Apify MCP Server
Give your AI agents 4,000+ web scraping and automation actors over MCP.
Updated
What is Apify MCP?
The Apify MCP server is a Model Context Protocol server that lets AI agents discover, run, and read results from Apify's library of 4,000+ web scraping and automation actors — ready-made scrapers for social media, search engines, maps, e-commerce sites, and any other website.
Apify hosts the server at https://mcp.apify.com, so there is nothing to deploy. Agents authenticate either via OAuth (a browser sign-in on first connect) or by sending an Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN> header with a token from the API & Integrations section of the Apify Console. The same project is open-source and can be run locally over stdio with npx @apify/actors-mcp-server for development.
Beyond running actors, the server exposes tools to search the Apify Store, inspect actor details and run logs, read dataset and key-value-store records, and even search the Apify documentation — giving an agent everything it needs to turn unstructured web data into structured output on demand.
Tools the Apify MCP server exposes
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| search-actors | Search for actors in the Apify Store. |
| fetch-actor-details | Retrieve details for a specific actor, including its input schema and README. |
| call-actor | Run an actor and return its run results. |
| add-actor | Add an actor as a new callable tool for the user. |
| get-actor-run | Get detailed information about a specific actor run. |
| get-actor-run-list | List an actor's runs, filterable by status. |
| get-actor-log | Retrieve the logs for a specific actor run. |
| abort-actor-run | Abort a running actor run, optionally gracefully. |
| get-dataset-items | Retrieve items from a dataset with filtering and pagination. |
| get-key-value-store-record | Get the value stored under a specific key. |
| search-apify-docs | Search the Apify documentation for relevant pages. |
| fetch-apify-docs | Fetch the full content of an Apify documentation page by URL. |
Connect the Apify MCP server
Claude Code
- 1
Add the remote server
Run: claude mcp add --transport http apify https://mcp.apify.com
- 2
Authenticate
On first use, complete the OAuth sign-in to Apify in your browser, or pass an API token with a header: --header "Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>" (token from the Apify Console API & Integrations section).
- 3
Verify
Run /mcp in Claude Code to confirm Apify is connected and its tools (e.g. search-actors, call-actor) are listed.
Cursor
- 1
Open MCP settings
Edit .cursor/mcp.json (project) or the global Cursor MCP config.
- 2
Add the Apify server
Add an entry: {"mcpServers":{"apify":{"url":"https://mcp.apify.com","headers":{"Authorization":"Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>"}}}}. Replace <APIFY_TOKEN> with your Apify API token, or omit the header to use OAuth.
- 3
Reload and verify
Reload Cursor; the Apify server and its tools should appear as available in the MCP panel.
Sample use cases
An agent runs a web scraper actor to collect product reviews from e-commerce sites.
Structured review data (rating, text, date) delivered to a spreadsheet or database for sentiment analysis.
A research agent crawls a list of competitor websites to extract pricing and feature tables.
Up-to-date competitive intelligence gathered automatically without manual browsing.
An agent monitors job boards for new postings matching specific criteria on a daily schedule.
Matching job listings collected and delivered to a tracking sheet or notification channel.
A lead-gen agent scrapes public business directories for contact information.
Enriched prospect lists built from public data, ready for CRM import.
An agent extracts structured data from PDF documents hosted on public URLs.
Tabular data from reports and filings converted into machine-readable format for analysis.
A content agent crawls news sites for articles mentioning specific topics or brands.
Real-time media monitoring with structured article metadata (title, source, date, URL) for PR teams.
An agent validates that website content matches expected copy after a deployment.
Post-deploy content verification catching unintended text changes or missing sections.
Security & permissions
Apify's MCP server uses bearer-token (or OAuth) authentication. With a bearer token, the agent sends Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>; this Apify API token scopes what the agent can do — it can run actors on your behalf and read the datasets, key-value stores, and run logs that token authorizes. Treat the token as a secret, prefer a token scoped to the minimum needed, and rotate it from the Apify Console if exposed. Note that running actors consumes your Apify platform usage, so an over-permissioned agent can incur real cost.
Using Apify MCP with Gamut
In Gamut, you connect Apify once and reference it as a tool inside an automated agent workflow — Gamut manages the MCP connection and credentials. An event- or schedule-triggered agent can then call an Apify actor to scrape a target (a product page, a search result, a competitor site), read the resulting dataset items, and pass that structured data downstream — for example a nightly run that scrapes pricing into a dataset and posts a summary to your team. The agent only runs actors and reads back the data its token authorizes.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Apify MCP server?
It is a Model Context Protocol server, hosted by Apify at https://mcp.apify.com, that lets AI agents discover and run Apify's 4,000+ web scraping and automation actors and read back their results — turning unstructured web data into structured output an agent can use.
Is the Apify MCP server free?
The MCP server itself is free and open-source. You pay only for the Apify platform usage that running actors consumes. Apify's permanent Free plan includes $5 of prepaid usage per billing cycle with no credit card required, and paid plans add more for higher volume.
How do I connect the Apify MCP server to Claude or Cursor?
Point your client at the remote URL https://mcp.apify.com. On first connect you can sign in via OAuth, or supply an Apify API token as an Authorization: Bearer header. In Claude Code use 'claude mcp add --transport http apify https://mcp.apify.com'; in Cursor add the URL (and optional bearer header) to .cursor/mcp.json.
Is the Apify MCP server hosted or self-hosted?
Both. Apify officially hosts it at https://mcp.apify.com (recommended for most users), and because it is open-source you can also run it locally over stdio with 'npx @apify/actors-mcp-server' using your APIFY_TOKEN.
How many actors are available through the Apify MCP server?
The MCP server can discover and run any of Apify's 4,000+ actors from the Apify Store — covering web scraping, data extraction, automation, and crawling across thousands of websites and platforms.
Can I run custom actors through the Apify MCP server?
Yes. If you have published a custom actor to your Apify account, agents can discover and run it through MCP just like any public Store actor. Private actors are accessible with the appropriate authentication.
What data formats does the Apify MCP server return?
Actor results are returned as structured JSON by default. The MCP server reads back the actor's output dataset, so agents get clean, typed data they can process directly — no HTML parsing needed on the agent side.
Does the Apify MCP server support scheduled scraping runs?
The MCP server triggers on-demand actor runs. For recurring scrapes, pair it with an agent scheduler (like Gamut's scheduled tasks) that invokes the Apify MCP tools on a cron — the scheduling lives in the agent layer, not the MCP server itself.