Pick Apify if
teams who will burn the Free $5 prepaid usage on a Store Actor or a Crawlee job, then buy Starter at $19/month ($17 billed annually) when they need chat support and 32 concurrent runs.
Read the Apify pageApify vs Playwright
Our take
Pick Apify if teams who will burn the Free $5 prepaid usage on a Store Actor or a Crawlee job, then buy Starter at $19/month ($17 billed annually) when they need chat support and 32 concurrent runs. Pick Playwright if teams who will stay on the OSS runner at $0 while they open a first Trace Viewer — then add their own CI, not Cypress Cloud Team $67 first unless they want Cypress’s hosted dashboard.
Best for
Apify Scrapes, browsers, and published Actors metered in prepaid usage
Playwright A trace you start at a public $
Free plan
Apify $0 · $5 prepaid usage / month. No card. $0.2/CU. 16 GB max RAM. 5 concurrent runs. Community support. No Store discount. When prepaid is gone, the account blocks until next cycle
Playwright No free plan
Lowest paid
Apify Creator $1/mo
Playwright Not published by the vendor
Next step up
Apify Proxy (list) $8
Playwright
Runs where
Apify Hosted
Playwright Hosted
Watch out
Apify Free blocks when the $5 is gone
Playwright No hosted cloud runner in core
Last checked
Apify 2026-10-22 · apify.com/pricing
Playwright 2026-10-23 · playwright.dev
Which one, then?
Pick Playwright if
teams who will stay on the OSS runner at $0 while they open a first Trace Viewer — then add their own CI, not Cypress Cloud Team $67 first unless they want Cypress’s hosted dashboard.
Read the Playwright page