Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Envoy Proxy VS Apify

Compare Envoy Proxy VS Apify and see what are their differences

Envoy Proxy logo Envoy Proxy

Envoy is an open source edge and service proxy, designed for cloud-native applications

Apify logo Apify

Apify is a web scraping and automation platform that can turn any website into an API.
  • Envoy Proxy Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-02-09
  • 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.

Envoy Proxy features and specs

  • High Performance
    Envoy Proxy is designed for high-performance communication across microservices, offering efficient proxying, low latency, and support for high throughput.
  • Extensibility
    Envoy supports a wide range of filters and extensions that allow you to customize its behavior easily, accommodating diverse use cases.
  • Observability
    It provides comprehensive observability features, including distributed tracing, metrics, and logging, which help in monitoring and debugging traffic issues.
  • Service Discovery
    Envoy seamlessly integrates with service discovery systems, automatically adjusting to changes in the environment without requiring manual intervention.
  • Resilience
    Built-in resilience features like retries, circuit breakers, and timeout management enhance Envoy's robustness in unreliable network environments.
  • Protocol Agnostic
    Envoy supports various communication protocols, which helps in managing HTTP1, HTTP2, gRPC, TCP, and WebSockets in a single binary.

Possible disadvantages of Envoy Proxy

  • Complex Configuration
    The configuration files in Envoy can become complex and challenging to manage, which may require steep learning curves for new users.
  • Resource Intensive
    Envoy can be resource-intensive, especially when handling a high number of connections or processing large volumes of data.
  • Limited GUI Tools
    Compared to other solutions, Envoy lacks comprehensive graphical user interface tools for monitoring and configuration management.
  • Community and Ecosystem Maturity
    While Envoy has an active community, some organizations may find the maturity of its ecosystem lacking compared to longer-established options.
  • Version Compatibility
    Keeping Envoy and its dependencies up to date can be challenging, especially in environments with fast-paced development cycles.

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.

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.

Envoy Proxy videos

Webinar: Using Envoy Proxy as Your Gateway to Service Mesh

Apify videos

Apify product news - 2019/01/30

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Envoy Proxy and Apify)
Proxy
100 100%
0% 0
Web Scraping
1 1%
99% 99
Residential Proxies
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 Envoy Proxy and Apify

Envoy Proxy Reviews

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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 seems to be a lot more popular than Envoy Proxy. While we know about 44 links to Apify, we've tracked only 2 mentions of Envoy Proxy. 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.

Envoy Proxy mentions (2)

  • gRPC vs REST: Comparing API Styles in Practice
    But what if we could make some changes to enable clients to interact with our gRPC API as though it were a REST service? Our service won't be RESTful since it will still be RPC under the covers, but we will get to access it via HTTP/1.1, URLs, and JSON. Thankfully, we can use an Envoy proxy server to easily accomplish this feat without having to write our own code manually! - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • SSL Termination before Postgres - is it possible?
    Have a look at Envoy (https://envoyproxy.io) and the Postgres filter (https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/v1.19.0/configuration/listeners/network_filters/postgres_proxy_filter) and StartTLS filter (see https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/v1.19.0/api-v3/extensions/filters/network/postgres_proxy/v3alpha/postgres_proxy.proto.html how to use it). Source: almost 5 years ago

Apify mentions (44)

  • 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 / 16 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 / 24 days 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 1 month ago
  • Training a Twitch chat toxicity classifier on real VOD data at scale
    You need apify-client installed (pip install apify-client pandas scikit-learn). Get a free Apify API token at apify.com โ€” no card required, every account starts with $5 of credit. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How to scrape Shopify App Store data with Python (no API key needed)
    A free Apify account (for the API token). - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

ProxySentinel.io - Proxy Sentinel is a self-managed rotation engine that simplifies using your own proxies for data scraping. Bring an unlimited number of any proxies you choose.

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.

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

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

nginx - A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.

Haproxy - Reliable, High Performance TCP/HTTP Load Balancer