Apify vs Fastcrawl: which one should your agent use?

Apify and Fastcrawl both fetch the web for you, but they're built for different jobs. Apify is a marketplace-and-actors platform; Fastcrawl is a single-purpose rendering API tuned for AI agents. Here's how they actually compare for agent workloads.

The quick verdict

Apify is the right pick if you want a library of pre-built "actors" (scrapers for Google, Amazon, social platforms) and a marketplace to buy or publish them. Fastcrawl is the right pick if you want clean, LLM-ready markdown from any URL with one API call — crawl, map, search, extract, screenshot and monitors included, at $5/mo with 2,000 free credits.

Pricing

Apify            Fastcrawl
─────────────    ─────────────
Free $0/5 spend  Free $0: 2,000 credits/mo, 100/day
Starter $19/mo   Go $5/mo: 5,000 credits, no rate limit
Scale $199/mo    Enterprise: custom (SLA, SSO, volume)

Apify's free tier is a $5 credit allowance, not recurring credits — you burn through it fast on a single crawl. Fastcrawl's free tier is 2,000 credits a month, recurring, and the paid plan starts at $5/mo (vs Apify's $19) with no rate limit.

For AI agents specifically

• One flat credit per format — Fastcrawl charges 1 credit for a scrape, regardless of whether the site needs JS rendering. Apify actors bill per-run and can vary.
• MCP-native — Fastcrawl exposes all 12 tools over Model Context Protocol, so an agent just points at the MCP endpoint. Apify's integration is more manual.
• What you get back — Fastcrawl returns clean markdown by default (LLM-ready). Apify returns actor-specific JSON schemas you then have to map.
• Monitors built in — Fastcrawl ships scheduled re-scrapes with change detection; with Apify you'd build that on top.

When Apify wins

• You need a specific pre-built actor (YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn) rather than generic web access.
• You want a marketplace ecosystem to publish or rent scrapers.
• You're already in the Apify actor paradigm and don't want to rework pipelines.

When Fastcrawl wins

• You want every URL → clean markdown with one HTTP call, no actor hunting.
• You're building an agent/RAG pipeline that needs MCP-native access.
• You want a lower entry price ($5 vs $19) and a recurring free tier.