herascrape vs Apify
Apify runs an asynchronous Actor that produces one content type per run and bills per result; herascrape exposes 37 composable endpoints you call directly and get a page back in about a second.
Apify sits in the “general web-data & proxy platforms” tier. Scrape any website at scale; Instagram is one of hundreds of targets. Usually an async job you trigger and collect later, returning raw HTML or batch datasets — powerful for pipelines, heavy for a single live lookup.
| herascrape | Apify | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Instagram-only | General (marketplace) |
| Instagram data | Deep — 37 structured endpoints: profiles, followers, following, likers, comments, stories, highlights, tagged, reels, hashtags, locations | Per-Actor (profiles, posts, reels, comments…); results |
| Data format | Structured JSON | Structured results |
| API type | REST | Marketplace actor |
| Delivery | Synchronous | Async run |
| Response time (p90) | 1,720 ms | Seconds–hours (async) |
| Rate limit | 50 req/s (raisable) | Not published |
| Price / 1,000 | $0.40 flat | $1.50–2.70 |
| Pricing model | Flat per request at any balance; only successful (2xx) calls billed | Per result, Actor runs |
| Billing | Only successful (2xx) | Per result |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes |
| Client SDKs | Python, JavaScript | Python, JavaScript |
| Free tier | $1 free (~2,500 calls) | $5/mo credit |
Figures normalized to US$ per 1,000 and verified on each vendor’s live pages on 2026-10-24; re-check before relying on a number. Trademarks belong to their owners.
Why developers pick herascrape
Followers, likers, comments, stories, highlights, tagged and reels as real structured endpoints.
A synchronous REST response in about a second — no job to trigger, poll, or collect from storage.
One rate at any balance, only successful calls billed — no tiers, quotas, or credit multipliers.
$0.0004 per request, flat. 37 real-time Instagram endpoints. Only successful calls billed.