Apify MCP Server vs Zyte API

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.

Zyte API

One POST endpoint with an OpenAPI 3 contract picks proxies, browser rendering and extraction per site, bills only successful responses, and sends problem+json errors with Retry-After. Prices vary by target site across five tiers, so cost per request isn't known before the site is assigned one, and no dated API changelog was found.

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, since direct ?payment=x402 refuses the rest. Tokens last 14 days and unused balance isn't refunded
5. Ask for get-actor-run-log, not get-actor-log. The old name is ignored without an error

Zyte API

1. Send the API key as the Basic auth username with an empty password to https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract. Set only one of httpResponseBody or browserHtml, or one extraction field
2. Ask for httpResponseBody before browserHtml. Browser requests cost about eight to thirteen times more per tier
3. Retry 429, 503 and 520 after the Retry-After seconds, with backoff. They aren't billed. Don't retry 400, 401, 422 or 451
4. Read statusCode in a 200 response. A target site's 404 comes back as a successful, billed Zyte API response
5. Have the owner set a blocking spending limit on the key you use. A 403 /auth/account-suspended means the limit or the trial month ended