead enrichment, security audits, or competitor analysis. $0.005 per run.

{{screenshot-api}}

Sometimes you just need to see what a website looks like. This actor captures full-page or viewport screenshots via Playwright and returns them as base64 or a direct URL.

Good for visual monitoring, social media previews, or archival. $0.003 per run.

{{metadata-extractor}}

Extract Open Graph tags, Twitter Cards, JSON-LD structured data, and standard meta tags from any URL. Think of it as a programmable link preview generator.

Perfect for link unfurling, SEO analysis, or content aggregation. $0.002 per run.

{{screenshot-diff}}

Visual regression testing made simple. This actor takes two screenshots and produces a pixel-level diff with an overlay image showing exactly what changed.

Use it for UI testing, competitor monitoring, or deployment verification. $0.005 per run.

{{swedish-companies}}

Need official Swedish company data? This actor scrapes Bolagsverket (Sweden's company registry) and returns structured data including registration numbers, addresses, and officer information.

Works for business verification, compliance checks, or market research in Sweden. $0.003 per run.

{{ip-geo}}

Simple, fast IP geolocation. Drop in an IP and get country, city, ISP, ASN, and timezone data. Uses multiple free providers with automatic fallback.

Good for fraud detection, content localization, or analytics enrichment. $0.003 per run.

{{qr-generator}}

Generate QR codes programmatically — PNG or SVG output, customizable colors, sizes, and error correction levels. No external API dependency.

Useful for invoice generation, event tickets, or product labeling. $0.002 per run.

Why These Beat Building Your Own

Every actor above handles infrastructure you'd otherwise spend days setting up. Proxy rotation, anti-bot bypass, auto-scaling, REST API generation — all built in. They even work inside Claude, Cursor, and Windsurf via MCP.

At $0.002 to $0.005 per run, you'd spend more on electricity running your own server. If you've got a scraping problem that needs a custom solution, I'm active on the platform — reach out.