ApyHub vs Apify: The Apify Alternative Built on Reviewed APIs

ApyHub vs Apify: The Apify Alternative Built on Reviewed APIs

Last updated: September 25, 2026

01Introduction

ApyHub is an Apify alternative for teams that need web data inside an app or AI agent: page content, product data, article text, metadata. Where Apify runs an open store of scrapers and bills by compute, ApyHub offers a catalog of reviewed APIs, a clear policy on site terms and GDPR, and the exact cost of every call.

This post compares the two head on: what each one is built for, where each one wins, and how to switch.

02ApyHub vs Apify at a glance

03Where ApyHub wins

Reviewed APIs instead of an open store

Apify's Actor Terms (effective July 9, 2026) say Apify does "not review, vet, endorse, or monitor the Community Actors" or guarantee their "legal compliance" (section 9.1). Due diligence is "solely" yours (section 9.3). A search for LinkedIn in the Apify Store returns several scrapers that advertise "no cookies or account required," even though LinkedIn's User Agreement bans scraping. A US court enforced that ban in 2022: the hiQ Labs case ended with a $500,000 judgment and an injunction against hiQ (Morgan Lewis, December 22, 2022).

ApyHub reviews every API before it goes live. APIs whose main function breaks a third-party site's terms are rejected. Data APIs must use data the provider has rights to. You call an API that someone has already checked.

GDPR by design

Scraping personal data in the EU needs a lawful basis. The Dutch Data Protection Authority's May 2024 guidance says scraping by private companies "will almost always be in violation" of the GDPR (Hogan Lovells, May 13, 2024). The EU Court of Justice has since allowed commercial interests as a legitimate interest, but only where the processing is necessary and passes a balancing test (Hunton Andrews Kurth, October 28, 2024).

On Apify, community Actor creators "may have direct access to or control over" your inputs and outputs (Actor Terms, section 4.2). On ApyHub, the APIs you call have been reviewed, you pick the EU or US region for your workspace, and use extraction APIs built around content (pages, products, articles) instead of people.

The cost of every call, on the response

Apify bills compute units plus per-Actor pricing (Apify pricing). For a heavy scraping run that works. For an app making mixed calls, you learn the cost after the run.

ApyHub prices every API in atoms and lists each endpoint's cost on its page. When the work varies per request, the provider reports the exact cost of that call and ApyHub charges or refunds the difference. You see it on every response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
X-Apy-Atoms: 70

One unit covers the whole catalog, so budgeting is arithmetic. On Pro ($16/month, 100,000 atoms):

One subscription for everything around the scrape

Extraction is rarely the whole job. The page goes to Markdown, the PDF gets converted, the email gets validated, the text goes to an AI endpoint. On ApyHub, all of that runs on one key and one atom balance across a growing catalog of over 1,500 endpoints. Every endpoint is available through ApyHub MCP, so an AI agent can discover and call them directly without a hand-written wrapper or tool definition, and dynamic tool discovery keeps the catalog from flooding the model's context.

Explore the catalog →

04Where Apify wins

Apify is built for scraping at scale: proxies, headless browsers, scheduled crawls across thousands of pages, and a large store of site-specific scrapers. ApyHub has none of that and works one URL per call. If you run dozens of scheduled scrapers against sites with heavy anti-bot protection, Apify (or Bright Data and ZenRows) is the right tool. And if you need LinkedIn or Instagram profile data, ApyHub won't provide it.

05Switching from Apify to ApyHub

1. List the Actors you run. Mark which ones extract content (pages, products, articles, metadata) and which ones crawl or target people.
2. Map content Actors to APIs. Most map to HTML to Markdown, Extract Product Information, Extract Article, or the Web Scraping API.
3. Test on the free tier. Run your own URLs and compare the output.
4. Price your heaviest month from the atom costs in the table above.
5. Check the rest. Review site terms and personal data for anything you keep on a scraping platform.

A first call:

curl -X POST "https://api.eu.apyhub.com/chisleroff/convert-html-to-markdown" \
  -H "apy-token: $APY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://assets.apyhub.com/samples/sample.html"}'

{
  "title": "Apy Samples",
  "markdown": "# **A consequuntur voluptatem ut mollitia voluptatem.**\n\nLorem ipsum dolor sit amet...",
  "character_count": 7430,
  "readability_success": true
}

06Built a scraper on Apify? Publish it on ApyHub

If you've built extraction tools, list them on ApyHub and earn from every call:

• Publish in about 10 minutes. Schema, docs, and validation are generated for you.
• Set your own price in atoms, and use X-Apy-Atoms to charge by the work of each request (per page, per item, per model).
• Reach developers and AI agents. Every listed API is MCP-ready by default.
• Keep your IP. No exclusivity; sell the same API elsewhere too.
• Get paid monthly. Individuals can join without a registered company.

Your API goes through the same review: it must respect the target site's terms and use data you have rights to. Content extraction, product data, metadata, and page conversion APIs are a strong fit.

Become a provider →

07Conclusion

Apify is a scraping platform. ApyHub is the Apify alternative for teams that need web data inside an app or agent and want reviewed APIs, a clear stance on site terms and GDPR, and the cost of every call on the response. For crawling at scale, Apify still fits. For everything else, start with ApyHub.

Try ApyHub free, no card required →

08FAQ

What is the best Apify alternative? For extracting page content, product data, or article text inside an app or AI agent, ApyHub: reviewed APIs, one subscription, and a visible cost per call. For large-scale crawling, Bright Data or ZenRows.

Is there a free Apify alternative? Yes. ApyHub's Starter plan is free with 3,000 atoms a month and no credit card, about 60 HTML-to-Markdown conversions.

Is ApyHub cheaper than Apify? For mixed, lighter usage, usually yes: paid plans start at $16 a month and every call has a published cost. For heavy crawling, Apify's compute pricing can work out better.

Does ApyHub have LinkedIn or Instagram scrapers? No. APIs that break a third-party site's terms are rejected from the catalog.

How do I test ApyHub before switching? Run your own URLs through the free tier and compare the output with your Apify runs. Save the requests in an API client to rerun them. Voiden stores each request as a Markdown file in your Git repo; Postman and curl scripts work too.

Can I sell my scraper on ApyHub? Yes, if it respects the target site's terms and uses data you have rights to. You set the price in atoms and get paid monthly. Start at apyhub.com/become-a-provider.

09About ApyHub

ApyHub is a curated API catalog and trusted operational layer for developers and AI agents. It gives teams access to a growing catalog of over 1,500 endpoints and capabilities through a single subscription, priced in atoms (a per-call unit that reflects the actual work of each request). Every API carries machine-readable certification covering GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 [VERIFY: ApyHub's own SOC 2 and ISO 27001 audits are in progress; confirm this wording before publishing a compliance-focused post], and every endpoint is MCP-ready by default. ApyHub is headquartered in Amsterdam, with offices in the Netherlands, Greece, and India, and supports 65,000+ monthly developer workspaces [VERIFY: re-confirm]. The free tier requires no credit card. API providers can publish on ApyHub at apyhub.com/become-a-provider.