G2

imran o.

Director

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

10/20/2026

"Seamless n8n Integration with Reliable, Budget-Safe Instagram Scraping"

5/5

What do you like best about Apify?

It plugs straight into n8n. I call the run-sync endpoint with one HTTP node and get the dataset back in the same step, so there’s no polling and no extra plumbing. I use the Instagram scraper and the Instagram profile scraper as the data layer for a daily lead radar I built for a gem dealer, and they’ve been reliable. The per-call spend cap (maxTotalChargeUsd) is the feature I value most, because a bad input can never run up a bill on a client build. Pay per result keeps it cheap: my first test read 30 profiles for about eight cents. The unexpected win was being able to export a run’s dataset and build the whole engine against that saved data, so weeks of development and testing cost nothing in scraping. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apify?

The free tier is tight once you’re building something real. Unnamed datasets are deleted after about a week, which nearly cost me my test data before I learned to export it straight away. A clear warning in the console when a dataset is about to expire would fix that. Some actors also carry their own run limits on top of your account’s limits, and the difference between the two isn’t obvious in the interface, so I lost time working out why a run was refused. Showing both limits side by side on the actor page would help. The step up to the paid plan is fair for what you get, but it comes sooner than expected once a workflow runs every day, so budget for it early. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Apify solving and how is that benefiting you?

I build lead generation systems for small businesses, and the hardest part is getting clean public data without logins, proxies or scrapers I have to maintain myself. For one client, a sapphire dealer, the only alternative was scrolling Instagram by hand to find jewellers who buy coloured stones. Now Apify reads fifteen hashtag feeds a day, pulls the profiles of the accounts that look promising, and hands the data to n8n, where my workflow filters, scores and briefs each one. In testing, one run returned 69 posts across 53 accounts, and reading 30 full profiles cost about eight cents. That puts the whole daily scrape at roughly $20 a month, which makes a system like this affordable for a small business. It also means I can offer it as a product rather than as hours of manual research. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.