Apify Opportunity Finder – Validate Actor Ideas Before You Build

Know whether an Apify actor idea is worth building — before you write a line of code.

Enter your scraper ideas as keywords. Get GO / MAYBE / NO-GO verdicts scored by real Apify Store demand, direct competitor count, and data quality. Runs on Apify (no setup) or locally from the terminal.

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Run on Apify — no setup required

Open the actor, enter your keywords, click Run. No token, no config, no installation.

→ Open in Apify Console

You need an Apify account (free tier works). Your API token is provided automatically — you do not enter it anywhere.

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Run locally (CLI)

pip install apify-client rich
export APIFY_TOKEN="your_token_here"   # Settings → Integrations in Apify Console
python apify_opportunity.py

You'll be prompted to enter keywords:

Enter 3–20 keywords or ideas (comma-separated):
> newsletter scraper, Reddit research scraper, G2 review aggregator, podcast transcript

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What it does

You enter a comma-separated list of scraper ideas. For each one, the tool runs up to 5 related searches against the Apify Store, deduplicates results by actor ID, classifies each actor as a direct competitor, adjacent actor, or irrelevant result, then scores and returns a verdict.

Per keyword you get:

Field	What it means
Demand score	How many people use existing actors in this niche (relevant actors only)
Saturation score	How many direct competitors exist — actors that solve the same core problem
Opportunity score	Weighted blend of demand and saturation
Verdict	GO, MAYBE, NO-GO, or VALIDATE
Direct competitors	Actors matching both the target platform and the core problem
Data status	GOOD, LIMITED (search hit result cap), or INSUFFICIENT (no relevant actors found)

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Example output

Apify Opportunity Finder v2
Multi-variant search · relevance filtering · GO / MAYBE / NO-GO / VALIDATE

  Niche                       Demand  Saturation  Opportunity   Verdict   Direct competitors  Data status
 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Instagram visual hook           100      50          75          GO               6            LIMITED
  LinkedIn article scraper        100      30          67         MAYBE            12            LIMITED
  Instagram Reels hook            100      10          64         MAYBE            59            LIMITED
  Substack scraper                  3     100          42         NO-GO             0             GOOD
  newsletter scraper                2     100          41         NO-GO             0             GOOD
  podcast transcript scraper       29      30          29         NO-GO             3             GOOD

──────────────────────────── Score breakdown ─────────────────────────────
  Instagram visual hook scraper: high Apify demand signal, 6 direct
  competitors, but related searches returned limited data.
  → Validate manually before building.

──────────────────────────── What to do next ─────────────────────────────

Build this: "Instagram visual hook scraper"
  High Apify demand signal, 6 direct competitors, search results truncated
  — validate manually.
  → Start with a minimal scraper, publish fast, iterate on user feedback.

Verdicts are color-coded in the terminal: 🟢 GO · 🟡 MAYBE · 🔴 NO-GO · 🟣 VALIDATE

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Why the simple approach gets saturation wrong

A naive Apify Store search for "Instagram visual hook scraper" returns up to 30 broadly-matching actors — generic Instagram scrapers, Reels downloaders, profile extractors. Treating that full list as "30 competitors" overstates saturation and makes specific niches look crowded when they aren't.

This actor fixes that by classifying each returned result before scoring:

• Direct competitor — actor text matches both the target platform and the core problem term from your query
• Adjacent — matches the platform or the problem, but not both
• Irrelevant — no meaningful match, excluded from all scoring

For Instagram visual hook scraper: a generic Instagram profile scraper is adjacent (platform match only, no mention of hooks or visual analysis). An actor called "Instagram Reels Hook Analyzer" is direct. The demand and saturation scores use only the direct and adjacent actors — not the full returned list.

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How it works

Multi-variant search

A single keyword phrase often misses relevant actors that use different terminology. For each keyword, up to 5 related search strings are generated and searched:

Your keyword	Variants searched
Instagram visual hook scraper	Instagram Reels scraper · Instagram posts scraper · Instagram Stories scraper · Instagram video hook · Instagram first frame
newsletter scraper	Substack scraper · Beehiiv scraper · newsletter archive extractor · newsletter content extractor
podcast transcript scraper	podcast transcript scraper · podcast episodes scraper · podcast RSS scraper · podcast captions

Results across all variants are deduplicated by actor ID before classification.

Scoring

Demand score (0–100) Based on 30-day user count across direct + adjacent actors only.

