TLDR:
All Actors are split into two categories: Maintained by Apify and Maintained by Community.
Maintained by Apify Actors are best for mainstream use cases (e.g., scraping Google). Maintained by Community Actors have a wider range of available use cases (e.g., scraping local e-shops).
Apify takes full responsibility for the maintained by Apify Actors. Apify only hosts the maintained by Community Actors.
Apify support is not responsible for addressing issues with Community Actors or pushing new features. For this, use the Issues tab.
Apify Store has more than 2,000 ready-to-use Actors. The first Actors in Store (Google Maps Scraper, Web Scraper, Content Checker…) were created by the first Apifiers. As time went on and our platform evolved, we opened Apify Store to Actors made by non-Apify developers, so their solutions can find their users more easily.
As you know, most scrapers need regular check-ups and maintenance in order to function and stay in good condition. So how do we maintain 2K+ of them? Well, first of all, we split them into two categories: those managed by Apify (about 1/10) and those managed by our talented Community Developers (about 9/10). Let’s look at the differences and expectations for each category:
| Maintained by Apify | Maintained by Community |
👀 Examples | Scrapers for well-known websites, e.g. Twitter Scraper | Scrapers for specific websites, e.g. Hepsiburada Product Scraper |
🧑💻 Ownership | Created and maintained by Apifiers. | Created and maintained by independent developers. |
🛠 Maintenance | All maintenance, updates, and bug fixes are done by Apifiers. | All maintenance, updates, and bug fixes are done by the developers who created and published these Actors. Apify does not access their code, only hosts it. |
✨ Features and functionality | We are selective about which use cases have the best potential to become Actors and serve the most users. Our best work is on mainstream Actors. | Community-maintained has a wider range of interests. This category is best for specific features and Actors. You can suggest your Actor ideas here. |
👷♀️ Reliability and testing | Subject to meticulous reliability testing to meet Apify's quality and performance standards. | Tests are strongly recommended to the developers but not enforced. |
☝️ Support and issues | Comprehensive support and responsibility for addressing posted issues. Direct communication with our users via the scraper's Issue tab. | Issues and questions to be raised in the scraper's Issues tab. Apify cannot help with issues with Community Actors. Store terms and conditions |
✍️ Documentation | Extensive documentation resources available. | Documentation resources available. |