Oxylabs and Apify both offer data collection infrastructure. However, the similarity ends there. Both of these providers offer unique approaches to data collection.
Oxylabs offers collection through more traditional means such as proxies and unblocking tools. They offer residential, mobile, datacenter and internet service provider (ISP) proxies.
Apify uses a different route. They do offer proxies but their main selling point is the Actor framework. Apify Actors are modular pieces of software developed and maintained by both independent developers and Apify itself. They offer over 6,000 different tools built for data collection.
Oxylabs
- Web Scraper API: An all-in-one scraping Application Programming Interface (API) designed to convert URLs into structured data.
- Unblocking Browser: A tool for cloud browser automation for teams who need a reliable browser automation without the vulnerabilities of local hosting.
- Residential Proxies: Route your traffic through real user devices on home networks. These proxies make it easy for automated traffic to blend in with regular users.
- ISP Proxies: Run performance-grade hardware on a residential connection.
- Dedicated ISP Proxies: Use an ISP proxy all to yourself without sharing traffic.
- Datacenter Proxies: Route traffic through performance-grade hardware on a datacenter machine. These proxies are best for medium-difficulty websites.
- Dedicated Datacenter Proxies: Run a datacenter proxy with no shared traffic.
- Mobile Proxies: Similar to residential proxies. However, traffic gets routed through a mobile data network rather than a home internet connection.
- Web Unblocker: A managed solution offering automated proxy rotation, JavaScript rendering and CAPTCHA avoidance.
Apify
- Apify Actors: Modular pieces of software built with data collection in mind. Using the Actor framework, teams purchase only the products they need like pre-built scrapers for individual sites.
- Apify Store: Teams and independent developers can sell their Actors to Apify’s global customer base. Actors are maintained by both Apify and independent developers so performance and pricing can vary greatly.
- Residential Proxies: Route your scrapers through a home network connection.
- Datacenter Proxies: Utilize a datacenter connection with performance-grade hardware for medium difficulty sites.
- Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Proxies: Extract SERP data from sites like Google using different location-based configurations.
Trying them out
Now that we’ve got a basic idea of what these providers offer, let’s try them out! We’ll use these tools to extract data from Books to Scraper — a site specifically built for web extraction tutorials and scraping practice. We won’t get too intricate. We’ll simply scrape the site and show its output data. Most modern extraction systems convert the page to Markdown and feed it into an AI-powered system.
Oxylabs
First, we’ll head over to the Oxylabs API playground. Using the Website dropdown, select “Any other website.” Then, enter the URL into the URL input box.
This automatically generates our scraping code in a variety of languages. We’ll choose Python. Then, you can copy and paste the code into an editor of your choice.
Here’s our code. We didn’t change much. We added 'markdown': True to return the page as Markdown. We also removed pprint since we don’t need it. Make sure to replace the username and password with the actual username and password used to access your Oxylabs account.
import requests
# Structure payload.
payload = {
'source': 'universal',
'url': 'https://books.toscrape.com',
'markdown': True
}
# Get response.
response = requests.request(
'POST',
'https://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries',
auth=('<your-username>', '<your-password>'), #Your credentials go here
json=payload,
)
# Instead of response with job status and results url, this will return the
# JSON response with results.
print(response.text)
Here’s a screenshot of our final output. The page is contained within the content field. Teams should note that we have a perfectly valid Markdown page. However, the page comes with \n (newline) escape characters. Teams utilizing this solution should be prepared to run additional cleanup operations when needed.
Apify
Apify utilizes a different approach. However, we’re still going to choose an Apify Actor and run it from within our browser. The Actor we’ll use is called Website Content Crawler.
Once we’ve selected our Actor, we can use a variety of configuration options. In Start URLs, we simply enter our target site.
As we scroll downward, we set Max crawling depth to 1 — we’re only crawling a single page for this demonstration.
When you’re ready, click the Start button.
After the scraper finishes running, we can view and export the results in a variety of formats. Below, we show the page in Table format with Text results.
Here, we view it as JSON. Markdown and All fields are also available.
This scraper works quite well. Teams should also note pricing though. Our single scraping operation cost $0.024. For large scraping operations, this can get expensive. A team scraping 100,000 pages/day could pay as much as $2,400/day depending on configuration.
Oxylabs vs Apify – Pricing
Here, we have a basic breakdown of each provider’s pricing. Teams should note that the data caps mentioned below are not hard limits. Teams can refill or top-up when conditions require extra data. Teams should also know that they can contact each provider for custom plans with discounts available for higher usage than the plans covered below.
Oxylabs
- Web Unblocker: On their lowest tier, Web Unblocker costs $75/month for 8GB. At scale, teams pay $660/month for 88GB.
- Web Scraper API: Starting at $49/month for 98,000 results. Teams pay $249/month for 622,500 results.
- Unblocking Browser: $300/month for 50GB. $1,410/month for 300GB.
- SERP Data: Included with Web Scraper API.
- Residential Proxies: $8.00/GB for Pay-As-You-Go. $600/month for 86GB.
- ISP Proxies: $16/month for 10 IPs. $2,200/month for 2,000 IPs.
- Dedicated ISP Proxies: $16/month for 5 IP addresses. $2,200/month for 1,000 IPs for teams who need to scale.
- Mobile Proxies: $9/GB for Pay-As-You-Go. $600/month for the 80GB plan.
- Datacenter Proxies: $12/month for 10 IPs. $180/month for 200 IPs. Bandwidth-based options are available as well.
- Dedicated Datacenter Proxies: $6.70/month for 3 IPs. $3,600/month for 3,000 IPs.
Apify
- Starter: $39/month and comes with chat support and a bronze discount. Compute costs $0.30/unit.
- Scale: $199/month with priority chat support and a silver discount. Compute costs $0.25/unit.
- Business: $999/month with a dedicated account manager and a gold store discount. Compute costs $0.20/unit.
- Residential Proxies: Starting at $8/GB and costs $7/GB at scale.
- Datacenter Proxies: The Starter plan comes with 30 IP addresses and proxies can be added at $1/IP address. At the top tier plan, teams pay $0.60/IP address.
- Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Proxies: On low usage plans, SERP data costs $2.50/1,000 pages. At scale, teams pay $1.70/1,000 pages.
Key breakdown: Oxylabs vs. Apify
| Category | Oxylabs | Apify |
|---|---|---|
| Entry pricing | $49/month for 98,000 results | $39/month plus $0.30 per compute unit |
| Scaling model | Bandwidth- or result-based tiers | Compute unit-based usage |
| Proxy availability | Residential, ISP, mobile and datacenter | Residential and datacenter |
| Residential proxy pricing | $8/GB pay-as-you-go | $8/GB entry, ~$7/GB at scale |
| Datacenter proxy pricing | From $12/month for 10 IPs | 30 IPs included, $1/IP add-on |
| SERP data access | Included with Web Scraper API | $2.50/1,000 pages entry, $1.70/1,000 at scale |
| Browser automation | Dedicated Unblocking Browser product | Browser execution inside Actors |
| Maintenance responsibility | Fully managed by provider | Depends on Actor maintainer |
Conclusion
Apify and Oxylabs solve different problems despite often appearing on the same lists. Oxylabs is built for teams who need traditional web scraping infrastructure with predictable pricing tied to bandwidth and results. Using Apify, teams are incentivized to build their scraping infrastructure using modular components.
Neither of these approaches is wrong. They are philosophically different. For teams who need consistent, high-volume scraping, Oxylabs is the natural choice. For teams with hyper-specific scraping needs, Apify offers over 6,000 solutions built to meet these needs.