Apify runs the whole scraping platform. Human Browser is the stealth browser layer.

Two honest, different shapes

Apify and Human Browser both end up driving a browser against a website — but they sit at opposite ends of the stack, and the right pick depends entirely on what you already have. We will be straight about where each one wins.

Apify is an all-in-one web scraping and automation platform. Its core is the Apify Store — a marketplace of thousands of ready-made scrapers called Actors — plus managed cloud runs, scheduling, dataset storage and exports, integrations, the Crawlee SDK for authoring your own Actors, and the Apify Proxy (datacenter and residential). It is built to own the whole workflow, including for non-technical teams who rent a finished Actor and never write code. If your job is "extract this data on a schedule and hand me a clean dataset," Apify is squarely aimed at you.

Human Browser is not a platform — it is the stealth browser layer that an AI agent plugs into. You bring your own agent or LLM, send a goal to an A2A (v0.3) endpoint or call it as an MCP tool, and a hosted, stealth-patched headful Chrome runs the steps with residential IP across 75 countries and a 12-type CAPTCHA/Turnstile solver wired in by default. It is Playwright-compatible, so existing Playwright code points at the cloud browser instead of a local one. One pay-as-you-go bill, no subscription, no Store, no scheduler.

The one-line version: Apify owns the workflow; Human Browser is the undetectable browser you give to an agent you already run. If you want a finished scraping platform, Apify is built for that. If you already have agents or LLMs and just need an anti-bot browser layer, Human Browser is the focused Apify alternative for exactly that case.

Who Apify is for

We are not going to pretend Apify is the wrong tool — for a large set of teams it is exactly right, and these are the cases where it clearly wins:

Who Human Browser is for

Human Browser is deliberately narrower. It does one thing — an undetectable, agent-native browser — and bundles the anti-bot stack so you do not assemble it. It wins when the workflow already lives in your agent and the browser is the part that keeps getting blocked:

Side-by-side: platform vs browser layer

On pricing specifically: Apify's subscription-plus-usage model is predictable for steady, well-understood workflows but can be hard to forecast once you are running many Actors with their own rental fees and proxy spend. Human Browser is a single pay-as-you-go meter with nothing to commit to up front. Neither is cheaper in the abstract — it depends on volume and shape — so verify Apify's current plans and unit prices on their site; both vendors change pricing over time.

For the anti-bot detail behind the stealth column, see our guides on bypassing Cloudflare with Playwright in 2026, handling Cloudflare Turnstile, and the best residential proxy for scraping. Comparing the wider field? We keep an honest roundup of the best cloud browsers for AI agents, plus head-to-heads vs Browserbase, browser-use, Steel.dev and Hyperbrowser.

Code example: Apify Actor run vs Human Browser A2A

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

// Run a Store Actor; Apify owns the run, proxy and dataset.
const run = await client.actor('apify/web-scraper').call({
  startUrls: [{ url: 'https://target.com/reports' }],
  proxyConfiguration: { useApifyProxy: true },
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

const res = await fetch('https://agent.humanbrowser.cloud/a2a', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + process.env.HB_TOKEN
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    jsonrpc: '2.0',
    id: 'scrape-1',
    method: 'tasks/send',
    params: {
      skill: 'login_and_scrape',
      message: 'Log into target.com, export CSV from /reports',
      country: 'gb',
      profile: 'reports-bot'
    }
  })
});
const { result } = await res.json();
// Residential IP, stealth, CAPTCHA, login, extraction handled.

The left side is the Apify model: a finished Actor that runs on the platform, with proxy and dataset managed for you. The right side is the Human Browser model: your agent sends a goal and a hosted stealth browser does the steps. Neither is wrong — they are aimed at different builders. If you already have the agent on the right and just need it to stop getting blocked, that is the Human Browser case.

Migrating a blocked Apify run to Human Browser

You do not have to leave Apify to use Human Browser — many teams keep Apify for the workflows that already work and route only the blocked targets through the stealth layer. The path is short:

1. Identify the failing target — the Actor or step that keeps returning blocks, CAPTCHAs or empty datasets behind Cloudflare/DataDome/Turnstile.
2. Point your existing Playwright/agent code at the Human Browser cloud endpoint, or send the goal over A2A/MCP, with a country and persistent profile.
3. Drop the proxy and CAPTCHA glue — residential IP, stealth and the solver are bundled, so the per-target tuning goes away.
4. Keep Apify for the rest — scheduling, storage and the Store still earn their keep on the workflows that were never the problem.

FAQ