At a glance
Apify vs askFinz
Row by row — reach, freshness and what you get back.
| Compared on | Apify | askFinz |
|---|---|---|
| Model | A marketplace of scrapers ("Actors") run per job | One standing index, already read |
| Setup per task | Pick or build an Actor, configure it, run it | None — search what is already indexed |
| Freshness | As fresh as your last run of that Actor | Continuous reading, not a scheduled rebuild |
| Coverage | Whichever Actors exist, or ones you build | The sources askFinz reads, filed by what they are — a judgment, a standard, a filing, with its identifier |
| What comes back | A dataset in the shape you configured | The matched passage and the address it was read from |
| Documents, not just pages | Whatever the Actor is written to handle | PDFs, Office files, ebooks and data files converted to readable text and read |
| Best at | Repeatable structured extraction from known sites | Ad hoc questions against an existing index |
| Anti-bot handling | Actor-dependent, often via proxies | Real browser sessions rather than a rented proxy pool |
| Where it is used | A platform your code runs jobs on | Workspaces, a browser extension and a desktop app, on one sign-in |
Swipe the table sideways to see both columns.
What Apify is
Apify hosts a marketplace of Actors — reusable scrapers built by Apify, by other developers, or by you — for tasks like pulling product listings, social profiles or search results from a specific site. You choose an Actor or build one, configure it, run it, and get results for that job. It handles scheduling, proxies and scaling. Running it again later means running it again.
What askFinz is
askFinz does not work job by job. It maintains a single web index, read continuously and ahead of the question rather than re-run per task, with a Search workspace, Research, Chat, Code and News, a browser extension, a desktop app and research agents on top — all on the same index and one sign-in. A question returns the matched passage together with the answer, and the address it was read from, out of an index kept as separate collections filed by what each document actually is: a judgment, a standard, a filing or a clinical study comes back as that kind of record with its identifier attached, which is the part an Actor has to be written to produce and then rewritten to keep. PDFs, Office files, ebooks and data files are converted to readable text and read, not just fetched. askFinz does not sell index access as a standalone feed or API, and there is no marketplace to build on.
Configured answers and unplanned ones
This is the real division. An Actor answers the question you set it up to answer, from the sites you pointed it at, as of whenever it last ran. That is precisely what you want when the question is stable and the sites are known — monitor this competitor's pricing page, pull every listing from that marketplace, weekly.
It is the wrong shape when the question arrives without warning. askFinz has already done the reading, so a question that nobody anticipated is answered against something current rather than by kicking off a new job and waiting.
Two different jobs
One hands you material to process. The other has already read it.
Choose Apify if
- You have a well-defined, repeatable extraction job against known sites. This is exactly what it is for.
- You need structured fields — prices, listings, profiles — rather than passages of prose.
- An Actor already exists for your target site, which turns a week of work into an afternoon.
- You want to control scheduling, retries and proxy behaviour per job.
- You need to scrape a site askFinz's index does not cover, and you can point an Actor at it yourself.
Choose askFinz if
- Your questions are not known in advance, so there is nothing to configure ahead of them.
- You want an answer with the passage it came from, and the address it was read from, rather than a dataset to interpret.
- You do not want to own the maintenance — an Actor breaks when the site it targets changes its layout.
- You want content filed by what it is, with its identifier, so a filing, a standard and a listing are not the same kind of hit.
- The answer needs to go somewhere afterwards — Research, Storage, a project.
FAQ
Questions people ask
The things people actually ask before choosing between Apify and askFinz.
5 questions · open one to read the answer
Only for the "get me an answer" job. For repeatable structured extraction from a specific site, askFinz is not a substitute at all — there is no Actor to configure and no scrape to run.
No. There is no marketplace and no index API; askFinz is a product built on its own index.
As fresh as the last time you ran that Actor. Freshness is a scheduling decision you own.
It reads through real browser sessions rather than a rented proxy pool.
Not directly. It returns extracted data; interpreting it is work on your side.
See how the index works, or read the fuller case against renting a search index. Join the beta and try it against a real question.