Saturation score (0–100) — uses direct_competitor_count, not the total returned count:

Direct competitors	Score
0	100
1–2	85
3–5	70
6–10	50
11–20	30
21+	10

Opportunity score (0–100) 0.6 × demand + 0.4 × saturation, with quality adjustments:

• Avg success rate < 85% → +5 (reliability gap worth exploiting)
• Avg success rate > 95% → −5 (market already well-served)
• Data quality INSUFFICIENT → score capped at 40

Verdict thresholds

Verdict	Condition
GO	Opportunity ≥ 70
MAYBE	Opportunity 50–69
NO-GO	Opportunity < 50
VALIDATE	No relevant actors found — insufficient data for a confident verdict

Data quality flags

Status	Confidence	Meaning
GOOD	HIGH	Clean result, no truncation
LIMITED	MEDIUM	A search variant hit the result cap — competition may be understated
INSUFFICIENT	LOW	No relevant actors found — VALIDATE verdict, do not treat as automatic GO

A VALIDATE verdict means there is not enough signal to call it a GO. Zero competitors with zero demand could mean a genuine gap — or simply no market. Search the Apify Store manually before building.

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Run locally (CLI) — options

# Export results to CSV or JSON
python apify_opportunity.py --output results.csv
python apify_opportunity.py --output results.json

# Verbose mode — shows variants searched, actor classifications, and scoring reasoning per keyword
python apify_opportunity.py --verbose

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Output fields (CSV / JSON / Apify dataset)

Field	Type	Description
niche	string	Your keyword
demand_score	0–100	Apify demand signal from relevant actors
saturation_score	0–100	Based on direct competitor count
opportunity_score	0–100	Weighted blend
verdict	string	GO / MAYBE / NO-GO / VALIDATE
data_status	string	GOOD / LIMITED / INSUFFICIENT
confidence	string	HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW
total_users_30d	integer	30-day users across relevant actors
median_users_30d	integer	Median 30-day users
top_actor_users_30d	integer	Users held by the dominant relevant actor
top_actor_share	%	% of total demand held by the top actor
returned_actor_count	integer	Total unique actors returned across all variants
direct_competitor_count	integer	Actors matching platform + core problem
adjacent_competitor_count	integer	Actors partially matching
result_limit_reached	boolean	True if any variant hit the result cap
avg_success_rate	0–100	Avg run success rate of direct competitors
notes	string	Truncation warnings, demand concentration

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Costs and limits

Each keyword runs up to 5 search variants, each retrieving up to 30 results from johnvc/store-actor-intelligence-api. Based on test runs, cost is roughly $0.005 per keyword (~$0.05 for 10 keywords). The Apify free tier covers hundreds of runs.

Configurable limits (Apify input tab or CLI):

• 3–20 keywords per run
• 10–50 actors retrieved per variant (default: 30)

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What it's for — and not for

Use it to:

• Compare 3–20 scraper ideas before you start building
• Get a data-backed GO / NO-GO on a niche you're unsure about
• Rule out ideas with near-zero demand before wasting build time
• Prioritize a backlog when you have too many ideas

Not suitable for:

• Replacing manual Apify Store research before committing to a build
• Forecasting revenue or guaranteeing actor success
• Full-store category scans or historical trend analysis

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FAQ

Do I need to enter my Apify token? No. When you run the actor on Apify, your token is set automatically by the platform. You never enter it. The optional apifyToken input field only exists for users calling the actor programmatically via the Apify API from outside the Console.

Does running this use my Apify credits? Yes. The actor calls johnvc/store-actor-intelligence-api for each search variant. Those calls run on your account and use your credits. Cost is roughly $0.005 per keyword. The Apify free tier ($5/month) covers hundreds of runs.

Why do I get VALIDATE instead of GO when there are no competitors? Zero competitors with zero demand signal means the data is insufficient — not that the opportunity is confirmed. VALIDATE means: check the Apify Store manually, find evidence of real user demand, then decide. Building on a VALIDATE verdict without manual research is a risk.

What does LIMITED data status mean? At least one search variant returned the maximum number of results (up to 30 by default). More actors may exist than were retrieved. The verdict is directional — spot-check the Apify Store manually for these keywords before acting on it.

Can I adjust the scoring thresholds? Yes. All thresholds are documented in comments inside apify_opportunity.py. The demand_score(), saturation_score(), opportunity_score(), and verdict() functions each have inline notes explaining what to change and the effect it has.

How accurate are the scores? They are directional signals, not precise measurements. Demand reflects usage of existing actors — not total addressable market size. A niche with no actors and no demand signal could still be an opportunity if you bring your own audience. Use the verdicts to filter and prioritize, not as guarantees.

Is this affiliated with Apify? No. This is an independent tool. It uses the public Apify API and johnvc/store-actor-intelligence-api, but is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apify.

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License

MIT — use it, fork it, build on it.