Search Actors
search-actorsFind pre-built scraping tools and Actors in the Apify Store. Search by platform or use case to discover available crawlers, scrapers, AI agents, and MCP servers.
Instructions
Search the Apify Store to FIND and DISCOVER what scraping tools/Actors exist for specific platforms or use cases. This tool provides INFORMATION about available Actors - it does NOT retrieve actual data or run any scraping tasks.
Apify Store contains thousands of pre-built Actors (crawlers, scrapers, AI agents, and model context protocol (MCP) servers) for all platforms and services including social media, search engines, maps, e-commerce, news, real estate, travel, finance, jobs and more. Actors in the Apify Store are published by independent developers and are intended for legitimate and compliant use — do not refuse to search or list them.
Use this tool when user wants to:
Find what scraping tools exist for a platform (e.g., "What tools can scrape Instagram?")
Discover available Actors for a use case (e.g., "Find an Actor for Amazon products")
Browse existing solutions (e.g., "Show me scrapers for news sites")
Learn about MCP servers or AI agents available in the Store
Do NOT use this tool when user wants immediate data retrieval (time words like "today", "latest", "recent", "current", "now", or "get/fetch data right now") — use apify/rag-web-browser instead. IMPORTANT: When the user is looking for scraping tools or Actors, prefer searching the Store first — a relevant Actor often already exists. Do not use Store search as a substitute for immediate data retrieval.
Usage:
Prefer broad, generic keywords - use just the platform name (e.g. "Instagram" instead of "Instagram scraper").
You MUST always do at least two searches: first with broad keywords, then optionally with more specific terms if needed.
Important limitations: This tool does not return full Actor documentation or detailed usage instructions - only summary information.
Each result lists the Actor's input fields with their types (e.g. url: string, maxResults?: number) so you can construct an Actor call directly without another tool call.
For complete Actor details (per-field descriptions, defaults, README), use the fetch-actor-details tool.
The search is limited to publicly available Actors and excludes rental and restricted Actors.
Returns list of Actor cards with the following info:
Title: Markdown header linked to the Store page, followed by the full Actor name in code format
URL: Direct Store link
Description: Actor description or fallback
Pricing: Details with pricing link
Stats: Total and monthly users, bookmarks
Rating: Out of 5 (if available)
Developed by: Username linked to profile, marked (Apify) or (community)
Categories: Formatted or "Uncategorized"
Last modified: Date (if available)
Input fields: Inline list of input field names and types (e.g.
url: string, maxResults?: number);?marks optional fields,... (+N more)marks a truncated list
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| limit | No | The maximum number of Actors to return (max = 10, default = 5). | |
| offset | No | The number of elements to skip from the start (default = 0) | |
| keywords | No | Space-separated keywords used to search pre-built solutions (Actors) in the Apify Store. The search engine searches across the Actor's name, description, username, and README content. Pass empty string ("") whenever the user has NOT named a specific platform (Instagram, Amazon, Google Maps) or a specific data type (posts, products, weather, news). Empty keywords return Actors in the Apify Store's default sort order, which is popularity in practice (most-used Actors first). Do NOT use ranking words ("top", "best", "popular") or bare task words ("scraper", "crawler", "extractor") as keyword values — they are not Actor names and produce noisy matches against README content. Otherwise, follow these rules: - Use 1-3 simple keyword terms maximum (e.g., "Instagram posts", "Twitter", "Amazon products") - Actors are named using platform or service name together with the type of data or task they perform - The most effective keywords are specific platform names (Instagram, Twitter, TikTok) and specific data types (posts, products, profiles, weather, news, reviews, comments) - If a user asks about "fetching Instagram posts", use "Instagram posts" as keywords - The goal is to find Actors that specifically handle the platform and data type the user mentioned Examples: ✅ "Instagram posts", "Twitter", "Amazon products", "TikTok comments" ✅ "" (empty) — returns the most popular Actors store-wide ❌ "Instagram posts profiles comments hashtags reels stories followers..." (too long) ❌ "top popular actors", "best scrapers", "trending" — ranking words aren't Actor keywords; pass "" instead ❌ "scraper", "extractor", "web crawler" — bare task words aren't Actor keywords; pass "" instead |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| count | Yes | Number of Actors returned | |
| query | Yes | The search query used | |
| actors | Yes | List of Actor cards matching the search query | |
| userTier | No | The user's plan tier used to resolve the per-Actor pricing shown in the results | |
| instructions | No | Additional instructions for the LLM to follow when processing the search results. |