Apify API

Name: Apify API API
Brand: Apify API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecDeveloper ToolsCi Cdbearer, apiKey118 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Run, monitor, and collect results from Apify Actors and tasks, plus manage datasets, key-value stores, and request queues across 118 endpoints.

Quickstart

Get started with Apify API in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"run a web scraper"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Apify API API.

Launch Actor runs synchronously or asynchronously and pass JSON input that drives the scraper's behaviour

Poll Actor run status, fetch logs, and abort or resurrect runs from the /v2/actor-runs endpoints

Stream items out of a run's default dataset in JSON, CSV, XLSX, or RSS via /v2/datasets/{datasetId}/items

Read and write arbitrary blobs in key-value stores using /v2/key-value-stores/{storeId}/records/{key}

GET STARTED

Start building with Apify API API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Apify is a cloud platform for building, running, and scaling web scrapers and browser automation jobs called Actors. The Apify API exposes 118 endpoints for managing Actors, Actor versions and builds, scheduled and on-demand runs, datasets, key-value stores, request queues, and webhooks. Agents and integrations use it to launch scraping jobs, poll their progress, and pull structured results from the default dataset. Authentication is via a bearer token issued from the Apify console, and the global rate limit is 250,000 requests per minute with 30 to 200 requests per second per resource.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Apify API API for, with concrete tasks.

★ On-demand web scraping for agents

Trigger a pre-built or custom Apify Actor to scrape product listings, search results, or social profiles, then read the structured output from the run's default dataset. Agents call POST /v2/acts/{actorId}/runs with a JSON input, poll GET /v2/actor-runs/{runId} until status is SUCCEEDED, then fetch items via GET /v2/datasets/{datasetId}/items. The whole loop typically completes in seconds to a few minutes depending on Actor complexity.

POST /v2/acts/apify~web-scraper/runs with input {startUrls:[{url:'https://example.com'}]}, poll the run, then GET /v2/datasets/{defaultDatasetId}/items?format=json.

Scheduled data pipelines

Create an Actor task with a saved input and run it on a cron schedule, then have Apify push the dataset rows into your warehouse via webhook. Tasks decouple the run configuration from the Actor itself so analysts can edit inputs without touching code, and the /v2/schedules endpoints let you manage timing centrally. This pattern is well suited for daily price monitoring, SERP tracking, or competitor inventory feeds.

POST /v2/actor-tasks with actId, input, and a name, then POST /v2/schedules referencing the task id with a cron expression.

Coordinated distributed crawls

Use Apify request queues to share a frontier of URLs between many Actor runs so a large crawl finishes faster without duplicate work. The /v2/request-queues/{queueId}/requests endpoints support add, get, update, and delete plus lock and unlock semantics, allowing multiple Actor runs to claim items safely. Combined with datasets for results and key-value stores for state, this gives a clean producer-consumer architecture for crawls of millions of pages.

POST /v2/request-queues/{queueId}/requests to enqueue URLs, then have multiple Actor runs call /v2/request-queues/{queueId}/requests/head with lockSecs to claim them.

Agent-orchestrated research with Jentic

An agent answering a question about live web data can run an Apify Actor through Jentic without holding the bearer token directly. Jentic returns the run-and-fetch-results operations on demand, the token is injected from the vault, and the agent receives the dataset items as JSON to ground its answer. This lets the agent treat Apify as a single 'go scrape this' tool rather than orchestrating an SDK.

Through Jentic, search 'run a web scraper', load apify.com run-actor and get-dataset-items, then execute them in sequence to ground the answer.

Key Endpoints

118 endpoints — apify is a cloud platform for building, running, and scaling web scrapers and browser automation jobs called actors.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/v2/acts

List Actors in your account

POST

/v2/acts/{actorId}/runs

Run an Actor asynchronously

GET

/v2/actor-runs/{runId}

Get an Actor run's status and metadata

GET

/v2/datasets/{datasetId}/items

Fetch dataset items as JSON, CSV, or XLSX

POST

/v2/actor-tasks

Create a saved task with input and Actor reference

POST

/v2/schedules

Schedule a task to run on a cron

POST

/v2/webhooks

GET

/v2/acts

List Actors in your account

POST

/v2/acts/{actorId}/runs

Run an Actor asynchronously

GET

/v2/actor-runs/{runId}

Get an Actor run's status and metadata

GET

/v2/datasets/{datasetId}/items

Fetch dataset items as JSON, CSV, or XLSX

POST

/v2/actor-tasks

Create a saved task with input and Actor reference

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Your Apify bearer token is stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Agents receive a scoped Jentic key and the bearer token is injected into the Authorization header at execution, so the raw Apify token never reaches the agent's prompt or logs.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic with phrases like 'run a web scraper' or 'fetch dataset items' and Jentic returns the matching apify.com operations with their full input schemas, including required actorId and input fields.

Time to first call

Direct Apify integration with the apify-client SDK, polling, and webhook handling typically takes 1-2 days. Through Jentic, the same run-and-fetch loop is callable in under an hour.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Alternative

ZenRows

Single-call scraping API with built-in proxy rotation and anti-bot bypass.

Choose ZenRows when the agent needs a one-shot HTML fetch with proxies, not the full Actor lifecycle Apify provides.

Alternative

Browserless

Hosted headless Chrome with a Puppeteer-compatible API.

Choose Browserless when you already have Puppeteer or Playwright scripts and want to run them as-is rather than building Apify Actors.

Complementary

GitHub API

Source control and Actions, often used to deploy Apify Actor source.

Use the GitHub API alongside Apify when the agent needs to push Actor source code or trigger CI before a scrape run.

FAQs

Specific to using Apify API API through Jentic.

What authentication does the Apify API use?

The Apify API uses a bearer token sent in the Authorization header as 'Bearer <token>', with the token issued from the Integrations page in the Apify Console. A less-secure ?token= query parameter is also accepted. When called through Jentic, the token is held in the Jentic vault and never exposed to the agent.

Can I run an Actor synchronously and get its output in one call?

Yes. POST /v2/acts/{actorId}/run-sync waits up to 300 seconds and returns the run's output directly. For longer runs, call POST /v2/acts/{actorId}/runs and poll GET /v2/actor-runs/{runId} until status is SUCCEEDED, then fetch items from the default dataset.

How do I fetch dataset items with the Apify API?

Call GET /v2/datasets/{datasetId}/items with optional offset, limit, and format query parameters. Format defaults to json but xlsx, csv, html, rss, and xml are supported. The defaultDatasetId for a run is returned in the run object.

What are the rate limits for the Apify API?

The global limit is 250,000 requests per minute, counted per user for authenticated calls or per IP for anonymous calls. Per-resource limits are 30 requests per second by default, 100 for key-value store CRUD, and 200 for run-actor, push-items, and request-queue CRUD. Each response carries an X-RateLimit-Limit header.

How do I run an Apify Actor through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'run a web scraper', load the apify.com run-actor operation, and execute with the actorId and a JSON input. Jentic returns the run object; follow up with the get-dataset-items operation against the run's defaultDatasetId to retrieve results.

Does the Apify API support webhooks for run completion?

Yes. POST /v2/webhooks to register a subscription with eventTypes such as ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED, ACTOR.RUN.FAILED, and ACTOR.RUN.TIMED_OUT, plus a requestUrl for delivery. Apify retries failed deliveries with exponential backoff.