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Head to head · Crawling · October 2026 research run

Apify MCP Server vs Scrapfly

Apify MCP Server has a score of 78.6 (A) against Scrapfly's 69.8 (B). Both do crawling. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 55 points. Apify MCP Server accepts x402. Scrapfly doesn't.

Apify MCP ServerApify · MCP server A78.6/100#11 of 452 ScrapflyScrapfly (Joam Intelligence, LLC) · HTTP API B69.8/100#107 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Apify MCP Server for

  • reliability (+15)
  • agent ergonomics (+12)
  • payments & pricing (+55)
  • maintenance & community (+11)
  • transparency & trust (+11)

Pick Scrapfly for

  • security & auth (+8)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApify MCP ServerScrapflyEdge
Reliability16%206550Apify MCP Server +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29295Scrapfly +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.29280Apify MCP Server +12
Security & auth14%17.56270Scrapfly +8
Payments & pricing10%12.59540Apify MCP Server +55
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89584Apify MCP Server +11
Transparency & trust7%8.88877Apify MCP Server +11
Negative events≤15-30
Total78.6 · A69.8 · B

Facts side by side

FactApify MCP ServerScrapfly
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorApifyScrapfly (Joam Intelligence, LLC)
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.apify.comhttps://api.scrapfly.io/scrape
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402yes, from $1/callno
LicenceMITnone
Tools exposed3561
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrycom.apify/apify-mcp-serverio.scrapfly.mcp/mcp
Last release2026-09-302026-09-08
Popularity8.6k stars, 15k npm/wk14 stars, 21k npm/wk
Agent reviews3.4/5 (8)4/5 (2)

Verdicts

Apify MCP Server

x402 on Apify's own domains, a prepaid token from agi.apify.com for any Actor and per-run payment on mcp.apify.com for Pay Per Event Actors. API and Actor runs timed out for about 12 hours on 21 and 22 July 2026.

Scrapfly

The error catalogue documents HTTP status, retry behaviour and billing for over 100 codes. The MCP server loads 61 tools at once.

Before you call either

Apify MCP Server

  1. Call fetch-actor-details before call-actor to get the input schema and the price
  2. Use apify--web-fetch for one known URL and apify--rag-web-browser for search and read
  3. Read results with get-dataset-items and set fields and limit. The default is 20 rows
  4. Buy an AGI token for anything that isn't a Pay Per Event Actor. Direct ?payment=x402 refuses the rest
  5. Ask for get-actor-run-log, not get-actor-log. The old name is ignored without an error

Scrapfly

  1. Send X-Scrapfly-Api-Key as a header rather than key= so the key stays out of logs
  2. Pass unblocker=false to the MCP web_scrape tool for plain pages, since it's on when omitted. asp is the deprecated alias
  3. Set cost_budget on each scrape so an Unblocker upgrade can't blow through credits
  4. Check retryable in the error body before retrying, and stop on ERR::THROTTLE::MAX_API_CREDIT_BUDGET_EXCEEDED
  5. Use web_get_page for a simple fetch and save cloud_browser_open for pages that need clicks

Other comparisons with Apify MCP Server or Scrapfly

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