# Apify — MCP Server

> Run thousands of ready-made scrapers as agent tools.

**Source:** https://mcpplaygroundonline.com/mcp-servers/apify  
**Transport:** http  
**Requires auth:** Yes

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## What it does

The interesting design decision here is dynamic tool discovery. Rather than shipping a fixed tool list, the server lets an agent search Apify Store for an Actor that fits the task, read its input schema, and then call it — so a request the server was never configured for can still be satisfied. Results land in an Apify dataset, which the agent reads back with pagination and filtering, so a scrape returning fifty thousand rows does not have to pass through the context window in one piece. Actors are billed per run on the Apify platform, which is worth understanding before an agent starts calling them in a loop. The server also exposes Apify documentation search, which is genuinely useful when the agent needs to work out an Actor’s input shape. It is hosted at mcp.apify.com over streamable HTTP with OAuth, and also available as a local stdio server.

## Tools exposed

- search-actors — find an Actor in Apify Store by what you need scraped
- fetch-actor-details — read an Actor’s input schema, pricing and description
- call-actor — run an Actor with a given input and wait for the result
- add-actor — add a specific Actor to the session as a dedicated tool
- get-dataset-items — read results with pagination and field filtering
- search-apify-docs / fetch-apify-docs — Apify platform documentation

## Example queries you can run

- "Find every coffee shop in Lisbon on Google Maps with their rating and review count."
- "Scrape the last 50 posts from this Instagram profile and summarise the themes."
- "Find an Actor that can scrape Amazon product listings and show me its inputs."
- "Collect the top 100 Google results for this query with titles and snippets."

## Details

- **Recommended model:** anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5 — Dynamic tool discovery means the model must read an Actor’s input schema and construct a valid payload. Sonnet 4.5 is reliable at that; smaller models guess the shape.
- **Transport:** http
- **Authentication:** Required — OAuth in the browser on first connection, or an Apify API token as a bearer header. Actor runs consume Apify platform credit.
- **Hosted endpoint:** https://mcp.apify.com
- **Official source:** [Apify MCP server — official documentation](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp)

## Connecting to Apify

### Environment variables

- `APIFY_TOKEN` — API token from Apify Console under API & Integrations. Only needed if your client cannot do OAuth, or for the local stdio server.

### Client configuration

**Local stdio server**

Same tools, running on your machine, with the token in your own environment rather than exchanged over OAuth.

```
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@apify/actors-mcp-server"],
      "env": { "APIFY_TOKEN": "YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" }
    }
  }
}
```

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the Apify MCP server?

It is Apify’s official MCP server, hosted at mcp.apify.com. It lets an AI agent search Apify Store, run any of the thousands of Actors published there, and read the resulting datasets — covering social media, maps, search engines, e-commerce and general web scraping.

### How does it expose thousands of scrapers as tools?

It does not expose them all at once. The agent searches the store, fetches the input schema for the Actor it picked, and calls it — or adds it to the session as a dedicated tool. That keeps the tool list small while leaving the whole catalogue reachable.

### What does it cost?

Actor runs consume Apify platform credit, priced per run or per result depending on the Actor. The MCP server itself adds nothing, but an agent left in a loop can spend real money — check an Actor’s pricing with fetch-actor-details before letting an agent call it repeatedly.

### How is this different from Firecrawl?

Firecrawl is one general-purpose engine that fetches and cleans any URL. Apify is a catalogue of purpose-built scrapers that already know the structure of a specific site. For arbitrary pages use Firecrawl; for Instagram profiles or Google Maps listings, a dedicated Actor returns structured fields Firecrawl would make you extract.

### Is scraping through Apify legal?

That depends on the target site’s terms, the data involved and your jurisdiction — the tool does not settle it. Apify publishes guidance on ethical scraping, and the responsibility for what an Actor is pointed at sits with whoever runs it.

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_Test this server across 40+ models on MCP Playground: https://mcpplaygroundonline.com/mcp-servers/apify — free, no install._