The Stack
Apify
We tap it rather than let it run. A scraper pointed at a large database on a schedule is where the cost arrives, usually unnoticed.
- Category
- Scraping and automation
- Where the data sits
- In the United States
What you learn in the first month
Maintenance stays light because each workflow is compartmentalised and we do not leave it running against a huge database. We tap it when something needs confirming, or as a fallback source. The breadth is the real reason it stays in the stack: if there is no usable connector or actor there, the requirement is probably an unusual one. What we do not do is collect for the sake of it. A data point that is “might be useful” rather than necessary gets skipped, because the fewer unnecessary parts a system has the more reliable it tends to be. The one setting where scraping is the wrong route altogether is a heavy compliance environment.
We earn a commission if you sign up through some of the links on this page. What each tool teaches you is written from running it, and the hosting answer is the same whether we earn on it or not. Where there is no link, there is no programme we are part of.
Where the data sits
The United States, despite the company being Czech. Apify's security whitepaper states that core service servers and storage sit in Northern Virginia on AWS, with the primary database in the same region. European customers contract through the Czech entity and transfers rely on standard contractual clauses. Note the whitepaper is from 2020 and we found no newer vendor statement naming a region.
Worth saying plainly: hosting outside the EU can still be GDPR compliant. It is not the same thing as EU data residency, and which one you need depends on who you sell to. What the law actually asks of you is a separate question with a separate answer.