Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Visualping VS Apify

Compare Visualping VS Apify and see what are their differences

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Visualping logo Visualping

Visualping is the easiest to use website checker, webpage change monitoring, website change detector and website change alert software of the web. Read more about Visualping.

Apify logo Apify

Apify is a web scraping and automation platform that can turn any website into an API.
  • Visualping Landing page
    Landing page //
    2025-05-22
  • 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.

Visualping features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Visualping offers a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for users to set up alerts and track changes on web pages without a steep learning curve.
  • Customizability
    The tool allows users to customize the frequency of checks, the area of the web page to monitor, and the type of content changes to be alerted about. This flexibility can be highly beneficial for different use cases.
  • Versatility
    It supports various types of content monitoring including text, visual, and structural changes, making it suitable for diverse requirements such as SEO monitoring, product tracking, and compliance checks.
  • Notification Options
    Visualping provides multiple notification options including email, Slack, API, and browser notifications, catering to different user preferences.
  • Free Tier
    Visualping offers a free tier with limited checks per month, making it accessible for casual or light users.
  • Scale
    Visualping can scale with the needs of the user, offering paid plans that support increased monitoring frequency and additional features.

Possible disadvantages of Visualping

  • Cost
    While there is a free tier, the cost of paid plans can be relatively high for small businesses or individual users who need more frequent checks.
  • False Positives
    There can be occurrences of false positives where users are notified about insignificant changes, such as minor layout adjustments or advertisements on the page.
  • Resource Intensity
    Frequent monitoring can consume significant bandwidth and computational resources, potentially slowing down performance or leading to resource allocation issues.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Depending on the sites being monitored, there may be privacy concerns about storing and processing the data on Visualping's servers.
  • Configuration Complexity for Advanced Features
    Although the basic setup is easy, configuring advanced features and customized monitoring may require a higher level of technical knowledge.
  • Limited Mobile App Support
    Visualping's functionality is primarily web-based, and there is limited support for mobile apps, which could be a downside for users who prefer managing alerts on mobile devices.

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 Visualping

Overall verdict

  • Overall, Visualping is considered a good choice for individuals and businesses who need to keep an eye on dynamic web content. Its ease of use and reliability in notifying users of changes make it a valuable service in web monitoring.

Why this product is good

  • Visualping is regarded as a useful tool for monitoring website changes. It enables users to track visual and text changes on any web page without constant manual checking, which can save time and reduce human error. It's highly beneficial for professionals who need to stay updated with frequently changing online content, such as e-commerce sites, competitors' websites, or even personal interest pages.

Recommended for

  • E-commerce businesses tracking competitors' pricing
  • Journalists monitoring news sites for updates
  • Students watching academic pages for new publications
  • Job seekers tracking job boards for the latest postings
  • Anyone interested in tracking changes to specific web pages

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.

Visualping videos

VisualPing: Cool Site for Tracking Website Changes

More videos:

Apify videos

Apify product news - 2019/01/30

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Visualping and Apify)
Monitoring Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Web Scraping
0 0%
100% 100
Website Monitoring
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 Visualping and Apify

Visualping 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, Visualping should be more popular than Apify. It has been mentiond 74 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.

Visualping mentions (74)

  • Show HN: ChangeDetection, monitor any website change
    Https://visualping.io does a nice similar job and is free for moderate personal use. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Summer course tracking
    Could try visualping.io but it's not gonna be as convenient as coursicle. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • PageProbe - Automatic Page Monitor
    You can also monitor up to five webpages for free with VisualPing. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Looking to apply for the RPAS pilot role
    As a belt and braces approach you could try using something like visualping.io (others are available) to monitor the URL https://recruitment.raf.mod.uk/apply/applying-for?c=15&r=293&type=regular and check when the wording "THIS ROLE IS CURRENTLY CLOSED FOR NEW APPLICATIONS. PLEASE REGISTER YOUR INTEREST AND WE WILL BE IN TOUCH WHEN IT REOPENS." disappears, and it will send you an email when it detects a change. Source: about 2 years ago
  • coach outlet increased prices for their 20% sale so its the same price anyway. should i just buy it or wait?
    Also I was using https://visualping.io/ to track the change. Like you can track the change on the button change for that particular page ( like the button being now back in stock instead of grayed out). Source: over 2 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 / about 1 month 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 / 3 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 / 9 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 / 10 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 / 11 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

Wachete - Track web page changes and get notified. Free Sign-up. Have all data in one place

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.

Distill Web Monitor - Distill is a web monitoring tool. It can monitor RSS feeds, a webpage or a part of webpage. Alerts in the form of pop-up, audio or emails can be received.

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

Distill.io - Distill.io is one of the advanced page monitoring tools used by professionals to monitor dynamic pages, feeds, and iframes.

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