Apify: Deploy Web Scrapers to the Cloud in 5 Minutes (Free Tier)

Building a scraper locally is one thing. Running it reliably in the cloud is another. Apify handles deployment, scheduling, proxy rotation, and storage — so you focus on the scraping logic. What is Apify? Apify is a cloud platform for web scraping and automation. You write a scraper (called an "Actor"), deploy it, and Apify runs it on their infrastructure. Deploy in 5 Minutes # Install CLI npm install -g apify-cli # Create new project apify create my-scraper cd my-scraper # Write your scraper in src/main.js # ... (your scraping code) # Test locally apify run # Deploy to cloud apify push Free Tier $5/month compute credit (free) Enough for ~100 scraper runs No credit card required Why Not Just Use a Cron Job? Feature Cron + VPS Apify Proxy rotation Manual setup Built-in Storage Manage yourself Included Scheduling Crontab UI scheduler Error handling DIY Auto-retry Scaling Limited by VPS Auto-scale My Setup I have 77 scrapers on Apify , covering: YouTube (Innertube API) Reddit (JSON endpoi