Apify vs Tines
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Apify and Tines.
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Verdict: Tines wins
Tines scores 4.5/5, edging out Apify at 4.3/5. Security, IT and operations teams that need auditable no-code automation across sensitive systems with human approval gates built in.
Apify Web scraping and automation platform | Tines Workflow automation platform for security and operations teams | |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 4.3 (1 review) | 4.5 (1 review) |
| Pricing Model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting Price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best For | Developers and data teams who need web data as a recurring pipeline — prebuilt scrapers to start, custom Actors and proxy infrastructure as they scale. | Security, IT and operations teams that need auditable no-code automation across sensitive systems with human approval gates built in. |
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Team Features | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Tags | free tierapi accessopen source | free tierteam featuresapi access |
| Visit Apify → | Visit Tines → |
Apify
Pros
- + Genuine free sandbox: $5 monthly credit covers real test runs of store Actors, not just a feature tour
- + Store breadth — flagship scrapers (Google Maps, Instagram, SERP) show 4.6–4.7 ratings across hundreds of reviews in their own store stats
- + Billing is itemized per compute unit, proxy GB and storage operation, so I could attribute a run's cost down to cents
- + First-class developer tooling: Crawlee (open source), Python and JS SDKs, CLI deploys, scheduling, webhooks, REST API
- + Proxy network (datacenter, residential, Google SERP) is integrated rather than a third-party add-on, with country-level rates published
Cons
- - Real cost is a stack of meters (Actor per-event price + compute units + proxy GB + storage) and is hard to forecast without test runs
- - Store catalog is noisy with heavy duplication — one reviewer counted 12,000+ job scrapers alone; long-tail quality is unvetted
- - Anything past running a prebuilt Actor requires coding skills and proxy knowledge
- - SSO is Enterprise-only; personal training is $150/hour; support is community-only below the $19 tier
- - Vendor's headline customer and catalog counts are self-reported and undefined — I could not verify them independently
Tines
Pros
- + Security-native design: credential isolation, immutable audit logs, SSO on the free tier and first-class approval gates — I verified approvals work as a primitive, not a webhook hack
- + A real phishing-response workflow (enrich, branch, Slack approval, ticket write-back) went live on the canvas in under an hour in my testing
- + G2 satisfaction is exceptional for the category: 4.8/5 from ~230 reviews with high-nineties scores on ease of use, setup and support quality
- + Vendor-agnostic by design — anything with an API connects, so you are not stranded by a curated connector marketplace
- + Strong company signals: $125M Series C at a $1.125B valuation (Feb 2025), 1B+ automated actions per week, and an AI-governance (3B) story ahead of rivals
Cons
- - No published pricing above the free tier — every production evaluation runs through sales, and the AWS Marketplace vehicle is a custom contract only
- - The free edition caps at 3 live workflows (and 25,000 monthly events under older terms) — enough to evaluate, not to operate
- - No code escape hatch: deep JSON reshaping and bespoke logic get tedious in event transforms where a JS node would be three lines
- - Tines 3B (self-healing, cross-org monitoring of externally built workflows) launched July 2026 and is young — validate hands-on before betting a governance program on it
- - Category identity is blurred (SOAR, iPaaS, process automation), and non-security use cases feel secondary to the alert-driven core
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Apify or Tines?▼
Tines scores higher at 4.5/5 vs 4.3/5 for Apify, making it the better-rated option in our comparison.
What is the difference between Apify and Tines?▼
Apify: Apify is a marketplace and platform of ready-made web scrapers and automation actors, with tooling to build and host your own. Tines: Tines is a workflow automation platform used by security and IT teams to build and run processes across sensitive systems without writing code.
Is Apify or Tines more affordable?▼
Apify starts at €0/mo, Tines starts at €0/mo. Check the comparison table above for current pricing.
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