The Simple Apify Alternative
Apify is a genuinely powerful platform — thousands of community actors, an SDK, scheduling, storage, an API for everything. If you're a developer building scraping into a product, it's a strong choice. But if what you actually need is "this hashtag, as a CSV, now", the platform tax is real: picking between near-identical actors, decoding each one's pricing model, JSON output to reshape, docs to read before your first row of data.
1Scrape is the other trade. Three sources — TikTok, Instagram, Google Maps — behind one form, with contact extraction built in, a flat published rate of $8 per 1,000 results, and $5.00 free to start. No actors, no compute units, no docs required.
Where the two tools actually differ
Setup
Apify: choose an actor, read its input schema, configure a run. 1Scrape: fill in a short form — target, filters, cap — and press start.
Pricing model
Apify combines platform plans with per-actor pricing that varies by author and model. 1Scrape is one number everywhere: $8 per 1,000 results, billed per result scraped, no subscription.
Output
Apify returns datasets you export or fetch via API — flexible, developer-shaped. 1Scrape returns one thing: a clean CSV that opens straight in Excel or Sheets.
Contact data
On 1Scrape, email, phone, bio, and link columns from public bios are part of every social export — and Google Maps runs can enrich emails from business websites. No add-on actors to chain.
Spend control
Your prepaid balance is a hard limit — a run holds its worst case up front and refunds the unused part. No surprise compute-unit bills.
When Apify is the better choice
Honesty cuts both ways. Pick Apify if you need sources beyond TikTok, Instagram, and Google Maps; if you're scheduling recurring pipelines into a warehouse; if you need a full API and SDK; or if you want to write custom actors for niche sites. It's a real developer platform, and 1Scrape doesn't try to be one.
Pick 1Scrape when the job is marketing, lead gen, or research on the three sources it covers — and you'd rather spend the afternoon using the data than wiring up the pipeline that fetches it.
Moving a workflow over is a five-minute test
There's no migration to speak of — no stored configuration worth porting. Take the hashtag, profile list, or Maps search you currently run through an actor, paste it into the matching 1Scrape form, and run it on the $5.00 free credits. Compare the CSV, the price, and the time it took. Whichever wins for your workflow, you'll know within the free tier.
How it works
Sign up free
$5.00 in credits on every new account — no credit card, no plan to pick.
Recreate your run
The same hashtag, username list, or "what in where" search you run today — typed into one form.
Run and watch live
A live counter instead of a log view. The run holds only its worst-case cost against your balance.
Compare the CSV
Same-shaped rows every time, contact columns included, billed per result scraped.
Frequently asked questions
Is 1Scrape cheaper than Apify?
It depends on the actor — Apify pricing varies by author, model, and your platform plan, so there's no single honest comparison. What we can say plainly: 1Scrape is $8 per 1,000 results with no subscription or platform fee, failed runs are free, and the $5.00 free credits let you price out your exact workload before spending anything.
Does 1Scrape have an API like Apify?
No — 1Scrape is deliberately a self-serve web tool: form in, CSV out, live progress in between. If you need programmatic scraping wired into an application, a developer platform like Apify is the right shape. If a human runs the scrape and a spreadsheet is the destination, you won't miss the API.
What sources does 1Scrape support?
TikTok (hashtags, keyword search, profiles, video URLs), Instagram (hashtags, profiles, Reels, locations), and Google Maps (search, categories, place URLs) — each with contact extraction. That's narrower than Apify's catalog on purpose: three sources, kept working, behind one interface.
How much does it cost?
Runs are priced at $8 per 1,000 results, and every new account starts with $5.00 in free credits — enough to pull thousands of rows before you pay anything. You're billed per result scraped — never for your full cap — and the unused hold is refunded the moment a run finishes. If you use a lead filter like "only profiles with an email", the CSV keeps just the matches while you still pay per profile scraped. If a run fails, it's refunded in full and never costs a credit.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. You fill in a short form — what to scrape and how many results you want — watch the count climb live, and download the CSV when it finishes. There's nothing to install and no API to wire up.