Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Extractor API VS Apify Python SDK

Compare Extractor API VS Apify Python SDK and see what are their differences

Extractor API logo Extractor API

Extract clean text from thousands of articles with a simple API request or use our visual web tool - we'll handle IP rotation, retries and everything else. Features include news search, translation, and ML-powered text extraction.

Apify Python SDK logo Apify Python SDK

Build and manage web scraping Actors in the cloud.
  • Extractor API Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-11

Features

IP Rotation & JS Rendering

We automatically apply IP rotation and retries to every request (Free Plan included), and all our paid plans allow you to render JavaScript before extraction.

Search Country News

Free and paid plans can search the world's news with our News Search endpoint. Every request returns up to 100 news items, including metadata. Collect the URLs - then extract clean text with our Extractor endpoint.

Clean Text & Metadata

Extract clean text, HTML, image and video links, authors, title, publication date, html, and raw text. Choose only the fields you need.

API Not Required

You can extract data from up to 1,000 URLs at a time using our online visual extractor - not just the API. The visual extractor is included in all plans.

Store Your Results

Both the API and the visual extractor allow you to store your results in Jobs. Assign your target URLs a job name, then see their progress online or programmatically. Once the job is done, you can retrieve the results any time.

Translate Extracted Text

All paid accounts are able to translate to and from 55 languages. Swahili to English, Vietnamese to French, or anything you want - extract clean text and translate it with a single API call.

  • Apify Python SDK Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-16

Extractor API

$ Details
freemium
Platforms
Windows Browser Web Android iOS Mac OSX Google Chrome Linux Firefox Cross Platform REST API Safari JavaScript iPhone Chrome OS Internet Explorer Windows Phone Python Node JS Ruby Java C PHP .Net Go Swift C++ Docker ReactJS TypeScript
Release Date
2020 March

Apify Python SDK

Pricing URL
-
$ Details
Platforms
-
Release Date
-

Extractor API features and specs

  • Robust API
    We handle IP rotation, retries and JavaScript rendering - you get clean text.
  • News Search
    Search the world's news with a single API call - up to 100 results per request.
  • Extract Everything
    Extract clean text, translate it into 50+ languages and get tons of metadata.
  • Visual Extraction
    Don't want to use the API? Use our visual online tool to paste or upload URLs!
  • Persistent Jobs
    Both our API and online tool allow you to save extracted text to your Jobs page.
  • Quick Start
    Check out the Getting Started guide for a quick overview of the API and the FAQ for more info.

Apify Python SDK features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    The Apify Python SDK offers a high-level interface that simplifies the process of accessing Apify services and building web scrapers. This can save developers significant amounts of time and reduce complexity in their projects.
  • Integration
    The SDK is designed to work seamlessly with Apify's platform, making it straightforward to leverage Apify's hosting and scheduling capabilities, as well as accessing datasets and key-value stores.
  • Flexibility
    The SDK supports both headless and headful scraping, providing flexibility for users to choose the mode that best suits their needs.
  • Community and Support
    Apify has an active community and provides robust documentation and support resources, which can be especially beneficial for troubleshooting and learning best practices.

Possible disadvantages of Apify Python SDK

  • Dependency on Apify Platform
    While the SDK simplifies many tasks, it is tightly integrated with Apify's platform. This could be a limitation for developers who are looking for a more standalone solution or who want to minimize dependencies on third-party platforms.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers not familiar with Apify, there might be an initial learning curve to understand how the SDK interacts with the broader Apify ecosystem and to learn its specific conventions and idioms.
  • Limited to Python
    As it is specifically for Python, developers using other programming languages may find this SDK irrelevant, and may need to look for other solutions or develop their own integrations.
  • Cost Considerations
    Using Apify's services involves subscription or usage fees, and developers need to consider these costs when implementing solutions that rely on the platform.

Analysis of Apify Python SDK

Overall verdict

  • The Apify Python SDK is a robust, well-documented toolkit that makes building, running, and scaling web scraping and automation projects (Actors) straightforward for Python developers, offering strong integration with the Apify platform and solid tooling out of the box.

Why this product is good

  • Comprehensive and clear documentation with practical examples and API references
  • Native Python support that integrates seamlessly with popular libraries like BeautifulSoup, Playwright, Scrapy, and HTTPX
  • Built-in tools for managing storage (datasets, key-value stores, request queues) without extra boilerplate
  • Easy deployment and scaling of Actors on the Apify cloud platform, including scheduling and proxy management
  • Handles common scraping challenges like proxy rotation, retries, and browser automation
  • Active maintenance, strong community support, and regular updates

Recommended for

  • Python developers building web scrapers or crawlers
  • Teams needing scalable, cloud-hosted automation and data extraction
  • Data engineers and analysts collecting structured data from websites
  • Developers who want to publish and monetize reusable Actors on the Apify marketplace
  • Projects requiring managed proxy rotation and anti-blocking features

Extractor API videos

Extractor API - Visual Extractor Demo

Apify Python SDK videos

No Apify Python SDK videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Extractor API and Apify Python SDK)
Data Extraction
47 47%
53% 53
Web Scraping
0 0%
100% 100
Web Scraping API
34 34%
66% 66
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Extractor API and Apify Python SDK. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Extractor API and Apify Python SDK

Extractor API Reviews

Creating an Automated Text Extraction Workflow โ€” Part 1
The 600 lbs gorilla, Diffbot, comes with a swath of solid APIs but starts at $300, which is ridiculous if youโ€™re just extracting text. Scrapinghubโ€™s News API, Extractor API, and plenty more are better priced if you want an affordable alternative; plus, Extractor API includes a visual online tool for extracting hundreds of articles at once, if you want to do things via UI.
Source: medium.com

Apify Python SDK Reviews

We have no reviews of Apify Python SDK yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Extractor API should be more popular than Apify Python SDK. It has been mentiond 3 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.

Extractor API mentions (3)

  • webscraping for sentiment analysis
    Take a look at our webscraping API - should be able to do what you need it to do. https://extractorapi.com/. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Using ChatGPT to build a database from web scraping?
    If you want to make it easier, we built a text extraction tool that can fit a number of use cases https://extractorapi.com/ people are using it instead of GPT for the scraping and then in certain cases feeding the data that comes from here to some broader app/use case. Just another route! Source: about 3 years ago
  • Text Extraction Tool for Training your ChatGPT app
    I'm looking for input on our tool as a pipeline for text data into your own ChatGPT use case. We know you can use ChatGPT API to do the same task, but we've found that to be costly and time-consuming for the text extraction/scraping portion. We've built a cost-effective and quick tool, Extractor API, for that use case. Would love to see what others are using outside of just relying on ChatGPT for text extraction. Source: about 3 years ago

Apify Python SDK mentions (2)

  • How to Scrape LinkedIn Job Postings with Python: A Step-by-Step Guide
    To overcome these challenges, we will utilize the Apify SDK for Python and Residential Proxies, which enable us to route requests through legitimate devices, making our traffic indistinguishable from real users. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • How to scrape Bluesky with Python
    Then add Apify SDK for Python as a project dependency:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Extractor API and Apify Python SDK, you can also consider the following products

Microlink - Extract structured data from any website

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

Schema API - Extract structured content from the semantic web

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

CRX Extractor - Get any Chrome Extension source code. Learn and hack!

Scraper API - Scale Data Collection with a Simple API.