Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Apify

36
71
+ 1
4
Puppeteer

582
568
+ 1
26
Add tool

Apifier vs Puppeteer: What are the differences?

  1. Architecture: Apifier is a platform that provides a higher-level layer of abstraction for web scraping tasks, while Puppeteer gives users more control over low-level interactions with the browser allowing for more customization in scraping tasks.

  2. Automated Tasks: Apifier focuses on automating and scheduling large-scale scraping tasks, while Puppeteer is more suitable for smaller, manual scraping tasks where customization is crucial.

  3. Scalability: Apifier is designed for scalability and can handle large volumes of data processing easily, while Puppeteer is better suited for smaller scale projects due to its focus on fine-tuned customization.

  4. Community and Support: Puppeteer has a larger community and more extensive documentation, making it easier for users to find help and resources, while Apifier has a more specialized user base but offers strong support for its platform.

  5. Cost: Apifier is a paid platform with tiered pricing based on usage and features, while Puppeteer is open-source and free to use, making it more accessible for smaller projects or users on a budget.

  6. Ease of Use: Apifier offers a drag-and-drop interface for building scrapers, making it more user-friendly for beginners, while Puppeteer requires more technical knowledge and coding skills, which may be challenging for novice users.

In Summary, the key differences between Apifier and Puppeteer lie in their architecture, automated task capabilities, scalability, community support, cost, and ease of use.

Advice on Apify and Puppeteer
Ankur Loriya
Needs advice
on
PhantomJSPhantomJS
and
PuppeteerPuppeteer

I am using Node 12 for server scripting and have a function to generate PDF and send it to a browser. Currently, we are using PhantomJS to generate a PDF. Some web post shows that we can achieve PDF generation using Puppeteer. I was a bit confused. Should we move to puppeteerJS? Which one is better with NodeJS for generating PDF?

See more
Replies (2)
Recommends
on
PuppeteerPuppeteer

You better go with puppeteer. It is basically chrome automation tool, written in nodejs. So what you get is PDF, generated by chrome itself. I guess there is hardly better PDF generation tool for the web. Phantomjs is already more or less outdated as technology. It uses some old webkit port that's quite behind in terms of standards and features. It can be replaced with puppeteer for every single task.

See more
Recommends
on
PuppeteerPuppeteer

I suggest puppeteer to go for. It is simple and easy to set up. Only limitaiton is it can be used only for chrome browser and currently they are looking into expanding into FF. The next thing is Playwright which is just a scale up of Puppeteer. It supports cross browsers.

See more
Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise.
Learn More
Pros of Apify
Pros of Puppeteer
  • 4
    Perfect for Heavy Java Script Websites
  • 10
    Very well documented
  • 10
    Scriptable web browser
  • 6
    Promise based

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Apify
Cons of Puppeteer
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 10
      Chrome only

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is Apify?

    Apify is a platform that enables developers to create, customize and run cloud-based programs called actors that can, among other things, be used to extract data from any website using a few lines of JavaScript.

    What is Puppeteer?

    Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome over the DevTools Protocol. It can also be configured to use full (non-headless) Chrome.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Apify?
    What companies use Puppeteer?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Apify or Puppeteer.
    Sign up for StackShare EnterpriseLearn More

    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with Apify?
    What tools integrate with Puppeteer?
      No integrations found

      Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

      Blog Posts

      What are some alternatives to Apify and Puppeteer?
      Scrapy
      It is the most popular web scraping framework in Python. An open source and collaborative framework for extracting the data you need from websites. In a fast, simple, yet extensible way.
      BeautifulSoup
      It works with your favorite parser to provide idiomatic ways of navigating, searching, and modifying the parse tree. It commonly saves programmers hours or days of work.
      import.io
      import.io is a free web-based platform that puts the power of the machine readable web in your hands. Using our tools you can create an API or crawl an entire website in a fraction of the time of traditional methods, no coding required.
      ParseHub
      Web Scraping and Data Extraction ParseHub is a free and powerful web scraping tool. With our advanced web scraper, extracting data is as easy as clicking on the data you need. ParseHub lets you turn any website into a spreadsheet or API w
      Octoparse
      It is a free client-side Windows web scraping software that turns unstructured or semi-structured data from websites into structured data sets, no coding necessary. Extracted data can be exported as API, CSV, Excel or exported into a database.
      See all alternatives