Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Elasticlunr VS Apify

Compare Elasticlunr VS Apify and see what are their differences

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Elasticlunr logo Elasticlunr

Lightweight full-text search engine in Javascript for browser search and offline search.

Apify logo Apify

Apify is a web scraping and automation platform that can turn any website into an API.
  • Elasticlunr Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-09-27
  • 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.

Elasticlunr features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Elasticlunr is a lightweight full-text search library that can be easily integrated into client-side applications without requiring a separate server or heavy backend processing.
  • Client-Side Operation
    Since Elasticlunr operates entirely on the client side, it reduces the need for server-side search operations, lowering server load and allowing for offline search capabilities.
  • Simple API
    Elasticlunr provides a simple, easy-to-use API which makes implementing search features straightforward, even for developers without specialized search technology expertise.
  • Customizable
    It offers the ability to customize the indexing and search process, allowing developers to tailor it to their needs, such as by configuring stop words or adjusting scoring algorithms.

Possible disadvantages of Elasticlunr

  • Limited Scalability
    Elasticlunr is designed for small datasets and may not perform well with very large data sets due to client-side processing limitations.
  • Memory Consumption
    As Elasticlunr operates in the browser, it relies on the device's memory, which can become a constraint with larger datasets, potentially impacting performance.
  • Minimal Features
    Compared to more robust search solutions like Elasticsearch, Elasticlunr offers a more limited set of features, which may not satisfy applications requiring advanced search functionalities.
  • Browser Dependency
    Being a client-side library, its functionality and performance depend heavily on the user's browser capabilities and the device's processing power.

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.

Elasticlunr videos

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Apify videos

Apify product news - 2019/01/30

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Elasticlunr and Apify)
Custom Search Engine
100 100%
0% 0
Web Scraping
0 0%
100% 100
Custom Search
100 100%
0% 0
Data Extraction
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 Elasticlunr and Apify

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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...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apify should be more popular than Elasticlunr. It has been mentiond 26 times since March 2021. 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.

Elasticlunr mentions (8)

  • Mozilla launching "Thundermail" email service to take on Gmail, Microsoft 365
    I do agree that it is a bad choice, though the reason for this is historical; after quite some testing and comparisons, the best JS-based index I could find at the time was elasticlunr [0]. It may very well be the case that there are better wasm alternatives available currently. Over time I then added a non-JS, external index. Since I already had an ES cluster running elsewhere anyway and the querying of... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • Show HN: A fast, accurate and multilingual fuzzy search lib for the front end
    When I did my static site search function some time ago, I used Elasticlunr. I was able to pregenerate the index file as a big json file that is loaded at the client. http://elasticlunr.com/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: What's the best way to add search to my website?
    If your content is mostly static, you might want to consider pre-building an index and shipping it as a whole. You could look into something like * https://stork-search.net/ (Rust/WASM) * tinysearch: https://github.com/tinysearch/tinysearch (JS, simple, stable) * http://elasticlunr.com/ - based on the former, slightly more sophisticated tuning options. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Self-Contained Search for Archived Static Site?
    There are a few client-side libraries like Lunr [1] or Elasticlunr [2]. For my recent project I went with a server-side approach using Stork [3]. It also provides a script to be used on the client. [1] https://lunrjs.com/ [2] http://elasticlunr.com/ [3] https://stork-search.net/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Writing a Fuzzy Search Component With Preact and Fuse for Astro
    Very nice! Seems to perform very well. I'm curious, have you compared Fuse with other search engines? Like flex search or elasticlunr? Why did you choose fuse ? Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

Apify mentions (26)

  • How to scrape TikTok using Python
    For deployment, we'll use the Apify platform. It's a simple and effective environment for cloud deployment, allowing efficient interaction with your crawler. Call it via API, schedule tasks, integrate with various services, and much more. - Source: dev.to / 12 days ago
  • How to scrape Bluesky with Python
    We already have a fully functional implementation for local execution. Let us explore how to adapt it for running on the Apify Platform and transform in Apify Actor. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Web scraping with GPT-4o: powerful but expensive
    We've had the best success by first converting the HTML to a simpler format (i.e. markdown) before passing it to the LLM. There are a few ways to do this that we've tried, namely Extractus[0] and dom-to-semantic-markdown[1]. Internally we use Apify[2] and Firecrawl[3] for Magic Loops[4] that run in the cloud, both of which have options for simplifying pages built-in, but for our Chrome Extension we use... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Current problems and mistakes of web scraping in Python and tricks to solve them!
    Developed by Apify, it is a Python adaptation of their famous JS framework crawlee, first released on Jul 9, 2019. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Show HN: Crawlee for Python – a web scraping and browser automation library
    Hey all, This is Jan, the founder of [Apify](https://apify.com/)—a full-stack web scraping platform. After the success of [Crawlee for JavaScript](https://github.com/apify/crawlee/) today! The main features are: - A unified programming interface for both HTTP (HTTPX with BeautifulSoup) & headless browser crawling (Playwright). - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Elasticlunr and Apify, you can also consider the following products

Stork Search - Full-text, WASM-powered search for static sites

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.

Sphinx (search engine) - Sphinx is a fulltext FLOSS search engine that provides text search functionality to client applications. Sphinx (search engine) - WikiMili, The Free Encyclopedia - WikiMili, The Free Encyclopedia

Scrapy - Scrapy | A Fast and Powerful Scraping and Web Crawling Framework

Typesense - Typo tolerant, delightfully simple, open source search 🔍

ParseHub - ParseHub is a free web scraping tool. With our advanced web scraper, extracting data is as easy as clicking the data you need.