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Apify vs SurfSense

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Entry price
Apify from $19/mo, SurfSense from $60/yr — different billing units, so no direct winner
Free plan
Both have one
Public API
Apify has one; not confirmed by us for SurfSense
Best fit
Apify: Teams that would rather rent a maintained scraper than babysit their own · SurfSense: Researchers who want cited answers over their documents without a cloud account
Platforms
Apify: Web · SurfSense: Windows, macOS, Linux

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

ApifyMarketplace and cloud platform of ready-made scrapers ('Actors') plus infrastructure to run your ownSurfSenseOpen-source desktop NotebookLM alternative that runs offline on your own machine with your own model keys or a local model.

Side by side

FactApifySurfSense
CategoryWeb Scraping & Data ExtractionDeep Research Agents
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$19/mo$60/yr
Public APIYesNot confirmed
Trust score94 / 10091 / 100
PlatformsWeb, APIWindows, macOS, Linux
CompanyApify Technologies s.r.o.SurfSense
Launched2015—
Last verifiedOct 16, 2026Oct 15, 2026

What our research says

Apify

The Actor marketplace is the draw: for most popular sites someone has already built and maintains the scraper, and agent-facing interfaces (API, MCP) are first-class. Costs need watching, since compute units plus per-Actor fees stack on top of the subscription and are hard to predict before you run at volume.

Pros

  • Huge catalog of maintained scrapers for common targets
  • Real free tier with $5 of usage and no card required
  • SDKs, CLI, proxies and scheduling in one platform
  • Published discounts for startups, universities and nonprofits

Cons

  • Two-layer pricing (subscription plus usage plus Actor fees) complicates forecasting
  • Marketplace Actor quality varies by author
  • Large-scale scraping raises site-terms and legal questions the platform leaves to you

SurfSense

SurfSense is now a local, air-gapped notebook for asking questions over your own documents, free to download and open source. It suits people who want NotebookLM-style answers without uploading sources to a cloud; anyone who relied on the old hosted connectors and REST API has to export before 18 October 2026 and wait for the paid scraper plugins, which have not shipped.

Pros

  • The app and updates are free, with no account and no usage cap
  • Runs offline with sources and index on your own disk
  • Works with your own model keys or a local model
  • Source is public, so it can be audited or built from scratch

Cons

  • The hosted service, REST API and MCP connectors are gone; the cloud is export-only
  • Scraper plugins are paid and have not shipped in version 2.0
  • The cloud export does not carry original uploads, generated artifacts or citation links

Which one fits

Choose Apify if you need

  • Teams that would rather rent a maintained scraper than babysit their own
  • AI builders feeding agents live web data through the API or MCP server
  • Developers monetizing crawlers without running infrastructure

Choose SurfSense if you need

  • Researchers who want cited answers over their documents without a cloud account
  • Teams that need document Q&A to run offline or inside their own network
  • Users who already have model API keys or run a local model

Apify vs SurfSense: the questions people ask

Is Apify cheaper than SurfSense?

They charge in different units, so there is no like-for-like answer: Apify starts at $19/mo, SurfSense at $60/yr. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it.

Does Apify or SurfSense have a free tier?

Both: Apify has a free tier, and SurfSense has a free tier.

Which has a public API, Apify or SurfSense?

Apify ships a public API, as of our last verification. A public API for SurfSense is not confirmed by us — check its developer docs before you plan an integration.

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