FastAF vs Apify
Verdict: Apify or FastAF?
Choose Apify if
- You need an Actor from its marketplace, or want to build and schedule your own automation.
- Your workload is a job with custom inputs and outputs rather than a fixed endpoint.
Choose FastAF if
- The documented endpoints cover your task and you do not want to pick or maintain an Actor.
- You make individual searches, product lookups, transcripts or page reads.
- You prefer one-time packs or per-call x402 to a monthly platform plan.
Apify prices
- Starter: $19 per month with $19 of usage included, $0.20 per compute unit
- Scale: $199 per month with $199 of usage included, $0.16 per compute unit
- Business: $999 per month with $999 of usage included, $0.13 per compute unit
- Actors charge per event, per usage or both: no single per-request price
- x402: Actor runs, USDC on Base
- Free: $5 of credits per month
Read on apify.com on . Prices change: check the source before you buy.
FastAF prices
- Google search: $0.003 per call over x402, or 5 credits with an API key ($2.50 per 1,000 on the $10 pack, $1.33 on the $799 pack)
- Single page scrape: $0.005 per call over x402, or 1 credit with an API key ($0.50 per 1,000 on the $10 pack, $0.27 on the $799 pack)
- One-time packs from $10 (20,000 credits) to $799 (3,000,000 credits), without expiry; 500 free credits every month after email verification, reset on the 1st
From FastAF’s pricing code. For x402 the live payment challenge is authoritative. Pricing
FastAF limits
- No custom code or Actors: only the documented endpoints.
- No scheduler, storage or dataset exports: FastAF does not keep result payloads.
- No crawl or site map: one public URL per scrape call.
- Public pages only: login-only, paywalled and private-network targets are refused.
Short answer: choose Apify for a marketplace of Actors, custom automation and workloads that run as jobs. Choose FastAF for a fixed catalogue of public-data endpoints returning Google results, product data, public profiles or a single scraped page. Both support x402 payments; it is not an exclusive FastAF feature.
At a glance
| FastAF | Apify | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing | One-time credit packs, no subscription: $10 for 20,000 credits through $799 for 3,000,000; without expiry (pricing) | Free $0 with $5 monthly usage; Starter $19/month with $19 usage; Scale $199/month with $199 usage; Business $999/month with $999 usage, plus pay as you go on paid plans (official pricing, 2026-10-27) |
| Unit of work | A request to a documented endpoint; default Google search uses 5 credits | Actor-specific pricing: pay per event, pay per usage, or both (pricing, 2026-10-27) |
| Compute | No separate compute-unit invoice | Free and Starter $0.20/CU, Scale $0.16/CU, Business $0.13/CU; one CU is 1 GB of RAM for one hour (pricing, 2026-10-27) |
| Free tier | 500 credits/month after email verification (about 100 Google searches); resets on the 1st, no rollover | $5 usage each month on Free, no card required (pricing, 2026-10-27) |
| x402 | All offered data endpoints, USDC on Base; no API key | Actor runs with USDC on Base and no API key (official announcement, read 2026-10-27) |
| MCP | Hosted discovery is public; tool calls need a FastAF key or authorized OAuth connection | Hosted Actor tools with OAuth or API-token authentication (MCP docs, 2026-10-27) |
| General page extraction | One public URL per scrape request, not a recursive crawler | Capabilities and outputs depend on the selected Actor |
How should I compare costs?
Apify’s platform allowance is not a fixed number of Google searches or Markdown pages. Actor events, compute and other applicable platform usage determine the bill. A single cross-product per-request price is therefore not found on the platform pricing page read on 2026-10-27.
For FastAF, a default Google search consumes 5 credits. Starter buys 4,000 such searches for $10, while Business buys 600,000 for $799; these are different volumes, not interchangeable entry prices. To compare at the same volume, price the same query count and output against a specific Actor’s pricing model. FastAF’s independent x402 Google search price is $0.003 per successful call, or $3 for 1,000 calls, from its API pricing code.
When to choose Apify
- You need an Actor marketplace or want to build and run your own automation.
- Your workload fits a job with Actor-specific inputs and outputs rather than a fixed endpoint.
- You want to fund platform usage with a monthly allowance and pay for additional usage.
When to choose FastAF
- You need the documented API catalogue without selecting or maintaining an Actor.
- Your application requests individual Google searches, product lookups, transcripts or public pages.
- You prefer one-time credit packs or independent x402 requests instead of a monthly platform plan.
If you are also weighing a page-scraping API rather than an Actor platform, read our ScrapingBee alternative comparison.
FAQ
Does Apify support x402? Yes. Its official announcement describes Actor runs paid in USDC on Base without an API key, verified on 2026-10-27.
Is Apify’s $5 free allowance a fixed request count? No. It is monthly platform usage credit; the number of results depends on the Actor and its charging model.
Is FastAF always cheaper than Apify? No general conclusion follows from these plans: compare the same workload, result count and options against the chosen Actor’s actual charges.
Can FastAF run custom Actors? No. FastAF exposes its own documented public-data endpoints and does not execute uploaded Actors.
Is FastAF pricing predictable? Yes: each x402 endpoint has a fixed price, shown in the 402 challenge before you pay. Options beyond the covered band need API-key billing.
How should I switch? Run the same representative inputs through the chosen Actor and through FastAF, then compare field coverage, freshness, failure handling and total cost. Scheduled runs and data exports stay on your side: FastAF answers single requests.
Get a FastAF API key or inspect the Web Scraping API.
Sources (read with curl on 2026-10-27)
- Apify pricing: monthly plans, included usage, compute units and Actor pricing models. Annual pricing is not used in this comparison.
- Apify x402 announcement: Actor payments and supported currency/network.
- Apify MCP documentation: hosted tools and authentication.
- FastAF figures are derived from its credit-pack and endpoint-pricing code, documented in the complete API reference. No new live price measurement is claimed here.