Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Apify VS Outbrain

Compare Apify VS Outbrain and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Apify logo Apify

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

Outbrain logo Outbrain

Outbrain is the world's leading performance-driven discovery and native advertising platform. We help advertisers get discovered on leading publishers websites.
  • 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.

  • Outbrain Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20

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.

Outbrain features and specs

  • Global Reach
    Outbrain has partnerships with a variety of major publications worldwide, allowing you to reach a broad and diverse audience.
  • Targeting Options
    Outbrain offers advanced targeting features including geo-targeting, interest targeting, and behavioral targeting, which helps in reaching the right audience.
  • Engagement Metrics
    Provides detailed metrics and insights into how users are interacting with your content, allowing for data-driven decisions.
  • Ease of Use
    The platform is user-friendly and offers a streamlined process for setting up and managing campaigns.
  • Content Amplification
    Helps in amplifying your content and driving high-quality traffic to your website or blog.

Possible disadvantages of Outbrain

  • Cost
    Outbrain can be expensive compared to other content recommendation platforms, especially for small businesses.
  • Content Approval
    The content approval process can be stringent and time-consuming, potentially delaying campaigns.
  • Mixed Quality Traffic
    Not all the traffic driven by Outbrain may be of high quality, potentially resulting in lower conversion rates.
  • Ad Fatigue
    Frequent displays of the same content recommendations can lead to ad fatigue among users, thereby reducing effectiveness over time.
  • Limited Control
    While the targeting options are robust, there is still limited control over where exactly your content will appear, which could impact brand safety.

Analysis of Apify

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Apify is considered a good choice for web scraping and automation needs due to its comprehensive features, user-friendly interface, and strong community support. It is especially beneficial for those who require efficient, large-scale data extraction and workflow automation.

Why this product is good

  • Apify is an established platform known for its robust web scraping and automation capabilities. It provides a powerful API, pre-built actors for common tasks, and allows you to create custom web scrapers with ease. The platform is scalable, supports a variety of programming languages, and offers features like scheduling, proxies, and data storage solutions. This versatility makes it a valuable tool for businesses and developers needing efficient data retrieval and workflow automation.

Recommended for

  • Developers looking for a versatile web scraping solution.
  • Businesses needing to automate data collection processes.
  • Researchers and analysts requiring extensive data from the web.
  • Marketers seeking competitive analysis through data scraping.
  • Tech enthusiasts interested in exploring web automation tools.

Analysis of Outbrain

Overall verdict

  • Outbrain is generally considered good for businesses and marketers looking to increase content visibility and drive traffic. Its effectiveness, however, can depend on specific marketing goals, target audience, and content strategy. Some users appreciate its wide reach and engagement capabilities, while others may find the costs challenging without a clear ROI.

Why this product is good

  • Outbrain is a content discovery platform that helps publishers and marketers reach a larger audience by promoting their content across a network of high-quality sites. It is known for its advanced targeting options, which allow businesses to reach specific demographics, and its native advertising approach, which aims to better engage users compared to traditional ads.

Recommended for

  • Content Marketers
  • Digital Advertisers
  • Companies aiming to increase brand awareness
  • Publishers looking to monetize their websites

Apify videos

Apify product news - 2019/01/30

Outbrain videos

OUTBRAIN Amplify PUBLISHER Review | Underground Targeted Traffic Source

More videos:

  • Review - Should You Be Using Outbrain or Taboola? | Ep. #233
  • Review - Outbrain Adsense Reviews: for Publisher | Earn High Revenue with Outrain For Blogger & Websites

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apify and Outbrain)
Web Scraping
100 100%
0% 0
Advertising
0 0%
100% 100
Data Extraction
100 100%
0% 0
Ad Networks
0 0%
100% 100

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 Outbrain

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...

Outbrain Reviews

The 5 Best Content Marketing Tools You Aren't Using
4. Outbrain. Are you already creating great content but struggling to distribute it to the right networks? Outbrain is for you. The easy-to-use platform can amplify your audience for virtually any piece of content, including blogs, articles, videos, and infographics. Your content appears alongside other articles as promoted content suggestions. While this is a โ€œpay-to-playโ€...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apify seems to be a lot more popular than Outbrain. While we know about 46 links to Apify, we've tracked only 3 mentions of Outbrain. 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 (46)

  • Google's News API has been gone since 2016, and people still search for it
    That runs News Scraper on Apify, which is the same forty lines plus the parts that are Tedious rather than hard: both feeds, the nested publisher element, the date Normalisation, and deduplication. - Source: dev.to / 8 days ago
  • WHOIS is gone, RDAP replaced it, and a 404 does not mean what you think
    That runs an Apify Actor I maintain, Domain Scraper, because the Tedious parts are the RDAP bootstrap, the vcard unpacking and the provider Fingerprinting rather than the HTTP call. If you would rather do it yourself, Https://rdap.org/domain/ is the whole API and it needs no key. - Source: dev.to / 8 days ago
  • How I Turned Canadian Open Government Data Into a Live Licence-Verification Site + API (Build Log, 2026)
    Data collection: Apify actors, one per source, that scrape the open-data endpoints and normalize them. Quebec RBQ ships a daily bulk CSV (inside a 10.8 MB zip, ~924k rows that dedupe to ~54k active licences). Ontario HCRA has no bulk file โ€” it's an internal JSON API behind the public registry. - Source: dev.to / 27 days ago
  • How to Track US Startup Funding Rounds in Real Time (Before TechCrunch Writes About Them)
    Create a free Apify account and grab your API token from Settings โ†’ API & Integrations. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • I built a Claude Code skill that finds customers, not competitors, on Reddit & LinkedIn
    BYOK. It runs on your own Apify token. No shared keys, no lock-in, no licensing chokepoint โ€” a lesson the whole "Proxycurl shut down and stranded everyone" saga taught the space. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
View more

Outbrain mentions (3)

  • Newbie question on HTML
    Or it's related to the site's ad campaign. You see the first link is for outbrain.com which is an affiliate program. Those sites listed might be affiliates OR they are sites that Soulframe is refusing to give affiliate money to for links. Source: about 4 years ago
  • I get 4.5 million page views a month on my content, how do I get advertising?
    Additionally, I have become aware of services such as outbrain.com and taboola.com that pay publishers in a variety of ways for integrating ads onto content that has high page views. However, I don't know the correct course as advertising is uncharted waters for me. Source: over 4 years ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2021)
    Outbrain | Israel, Half-Remote | Full-Time | Experienced Algorithm/ML Engineer | https://outbrain.com Our team is developing machine learning algorithmic solutions that improve outcomes for our advertisers. It is part of Outbrainโ€™s Recommendations Group - about 40 machine learners, data scientists and machine-learning engineers who are responsible for everything that Outbrain recommends in its feeds and widgets.... - Source: Hacker News / almost 5 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apify and Outbrain, 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.

Taboola - Drive traffic to your site, blog or video, or monetize your site with the largest platform for content recommendation, audience acquisition, and native advertising.

Octoparse - Octoparse provides easy web scraping for anyone. Our advanced web crawler, allows users to turn web pages into structured spreadsheets within clicks.

Infolinks - Discover what Infolinks smart ads can do for you

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

VigLink - VigLink identifies commercial products mentioned within content and links them to destinations determined in real-time, advertiser-bid auctions.