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SenseCollectSenseCollect vs Apify
Apify is a platform for running anyone's scraper. SenseCollect is one API for local lead data. The right answer depends on whether you want a toolbox or a result.
pricing checked 2026-08-07 · from their published pricing page
What each one is
Apify is a marketplace and runtime. You pick an actor someone published — there are several Google Maps scrapers on it — configure its inputs, and pay for the compute it burns. That generality is the product: if a source exists, something on Apify probably reaches it.
SenseCollect does one category of work. A GET request returns local business rows with phone, email, and website already resolved, in a schema that does not change between sources. There is nothing to configure and nothing to pick.
How each one charges
Free tier with $5/month of platform usage. Paid plans at $29, $199, and $999 per month, each including prepaid usage equal to the plan price. Billing is by compute unit — one CU is 1 GB of RAM for one hour — at $0.20/CU on the free tier down to $0.13/CU on Business. Unused prepaid usage does not roll over and expires at the end of the billing cycle.
No subscription. Credit packs are bought once and do not expire. Billing is per row returned, so an idle month costs nothing.
Figures for Apify checked on 2026-08-07. Source: apify.com/pricing Prices change without notice — verify before deciding on cost alone.
1,000 enriched local business rows, pulled once
The comparison that matters is not the per-unit rate — it is what happens to the floor and the leftovers. Apify's compute-unit cost for a Maps run varies with the actor and the machine it requests, so the honest figure is the subscription floor plus whatever the run burns.
| Step | Apify | SenseCollect |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly floor before you pull anything | $29 on Starter | $0 |
| Cost of the rows themselves | Compute units, variable by actor and machine size | $21.04–$32.30 |
| Unused balance at month end | Expires | Carries forever |
| Months you pull nothing | Still $29 | $0 |
If you pull every week and want many different sources, Apify's floor disappears into the volume and its range is the point. If you pull in bursts — a campaign, a client project, a quarter of prospecting — the subscription and the monthly expiry are the whole cost story, and that is the case SenseCollect is built for.
Line by line
| Dimension | Apify | SenseCollect |
|---|---|---|
| Breadth of sources | Thousands of actors across effectively any public site | Three sources: Google Maps, Amazon reviews, TikTok |
| Billing unit | Compute units — RAM × time, so cost tracks the run, not the result | Rows returned |
| Subscription floor | $29/month minimum for a paid plan | None |
| Credit expiry | Prepaid usage expires at the end of each billing cycle | Credits never expire |
| Contact enrichment | Depends on the actor; often a second actor and a second run | Phone, email, and website resolved in the same call |
| Response schema | Whatever the actor's author decided to output | One schema across every source, raw payload preserved |
| Self-hosting and custom code | Write and deploy your own actors in JS or Python | Not offered |
| Cost when a run returns nothing | Compute was still consumed | Nothing — billing is per row returned |
Which one you should actually pick
Choose Apify if
- You need sources we do not have. Three sources is three sources, and Apify reaches almost anything.
- You want to write and host your own scraper rather than call someone else's API.
- You are already running high, steady volume, where a $29 floor is noise and the CU rate is what matters.
- You need proxy control, custom browser fingerprinting, or the other knobs a general runtime exposes and a fixed API does not.
Choose SenseCollect if
- You want local business rows with contacts resolved, not a scraper to configure.
- Your usage is bursty, and you would rather not pay a monthly floor between campaigns.
- You want the balance you bought to still be there next quarter.
- You want one response shape you can write code against once.
Questions people ask before switching
Is SenseCollect cheaper than Apify?+
For bursty usage, yes — there is no monthly floor and nothing expires. For steady high volume across many sources, Apify's compute pricing can come out ahead, and its range is far wider. The floor and the expiry are the honest difference, not the headline rate.
Can I migrate an Apify Google Maps actor to SenseCollect?+
If the actor was returning places for a query and location, yes — that is one GET request here. If it was doing custom post-processing inside the actor, you would move that into your own code.
Does SenseCollect support custom scrapers like Apify actors?+
No. SenseCollect is a fixed API over three sources. If you need to write your own collector, Apify is the better tool and we would rather say so.
Do SenseCollect credits expire?+
No. Credits are bought once and stay on the account indefinitely. Apify's prepaid platform usage expires at the end of each billing cycle.