Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

SerpApi VS Apify

Compare SerpApi VS Apify 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.

SerpApi logo SerpApi

Scrape Google search results from our fast, easy, and complete API.

Apify logo Apify

Apify is a web scraping and automation platform that can turn any website into an API.
  • SerpApi Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-03
  • SerpApi SerpApi use cases
    SerpApi use cases //
    2024-11-25
  • SerpApi API List
    API List //
    2024-11-25

We help you automate gathering data from search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. What's cool about SerpApi is that it handles all the scraping complexities for you, like dealing with CAPTCHAs, managing IP addresses, and parsing data into a structured JSON. So you don't have to worry about the details.

It's super useful for developers who need to pull search results for tasks like SEO monitoring, market research, travel information, AI models, or even academic projects. Plus, it provides the data in a neat JSON format, making it really easy to use in your applications!

  • 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.

SerpApi

$ Details
freemium
Startup details
Country
United States
State
Texas
City
Austin
Founder(s)
Julien Khaleghy
Employees
20 - 49

Apify

Website
apify.com
$ Details
-
Startup details
Country
Czech Republic
City
Prague
Employees
10 - 19

SerpApi features and specs

  • Comprehensive Data Extraction
    SerpApi provides a powerful and easy-to-use API for extracting search engine results, allowing users to access a wide variety of data types such as ads, maps, organic results, and more from multiple search engines.
  • Real-time Data
    The API is designed to retrieve real-time search results, which is crucial for applications that rely on up-to-date information, such as market research and competitive analysis.
  • Easy Integration
    SerpApi offers detailed documentation and client libraries in multiple programming languages, simplifying the integration process for developers across different platforms.
  • Scalability
    SerpApi is able to handle large volumes of requests, making it suitable for businesses of various sizes, from startups to large enterprises needing to gather extensive data.
  • Automated Billing
    The platform provides automated billing and usage management which ensures that businesses can easily manage their costs and understand their data usage.

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.

SerpApi videos

OpenAI Function Calling - Connect AI to the Internet

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Scrape Google Search using Python
  • Tutorial - Scrape Google Maps reviews data using Python

Apify videos

Apify product news - 2019/01/30

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to SerpApi and Apify)
SEO
100 100%
0% 0
Web Scraping
0 0%
100% 100
SEO Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Data Extraction
0 0%
100% 100

Questions and Answers

As answered by people managing SerpApi and Apify.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

SerpApi's answer

We provide more search engines under one subscription.

How would you describe your primary audience?

SerpApi's answer

Developers/Companies who need data from search engines.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

SerpApi's answer

Ruby on Rails and MongoDB

What makes your product unique?

SerpApi's answer

We're the first web scraping company that focus on scraping search engines.

What's the story behind your product?

SerpApi's answer

Back in 2017, Julien Khaleghy, the founder of SerpApi, built an iOS app that can analyze data from a picture. iOS didn't have a proper machine learning framework back then. It was challenging: iPhones' RAM were limited, no GPU or no dedicated chip acceleration were available, using only CPU was painfully slow, and compiling/porting C code from machine learning framework like Tensorflow or Caffe to iOS wasn't straightforward. Oddly, all of this wasn't the most difficult part of this project. Collecting images from Google Images was.

In these projects, 80% of his time ended up being spent on scraping and parsing Google Images. And maybe only 20% on actual machine learning model training, UI design of the actual apps, and iOS programming. This is how SerpApi was born.

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

SerpApi's answer

  • Airbnb
  • Nvidia
  • Meta
  • Shopify
  • Grubhub
  • and more!

User comments

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Reviews

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

SerpApi 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, SerpApi should be more popular than Apify. It has been mentiond 76 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.

SerpApi mentions (76)

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2025)
    SerpApi | https://serpapi.com | Junior to Senior Fullstack Engineer positions | Customer Success Engineer | Talent Acquisition Specialist | Based in Austin, TX but remote-first structure | Full-time | ONSITE or FULLY REMOTE | $150K - 180K a year 1099 for US or local avg + 20% for outside the US SerpApi is the leading API to scrape and parse search engine results. We deeply support Google, Google Maps, Google... - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • How Google replaced search by image with Google Lens.
    If any of these look interesting or useful to your use case, feel free to follow up in the appropriate thread or let us know via chat at serpapi.com or through email at contact@serpapi.com. We'll do our best to implement the features as soon as possible. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2024)
    SerpApi | https://serpapi.com | Junior-to-Senior Fullstack Engineer | Customer Success Engineer | Talent Acquisition Specialist | Based in Austin, TX but remote-first structure | Full-time | ONSITE or FULLY REMOTE | $150K - 180K a year 1099 for US or local avg + 20% for outside the US SerpApi is the leading API to scrape and parse search engine results. We deeply support Google, Google Maps, Google Images, Bing,... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • AI Agents: Transforming Ideas into Action, Collaboratively
    Custom Tool: The google_flights.py script interacts with the Google Flights API (via SerpAPI) to retrieve flight details. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • How to Create Your Own Job Board Web App Using React.js, Node.js, SerpApi, and MUI
    Const express = require('express'); Const cors = require('cors'); Const axios = require('axios'); Require('dotenv').config(); Const app = express(); App.use(cors()); Const PORT = process.env.PORT || 5000; // Endpoint to fetch job listings App.get('/api/jobs', async (req, res) => { const { query } = req.query; try { const serpApiUrl =... - Source: dev.to / 7 months 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 / 4 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 1 month 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 SerpApi and Apify, you can also consider the following products

Zenserp - Zenserp is a Google Search API that enables you to scrape Google search result pages in real-time.

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.

Aves API - Aves API is the insanely fast SERP API that enables you to scrape Google search results without blocking.

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

DataForSEO - DataForSEO offers API data for SEO companies that deliver results of tasks for Rank tracking, SERP, Keyword data and On-page APIs.

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