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cdpfleet vs Apify
A browser you connect to from your own code, priced per thread, against a platform that runs your whole scraper — Actors in containers, billed in compute units with proxies and storage. Prices, limits and features side by side.
Apify is a web-scraping platform: you package a scraper as an Actor — a Docker container, usually built on its open-source Crawlee library — and Apify runs it with storage, scheduling, an API and its own proxies, or you rent a ready-made Actor from the Apify Store. The browser lives inside your Actor run and is paid for as compute: memory × time. cdpfleet only does the browser: one HTTPS call returns a WebSocket to a real browser — Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Naver Whale, Yandex Browser, Chromium, Patchright, Rebrowser, Camoufox, Firefox or WebKit — that your code drives from wherever it already runs. They overlap when you'd otherwise put Playwright in an Apify container just to have a browser in the cloud.
| cdpfleet | Apify | |
|---|---|---|
| Browsers | 12 — Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Naver Whale, Yandex Browser, Chromium, Patchright, Rebrowser, Camoufox, Firefox, WebKit, plus hardware Android phones and iOS WebView in early access. Chrome with stable, beta and dev channels and pinned previous majors. | What your Actor installs. Base images for Playwright with Chromium/Chrome, Firefox, WebKit or all three, Camoufox, and Puppeteer with Chrome; headful through Xvfb. |
| How you connect | Your code runs anywhere and connects over the Playwright protocol — connect(wsUrl) from Node.js, Python, Java, C# or Go — or over CDP with "cdp": true for Puppeteer and connectOverCDP. Nothing to deploy. | You deploy your code as an Actor (Docker image) and it launches the browser inside the run; Apify SDK and Crawlee for JavaScript/TypeScript and Python. Results go to Apify datasets and key-value stores. |
| Session length | Up to 24 h per session (shared threads: also capped by your remaining daily minutes). Idle timeout 120 s by default, up to 10 min on shared threads and 24 h on dedicated. | As long as the Actor run, which has a timeout you set. |
| Metering | Per second, as thread-seconds: a headless browser is 1 thread, headful 2. Billing stops when the WebSocket closes. | Compute units: 1 GB of memory for 1 hour = 1 CU, at $0.20 (Free, Starter), $0.16 (Scale) or $0.13 (Business). Browser Actors need at least 1 GB; "large and complex sites" 4 GB or more. Proxies and storage are billed on top. |
| Plans | Free Community plan (invite-only for now): 2 threads, 60 browser-minutes per thread a day, 15-minute sessions, proxies included. Paid from $5.00/month (5 shared threads, 60–480 browser-minutes a day per thread); dedicated threads for 24/7 use at $5.00/thread/month. Pricing. | Free: $5 of usage a month, no card. Starter $19/month, Scale $199/month, Business $999/month — each fee is prepaid usage. Concurrent runs 5 / 32 / 128 / 256 on the pricing page (the limits docs say 25 on Free); memory 16 GB / 64 GB / 256 GB / 512 GB. |
| One browser, around the clock | A dedicated thread: $5.00/month, i.e. $0.0069/hour. | At 1 GB: 720 CU ≈ $144.00/month at $0.20 ($115.20 at Scale's $0.16, $93.60 at Business's $0.13), compute only; a 4 GB browser costs four times as much. |
| Concurrency | The threads you buy: 5 to 10,000 (more on request); each session takes 1–4 threads by type. | Concurrent runs per plan (above); one run can drive several browsers within its memory. |
| Proxies | Bring your own HTTP, HTTPS or SOCKS5 proxies — single, pool, or per-host rules (proxy_rules) — swap a running session's proxy live, see traffic per destination host and per rule; traffic through them is free. Or the cdpfleet residential proxy: 4 tiers from $0.50 to $5/GB from one prepaid balance ($5 free credit), mixable per host — e.g. Tier 4 for CDN assets, Tier 1 for pages. A launch without a proxy uses the free Community proxy — best effort, no guarantees. | Apify Proxy: datacenter (5 / 30 / 200 / 500 IPs included, then $1 / $1 / $0.80 / $0.60 per IP), residential ($8 / $8 / $7.50 / $7 per GB), Google SERP and an Unblocker; country targeting and sessions (residential sessions last about 30 minutes). Your own proxies work through Crawlee's proxyUrls. |
| Stealth | Real browsers by default (genuine Chrome, Edge, Brave…), headful by default, and three stealth builds — Patchright, Rebrowser, Camoufox — on every plan. See the headless tells case. | Crawlee generates browser fingerprints for its crawlers; a Camoufox base image; the Unblocker proxy for anti-bot systems. |
| Watching a session | Live view with human takeover — Watch / Take control in the dashboard, or a link from the API — and Launch interactive: open any browser on a start page straight into live view from the dashboard's code generator (start_url over the API). Session recordings as MP4 (480p free, 720p or 1080p on a plan), and JPEG frames to your code with page.screencast. | Run logs, datasets and key-value-store files in the Apify Console. |
| Persistence | Persistent profiles keep cookies, local storage and IndexedDB between sessions (paid plans); Playwright storageState; keep_alive to reconnect to the same browser on dedicated threads. | Named key-value stores and datasets; Crawlee's session pool keeps cookies per proxy session. |
| Ready-made scrapers | None — you bring the code; the cases, recipes and code builder help you write it. | The Apify Store: a marketplace of ready-made Actors for popular sites, some priced per result. |
| Examples | 58 cases run on production in five languages, all on GitHub with their output. | Crawlee and Actor templates. |
Apify facts from its public pricing page and documentation, checked on 14 October 2026; list prices in USD. Tell us if something is out of date.
Which one, when
Pick Apify if…
- You want the whole scraper hosted — queue, retries, scheduling, storage and an API — not just the browser.
- A ready-made Actor from the Store already does what you need.
- Your jobs are small enough for $5 of free usage a month, or bursty enough that paying by memory-hour beats a monthly thread.
Pick cdpfleet if…
- Your code already runs somewhere and only needs a browser: no image to build, no deploy, five languages.
- The site must see a specific real browser or version — Chrome channels, Edge, Brave, Opera, Firefox, WebKit, Camoufox — or a phone.
- Browsers run for hours or around the clock: a dedicated thread is a flat monthly price, not memory × hours.
- You want live takeover, recordings, persistent profiles and per-host proxy routing built in.
- You want to start free — the Community plan includes proxies — and try a browser in live view before writing any code.
Try it
The quickstart is one HTTPS call and five lines of Playwright; the code builder writes the launch for any browser and option set in your language.