Hubertino

Outscraper vs Apify

By Doug Nielsen, Product Manager · Updated · first published

Competitor facts checked: September 2026. Figures link the page they came from; other descriptions reflect public information as of July 2026.

These two get compared constantly, but they aren't really the same kind of product. Outscraper is a catalog of finished data services you call and pay for by the record. Apify is a compute platform where scrapers — 'actors' — run, and you pay for the platform plus whatever the actor charges. The practical question is almost never which is better; it's whether you want a data service or a runtime. If you never intend to open a code editor, that answer decides it.

OutscraperApify
What it's built forA catalog of ready data services (Maps, reviews, emails, phone validation, marketplaces) you call and get results back fromA general web-scraping and automation platform: run, schedule, host and build scrapers for effectively any site
Google Maps specificallyA first-class, maintained service with its own endpoint and documented fieldsAvailable through Store actors — several exist, quality and field coverage vary by author
Emails & contact enrichmentAvailable as a separate Emails & Contacts service at $3 per 1,000 domains where it finds contacts, after 500 free a month
(outscraper.com/pricing, archived Jun 17, 2026, checked Sep 2026)
Depends on the actor. Apify's Google Maps Scraper sells a company-contacts add-on: $2 → $1.05 per 1,000 places with a website, by plan
(apify.com/compass/…, checked Sep 2026)
Pricing modelPay-as-you-go per record with no subscription, from a prepaid balance or a monthly invoice; $3 per 1,000 drops to $1 after 100,000 a month, and each enrichment service meters separately
(outscraper.com/pricing, archived Jun 17, 2026, checked Sep 2026)
Monthly plan whose fee is prepaid usage, then pay as you go; each actor sets its own pricing (per event, per result or by compute). Its Google Maps Scraper charges $4 → $1.50 per 1,000 places by plan, platform usage included
(apify.com/compass/…, checked Sep 2026)
Free start500 businesses, 500 email-domain lookups and 500 reviews free every month
(outscraper.com/pricing, archived Jun 17, 2026, checked Sep 2026)
$5 of platform usage every month — about 1,250 Google Maps places without add-ons
(apify.com/compass/…, checked Sep 2026)
Technical skill requiredLow for the web UI; an API key and basic HTTP for the APILow to use a Store actor, high to get the platform's real value — building or modifying actors means JavaScript or Python
Cost predictabilityEasier — you can usually estimate a job from record count before running itDepends on the actor — per-event actors like the Google Maps Scraper price per place, but compute-billed actors depend on runtime, retries, memory and proxy usage, so the same job can cost different amounts twice
Scale ceilingHigh for its supported sources; large jobs run on their infrastructure asynchronouslyVery high and horizontally scalable — concurrency and memory are things you buy and tune
Sources beyond Google MapsA fixed catalog: other maps and directories, marketplaces, reviews, company and contact dataEssentially unbounded — thousands of Store actors, and anything you write yourself
Export & APIREST API (listed on its paid tiers), CSV / Excel / Parquet / JSON exports, async jobs with results fetched when ready
(outscraper.com/pricing, archived Jun 17, 2026, checked Sep 2026)
REST API, dataset exports in several formats, webhooks, scheduling and integrations
Who maintains the scraperOutscraper — one vendor is accountable when a source changesThe actor's author, who may be Apify or a third-party developer; check the actor's activity and reviews

What a month of Google Maps data costs

The same businesses on both, each with the website email lookup on, at three monthly volumes. For more tools side by side, see Outscraper vs Scrap.io vs Apify pricing.

Monthly cost of Google Maps businesses with email lookups, by tool and volume
Businesses a month1,00010,00050,000
Outscraper1
Pay as you go
$1.91–$2.75
$1.91–$2.75 per 1,000
$46.06–$54.48
$4.61–$5.45 per 1,000
$242.29–$284.38
$4.85–$5.69 per 1,000
Apify2
Google Maps Scraper actor
$19
Starter · $19 per 1,000
$48.67
Starter · $4.87 per 1,000
$199
Scale · $3.98 per 1,000
Notes and sources

The month's bill for that many businesses, each with a website email and social lookup. Prices checked September 2026; Outscraper's from an archived copy of its pricing page dated Jun 17, 2026, because its site refuses automated checks.

