Apify Actors
The Apify MCP server enables your AI agents to extract data from social media, search engines, maps, e-commerce sites, or any other website using thousands of ready-made scrapers, crawlers, and automation tools available on the Apify Store.
What is Apify Actors?
Apify Actors is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows AI assistants like Claude, Cursor, and VS Code to apify mcp server enables your ai agents to extract data from social media, search engines, maps, e-commerce sites, or any other website using thousands of ready-made scrapers, crawlers, and automation...
The Apify MCP server enables your AI agents to extract data from social media, search engines, maps, e-commerce sites, or any other website using thousands of ready-made scrapers, crawlers, and automation tools available on the Apify Store.
This server falls under the Search & Data Extraction category on MCPgee, the world's largest MCP server directory with 33,000+ servers.
Features
- The Apify MCP server enables your AI agents to extract data
Use Cases
Maintainer
Works with
Installation
NPM
npx -y @apify/actors-mcp-serverManual Installation
npx -y @apify/actors-mcp-serverConfiguration
Configuration Details
claude_desktop_config.json
Performance
Response Metrics
Resource Usage
How to Set Up and Use Apify Actors
The Apify Actors MCP Server connects AI assistants to the entire Apify Store — thousands of ready-made scrapers, crawlers, and automation Actors for extracting data from social media platforms, search engines, maps, e-commerce sites, and virtually any website. Through a small set of discovery and execution tools, an AI agent can search for the right Actor, inspect its input schema, call it with appropriate parameters, and retrieve structured results, all without writing any scraping code.
Prerequisites
- An Apify account (sign up free at apify.com)
- An Apify API token (found at apify.com/account/integrations)
- Node.js 18 or higher (for local stdio mode via npx)
- An MCP client such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, or VS Code
Obtain your Apify API token
Log in to apify.com, go to Settings > Integrations, and copy your personal API token. It starts with 'apify_api_'. This token authenticates all Actor runs and is billed to your account.
Choose a connection method: hosted or local
The easiest option is the hosted server at mcp.apify.com which supports OAuth — just add the URL to your MCP client with no local installation. For local/stdio use with Claude Desktop, use npx.
Add the hosted server to your MCP client (recommended)
For clients that support HTTP/SSE MCP servers (Claude.ai web, VS Code), add the hosted endpoint. Your APIFY_TOKEN is passed as a Bearer header.
{
"mcpServers": {
"apify": {
"url": "https://mcp.apify.com",
"headers": {
"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN"
}
}
}
}Or configure local stdio mode for Claude Desktop
For Claude Desktop, use the npx stdio transport. The --tools flag controls which tools are loaded; the default includes search-actors, fetch-actor-details, call-actor, search-apify-docs, and the rag-web-browser Actor.
{
"mcpServers": {
"apify": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@apify/actors-mcp-server"],
"env": {
"APIFY_TOKEN": "apify_api_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
}
}
}
}Restart your MCP client and verify tools
Restart Claude Desktop or reload your MCP client. The following tools should be available: search-actors, fetch-actor-details, call-actor, search-apify-docs, fetch-apify-docs, and apify--rag-web-browser.
Apify Actors Examples
Client configuration
Claude Desktop stdio configuration for the Apify Actors MCP server with an explicit tools list.
{
"mcpServers": {
"apify": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@apify/actors-mcp-server",
"--tools",
"actors,docs,apify/rag-web-browser"
],
"env": {
"APIFY_TOKEN": "apify_api_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
}
}
}
}Prompts to try
Example prompts to send to Claude once the Apify MCP server is connected.
- "Search Apify Store for an Actor that can scrape Google Maps reviews"
- "Use the Instagram scraper Actor to get the last 20 posts from @nasa"
- "Find recent news about climate change using the RAG web browser"
- "Scrape the top 10 Google search results for 'best MCP servers 2025'"
- "Extract product listings and prices from this e-commerce URL: https://example.com/products"Troubleshooting Apify Actors
Actor runs fail with 'Authentication failed' or 401 errors
Verify APIFY_TOKEN is set correctly and has not expired. Go to apify.com/account/integrations to regenerate a token if needed. Make sure there are no extra spaces in the token value.
call-actor returns run metadata but no actual data
This is expected behavior. After calling an Actor, follow the nextStep hint in the response and call get-dataset-items with the datasetId returned by the run to retrieve the actual scraped data.
npx takes a long time to start the server on each restart
Install the package globally to avoid repeated downloads: npm install -g @apify/actors-mcp-server. Then change the command in your config from 'npx' with '-y' args to 'actors-mcp-server' directly.
Frequently Asked Questions about Apify Actors
What is Apify Actors?
Apify Actors is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that apify mcp server enables your ai agents to extract data from social media, search engines, maps, e-commerce sites, or any other website using thousands of ready-made scrapers, crawlers, and automation tools available on the apify store. It connects AI assistants to external tools and data sources through a standardized interface.
How do I install Apify Actors?
Install via npm with the command: npx -y @apify/actors-mcp-server. Then add the server configuration to your AI client's JSON config file (e.g., claude_desktop_config.json or .cursor/mcp.json).
Which AI clients work with Apify Actors?
Apify Actors works with all major MCP-compatible AI clients including Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code (GitHub Copilot), Windsurf, and Cline.
Is Apify Actors free to use?
Yes, Apify Actors is open source and available under the MIT license. You can use it freely in both personal and commercial projects.
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Browse More Search & Data Extraction MCP Servers
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Set Up Apify Actors in Your Editor
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Quick Config Preview
Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json or .cursor/mcp.json
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