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Apify MCP

Give agents access to thousands of ready-made web scrapers and crawlers

Browser AutomationFreemiumClaude DesktopCursorVS CodeEasy✓ Verified
Visit Tool8,752 stars

Last verified: August 2, 2026

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Maintenance status

Active
Last code update: September 27, 2026License: MITChecked September 28, 2026

How to Install Apify MCP

$npx @apify/actors-mcp-server@latest

Compatible with: Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code.

Setup by client

Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "@apify/actors-mcp-server@latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Cursor (~/.cursor/mcp.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "@apify/actors-mcp-server@latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

VS Code (.vscode/mcp.json)

{
  "servers": {
    "apify-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "@apify/actors-mcp-server@latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code (terminal)

claude mcp add apify-mcp -- npx @apify/actors-mcp-server@latest

Add any API keys or environment variables the server's README lists.

About Apify MCP

The official Apify MCP server lets AI agents extract data from social media, search engines, maps, e-commerce, and virtually any website using thousands of ready-made scrapers ('Actors') from the Apify Store. It turns Apify's automation platform into a tool layer agents can call directly, with a hosted endpoint at mcp.apify.com or local install. If you only need clean markdown from arbitrary pages, connect Firecrawl to Claude instead.

Apify MCP is a Browser Automation MCP server designed for QA, growth, ops, and research teams. It enables driving a real browser from an AI assistant by exposing Playwright/Puppeteer sessions as MCP tools. Key capabilities include navigate, click, type, and submit, headless screenshots and pdfs, form-fill and file-upload flows, and structured tool calls that work cleanly inside an LLM context. It integrates with Playwright, Puppeteer, headless Chromium, and Selenium grids, and is best suited for QA, growth, ops, and research teams who need end-to-end testing.

Key Features

  • web scraping
  • data extraction
  • crawling
  • automation
  • Navigate, click, type, and submit
  • Headless screenshots and PDFs

Pricing

Freemium: from Free tier; usage-based via Apify credits

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Reaches sites that don't expose APIs
  • Self-healing test flows
  • Strong selectors paired with LLM context

Cons

  • Slower than direct API calls
  • Brittle against aggressive bot protection
  • Per-session state can leak without isolation

Best For

  • End-to-end testing
  • Scraping rendered pages
  • Form-heavy workflows
  • Dashboard data extraction

Our Take on Apify MCP

Apify MCP is the fastest way to give an agent real web-scraping muscle without building scrapers yourself, backed by thousands of maintained Actors. Costs are usage-based, so heavy scraping adds up, but the breadth and reliability are hard to beat.

Frequently Asked Questions

Tags

#Browser Automation#web scraping#data extraction#crawling#automation