  1. 1. Outscraper. 500 businesses and 500 email domains free each month, then $3 per 1,000 up to 100,000 and $1 per 1,000 after, for each (outscraper.com/pricing, archived Jun 17, 2026, checked Sep 2026). Emails & Contacts is billed per domain with contacts found (outscraper.com/emails-scraper, archived Jun 17, 2026, checked Sep 2026), and Outscraper doesn't publish how often that is, so we show a range: from 63.5% of businesses (how often we find an email) to 91.6% (how many have their own website), measured on 67,173 businesses in our own runs (harvested July 2026).
  2. 2. Apify. Its Google Maps Scraper (compass/crawler-google-places) charges per event: $4 / $3 / $2 / $1.50 per 1,000 places on the Free, Starter ($19), Scale ($199), Business ($999) plans, plus $2 / $2 / $1.50 / $1.05 per 1,000 for the company-contacts (email) add-on (apify.com/compass/…, checked Sep 2026), charged on places with a website per a March 2025 help article (help.apify.com/en/…, checked Sep 2026) — 93.4% in our runs. The plan fee is prepaid usage, so the bill is whichever is higher; we pick the cheapest plan. No filters, reviews or other add-ons.
  3. All. The same volume every month, every business with the email lookup, plan credits fully used. Cost per 1,000 businesses compares like for like; cost per 1,000 emails doesn't, because the others don't publish how often they find one.

Choose Outscraper if you…

  • • want a finished data service you call, not a runtime you operate — no actor to choose, no memory setting to tune
  • • want to pay per record with no monthly platform fee, and to be able to estimate a job's cost before you run it
  • • need several related datasets (Maps listings, reviews, email and phone enrichment) from one vendor with consistent schemas and one bill
  • • want a single accountable vendor when a source changes and the scraper breaks

Choose Apify if you…

  • • are a developer who wants real control — the open-source Crawlee SDK, your own JavaScript or Python code, proxy and concurrency settings you actually tune
  • • need scrapers for many different sites, including ones nobody sells as a product, rather than a fixed catalog
  • • want the surrounding platform: scheduling, webhooks, storage, versioning, integrations and monitoring in one place
  • • want to fork a Store actor that almost fits instead of waiting for a vendor to add a field, or to publish and monetise your own

Disclosure: where Hubertino fits

Disclosure: we build Hubertino, a Google Maps lead-list tool, so we have a stake here. Our honest read is that neither product is aimed at someone who just wants a spreadsheet of local businesses with emails — Outscraper is broader than that job and Apify is lower-level than it. But if you need many sources, custom scrapers, or anything outside Google Maps, we're the wrong tool and one of these two is genuinely the right answer. More on who runs Hubertino.

Common questions

Is Apify cheaper than Outscraper?

For Google Maps with emails, it depends on volume. At 1,000 businesses a month Outscraper comes to about $1.91–$2.75 against $19 on Apify's Starter plan (Apify's free $5 covers only about 852 places with emails). At 10,000 they're close: $46.06–$54.48 against $48.67 on Apify's Starter plan. At 50,000 Apify is cheaper: $242.29–$284.38 against $199 on Apify's Scale plan (checked September 2026; Outscraper's from outscraper.com/pricing as archived on June 17, 2026). For other actors, Apify's cost depends on how that actor is priced — per event, per result, or by compute, memory and proxy use — so price the specific actor before you compare.

Which is better for non-developers?

Outscraper, clearly. Both have a web interface, but Apify's design assumes you'll eventually write or modify code — the concepts you have to learn (actors, compute units, datasets, memory allocation) exist because it's a developer platform. Outscraper's services are closer to 'fill in a form, get a file'. If nobody on your team writes code, Apify's ceiling is whatever a Store actor happens to expose.

Do I have to write code to use Apify?

No — you can run a Store actor entirely from the web UI. But you should be honest about what you're buying: without code, you're using a general platform to run someone else's prebuilt scraper, and paying platform pricing for it. The reason to choose Apify is the ability to change what the scraper does.

Which one is better for Google Maps data specifically?

Outscraper treats Google Maps as a maintained product with a documented field set, so it's the safer default. On Apify, quality depends on which actor you run — the good Maps actors are very good, but you're picking from a marketplace, so check the actor's recent runs, last update and reviews before you commit a workflow to it.

Related comparisons: Hubertino vs Outscraper · Hubertino vs Apify
More head-to-heads: Apify vs PhantomBuster · Outscraper vs Scrap.io · Lobstr.io vs Outscraper

Try it on your own niche

Start free with 100 credits — enough for a real lead list. No card required.

Start free with 100 credits