AlternativeTo Scraper

Scrape ranked software alternatives, descriptions, likes, licenses, product categories, platforms, origin, icons, and AlternativeTo links for competitive research and software discovery.

Free-plan limit: Apify free-plan runs deliver at most 5 records per run. Larger maxResults requests are reduced before browser crawling. Paid and agentic-payment runs follow the configured maxResults value.

What it extracts

One dataset item represents one software alternative shown on a public AlternativeTo alternatives page.

Field	Meaning
sourceSoftware, sourceSlug, sourceUrl	Product being compared and the exact source page
position, pageNumber	Display order and pagination position
name, slug	Alternative product name and AlternativeTo identifier
description	Description shown on the result card
likes, alternativeCount	Displayed community and catalog counts
licenses, applicationTypes, platforms	Cost/license, category, and platform labels
origin, iconUrl	Displayed origin and public icon URL
aboutUrl, alternativesUrl	Product detail and alternatives links
sponsored	Whether AlternativeTo labels the result as sponsored

Use this Actor for product research, competitor mapping, migration analysis, open-source discovery, and software directory enrichment. It does not scrape user profiles, authenticated content, comments, or external vendor websites.

Input

Provide softwareSlugs, startUrls, or both. Slugs are the segment after /software/ in an AlternativeTo URL.

{
  "softwareSlugs": ["slack", "notion"],
  "maxResults": 40,
  "maxPagesPerSoftware": 3,
  "includeSponsored": false
}

URL mode:

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://alternativeto.net/software/trello/" }
  ],
  "maxResults": 12
}

maxResults is a global cap across all inputs. The Actor deduplicates the same alternative within each source product. Set includeSponsored to true only if you want visibly labeled sponsored listings; the sponsored output field preserves that disclosure.

Output example

{
  "sourceSoftware": "Slack",
  "sourceSlug": "slack",
  "sourceUrl": "https://alternativeto.net/software/slack/",
  "pageNumber": 1,
  "position": 1,
  "name": "Zulip",
  "slug": "zulip-chat-server",
  "aboutUrl": "https://alternativeto.net/software/zulip-chat-server/about/",
  "alternativesUrl": "https://alternativeto.net/software/zulip-chat-server/",
  "description": "Threaded group conversations for organized team collaboration.",
  "likes": 275,
  "alternativeCount": 250,
  "licenses": ["Free Personal", "Open Source (Apache-2.0)"],
  "applicationTypes": ["Instant Messenger", "Group Chat"],
  "platforms": ["Mac", "Windows", "Linux", "Online"],
  "origin": "United States",
  "iconUrl": "https://img.alternativeto.net/icons/140/zulip-chat-server_251998.svg",
  "sponsored": false,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-29T12:00:00.000Z"
}

The SUMMARY key-value record classifies the run as DATA, EMPTY, BLOCKED, or REJECTED and reports page, result, and warning counts. A target challenge never becomes a fabricated empty success.

Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing. These are the current Apify Store event prices:

Event	Price (USD)	When it is charged
apify-default-dataset-item	FREE: $0.02; BRONZE: $0.02; SILVER: $0.02; GOLD: $0.016; PLATINUM: $0.016; DIAMOND: $0.016	Software alternative — One schema-valid AlternativeTo software alternative written to the default dataset.
apify-actor-start	$0.005	Actor Start — Charged when the Actor starts running. Number of events charged depends on Actor memory (one event per GB, minimum one event). — Charged once per run.

Apify platform usage for this Actor run is included alongside the event prices above; no separate per-run platform-usage fee is passed to users.

This covers Apify platform usage for this Actor run. Other Apify products or usage outside this Actor run may still follow your account plan.

Reliability and limits

AlternativeTo currently challenges basic datacenter HTTP requests with Cloudflare. The Actor therefore uses a real browser, coherent sessions, conservative concurrency, and an Apify residential US proxy by default. Images, fonts, ads, and analytics are blocked to reduce bandwidth. You can supply another proxy configuration, but turning the proxy off may produce a truthful BLOCKED outcome.

The Actor never solves CAPTCHAs, uses login cookies, or bypasses authentication or paywalls. It retries bounded transient failures and preserves already delivered records if later pages fail. AlternativeTo can change rankings and counts at any time; output reflects the source at scrape time.

Responsible use

Scrape only public pages and use the output in accordance with AlternativeTo's terms, robots directives, copyright rules, and applicable law. Keep request volumes reasonable. Do not use this Actor to profile individuals, infer sensitive traits, or republish copyrighted descriptions as a competing directory without appropriate rights.

For support, include the Actor run ID, input with secrets removed, and the affected AlternativeTo URL.

Use cases

• Add a repeatable structured-data step to applications, agents, and automation pipelines.
• Run a one-off research job and export the structured result as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS from Apify.
• Schedule the same input to monitor changes over time and send completed datasets to a webhook or integration.
• Feed schema-shaped records into a database, spreadsheet, BI tool, or AI workflow with the source URL retained for verification.

Run AlternativeTo Scraper with the Apify API

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('muhammadafzal/alternativeto-scraper').call({
  "softwareSlugs": [
    "slack"
  ],
  "startUrls": [],
  "maxResults": 20,
  "maxPagesPerSoftware": 3,
  "includeSponsored": false,
  "maxConcurrency": 2
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

You can also run the Actor from Apify Console, schedules, webhooks, the REST API, Make, Zapier, n8n, or the hosted Apify MCP server.

The Actor uses the owner's DataImpulse proxy through the DATAIMPULSE_PROXY_URL secret. No proxy setting is required in run input.