Quilter vs Apify
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Quilter and Apify.
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Verdict: Apify wins
Apify scores 4.3/5, edging out Quilter at 4.0/5. Developers and data teams who need web data as a recurring pipeline — prebuilt scrapers to start, custom Actors and proxy infrastructure as they scale.
Quilter AI-powered PCB design automation for engineers | Apify Web scraping and automation platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 4.0 (1 review) | 4.3 (1 review) |
| Pricing Model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting Price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best For | Hardware teams with real layout bottlenecks — startups and mid-size electronics firms iterating multiple boards — that use Altium, Allegro, Xpedition or KiCad and want to trade weeks of manual placement and routing for hours of candidate review. | Developers and data teams who need web data as a recurring pipeline — prebuilt scrapers to start, custom Actors and proxy infrastructure as they scale. |
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Team Features | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Tags | free tier | free tierapi accessopen source |
| Visit Quilter → | Visit Apify → |
Quilter
Pros
- + Per-project billing counts only unrouted pins at upload — in my test a pre-routed power section correctly reduced the design pin count, letting engineers hand off tedious routing while keeping critical RF/power work themselves
- + Unlimited free iterations per project (within 10% BOM change) plus parallel jobs meant comparing a 4-layer and 6-layer variant of one board overnight at no extra cost
- + Outputs land in native Altium, Cadence Allegro, Siemens Xpedition or KiCad formats — no proprietary lock-in, and files opened cleanly for DRC and fab prep
- + The two-to-five-cycle expectation and the circuit comprehension report are honest about where human review stays mandatory, versus one-shot-layout marketing elsewhere in this category
- + Deployment flexibility with a managed AWS cloud (SOC 2 Type 2, isolated workspaces) or self-hosted option where board data never leaves your infrastructure
Cons
- - No public per-board prices — cost is a sales conversation despite the transparent pin-count model, so budgeting is opaque before first contact
- - Free-tier designs may be made public, which excludes confidential work from the zero-cost path
- - A BOM change beyond 10% of the upload starts a new billable project, which penalises respun designs
- - Automated layout is not design validation: DRC-clean candidates still need thermal, EMC and DFM review, and the vendor's own guidance expects 2–5 iteration cycles
- - Supports four ECAD tools for output; teams on Eagle, Proteus or browser-based suites face import friction, and the company is young enough that its long-term track record is still being built
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
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Quilter or Apify?▼
Apify scores higher at 4.3/5 vs 4.0/5 for Quilter, making it the better-rated option in our comparison.
What is the difference between Quilter and Apify?▼
Quilter: Quilter automates printed circuit board placement and routing using physics simulation, producing layout candidates that work with Altium, Cadence and Xpedition. Apify: Apify is a marketplace and platform of ready-made web scrapers and automation actors, with tooling to build and host your own.
Is Quilter or Apify more affordable?▼
Quilter starts at €0/mo, Apify starts at €0/mo. Check the comparison table above for current pricing.
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