Fetchin vs Apify
Apify is a marketplace, not a single API. You pick a third-party actor, start a run, poll it until it finishes, then read the dataset. Price, quality and availability are set by whoever published that actor, and they vary widely between them.
That is the part worth thinking hardest about. You are not buying from Apify, you are buying from an individual publisher with no SLA, no per-actor status page and no commitment to keep the actor working. It can be repriced, deprecated or quietly abandoned, and the first you hear of it is a pipeline returning nothing.
The success rate an actor advertises measures whether the run finished, not whether the data came back correct or complete. A run that returns an empty dataset counts as a success.
Fetchin is one vendor with one contract, one published rate limit, one uptime figure and a public status page. And you keep the async option: our Apify compatibility layer accepts the official client and the same actor IDs, so you choose synchronous or asynchronous per call site rather than being forced into runs.
- requests served per month
- 40M+requests served per month
- uptime
- 99.9%uptime
- median response time
- 1smedian response time
- serving production traffic since
- 2023serving production traffic since
Fetchin vs Apify, feature by feature
| Feature | Fetchin | Apify |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price per 1,000 requests | $1.00 | $2 to $5 |
| Data freshness | Fetched live on every request | Live, collected at run time |
| Response time | 1s median, 1.5s P95 | 5 to 30s per run, plus queue wait |
| Delivery | Synchronous, or asynchronous via the Apify compatibility layer | Asynchronous: start a run, poll, then fetch the dataset |
| Rate limit | 5 req/s self-serve, 10 to 100+ on request | Concurrency depends on plan and actor |
| Uptime | 99.9% | Publisher-dependent, no per-actor SLA |
| Endpoints | Profile, company, posts, comments, reactions, engagement | Depends entirely on which actor you pick |
| Your own account required | Not on the cookie-free actors | |
| Billed on failed lookups | Varies by actor | |
| Free trial | 1,000 credits, no credit card | Free tier with monthly platform credit |
| Commitment | None, cancel anytime | None, pay as you go |
| Support | Live chat and email, same-day | Platform support; actor issues go to the publisher |
| Public status page | Yes, at status.fetchin.io |
Apify figures are taken from their own public pages and were last verified in August 2026. Pricing and limits change, so check the sources below before making a decision.
Fetchin pricing: Starter plan, $50 for 50,000 credits. Drops to $0.90 per 1,000 at 1M credits.
Apify pricing: Set per actor by its publisher, so the rate depends on which actor you pick. Listed rates run $2.00 per 1,000 posts on supreme_coder/linkedin-post, $4.00 per 1,000 profiles on harvestapi/linkedin-profile-scraper, $5.00 on supreme_coder/linkedin-profile-scraper, and $10.00 per 1,000 with email lookup, all on top of platform usage.
Where Fetchin wins
- One vendor accountable for the result. On a marketplace an actor can be repriced, deprecated or abandoned by its publisher with no notice, and there is no SLA or status page for the actor you depend on.
- A run that returns an empty dataset still counts as a successful run in an actor’s advertised success rate. Our uptime figure is measured on the data actually being served, and published at status.fetchin.io.
- Synchronous when you want it. One request returns the data, with no run to start, poll, and then read a dataset from. Asynchronous runs stay available through the compatibility layer.
- From $1.00 per 1,000 against $2 to $5 per 1,000 depending on the actor, and $10.00 with email lookup, before platform usage.
- About 1s median instead of 5 to 30s per run before queue time.
- A published rate limit you can design against, rather than concurrency that shifts with plan and actor.
Where Apify wins
- Far broader catalogue. Apify covers job postings, ad libraries and hundreds of non-professional sources that Fetchin has no endpoint for.
- If an actor exists for a niche source, that beats waiting for us to build it.
- Mature platform tooling: scheduling, storage, proxy management and webhooks are built in.
- Asynchronous runs suit genuinely large batch jobs where nobody is waiting on the response.
Choose Fetchin if…
- The call is on a user-facing path and a 5 to 30s asynchronous run is too slow.
- You want one predictable price and one uptime commitment rather than per-actor variance.
- You are tired of an actor changing behaviour or pricing underneath you.
Choose Apify if…
- You need sources outside professional profile and company data.
- You want job postings or ad data, which Fetchin does not cover today.
- You want scheduling, storage and orchestration bundled with the data.
Migrating from Apify
Fetchin exposes an Apify-compatible surface at /v1/apify/v2. The official client works unchanged, the actor IDs stay the same, and runs still behave asynchronously. You only change the base URL and the token.
Apify
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client'
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN })
const run = await client
.actor('yZnhB5JewWf9xSmoM')
.call({ usernames: ['williamhgates'] })
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems()Fetchin (same client, same actor ID)
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client'
const client = new ApifyClient({
token: process.env.FETCHIN_API_KEY,
baseUrl: 'https://api.fetchin.io/v1/apify',
})
const run = await client
.actor('yZnhB5JewWf9xSmoM')
.call({ usernames: ['williamhgates'] })
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems()Four actors are emulated field-by-field today. See the per-actor pages below, or ask support to add the one you depend on.
Fetchin vs Apify, answered
- What is the main difference between Fetchin and Apify?
- Apify is a marketplace of third-party actors that run as asynchronous jobs: you start a run, poll for completion, then read the results from a dataset. Fetchin is a single API you can call either way. It answers synchronously in about a second, and the Apify compatibility layer keeps asynchronous runs available for the batches where that suits you better.
- How reliable are Apify actors?
- It depends entirely on the publisher, because that is who you are buying from. There is no SLA for an individual actor and no per-actor status page, and an actor can be repriced, deprecated or abandoned without notice. Read the advertised success rate carefully too: it measures whether the run finished, not whether the data came back correct or complete, so a run returning an empty dataset still counts as a success.
- Can Fetchin replace the Apify actors I already use?
- For professional profile and company data, yes. Fetchin ships an Apify-compatible endpoint that accepts the official Apify client and the same actor IDs, so the migration is a base-URL change rather than a rewrite. Four actors are emulated field-by-field today and more are added on request.
- Is Fetchin cheaper than Apify?
- At the same volume, generally yes. Fetchin starts at $1.00 per 1,000 requests. On the marketplace the rate depends on the actor: $2 to $5 per 1,000 on the most-used professional actors, and $10.00 with email lookup, all on top of platform usage.
- What does Apify still do better?
- Breadth. Apify covers job postings, ad libraries and hundreds of sources outside professional data, and bundles scheduling, storage and proxy management. If your use case sits outside profile and company data, Apify is the better fit.
Sources, verified August 2026
Fetchin figures are our own measured values. Live availability is published here.
Actors we emulate today
Each of these accepts the official Apify client and the same actor ID. Need one that is not listed? Tell support the actor ID and the input shape you send it.
Try it against your own data
1,000 credits, no credit card. Run the same sample through Fetchin and Apify and compare field coverage and response times yourself.