🔀 AlternativeTo Scraper

🚀 Export software alternatives, likes, platforms, and license data from AlternativeTo in seconds. No API key required.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-21 - 📊 16 fields per record - 100+ alternatives per software - Global coverage

The AlternativeTo Scraper lets you extract the full list of software alternatives from alternativeto.net for any software product. Search by software name (e.g. "slack", "notion", "figma") and get structured data on every alternative including likes, supported platforms, license types, and whether the tool is free or open source.

AlternativeTo is the web's largest crowd-sourced software comparison database, listing over 300,000 software alternatives across every category. This actor delivers that data in clean, structured JSON - ready for analysis, comparison, or integration into your own tools.

Coverage: Alternatives to 300,000+ software products - 16 data fields per record - Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iPhone, Web-based, Self-Hosted, and more - open source and commercial tools alike.

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Target Audience / Use Cases

Who	What They Build
Product managers	Competitive landscape maps for any tool
Developers	Open-source alternative discovery pipelines
Researchers	Software ecosystem analysis and category mapping
Marketers	Positioning benchmarks and feature comparison tables
Venture capitalists	Market sizing and competitive density analysis
Enterprise buyers	Vendor shortlist generation by platform and license

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📋 What the AlternativeTo Scraper does

• Searches AlternativeTo for all alternatives to any named software product
• Returns each alternative's name, slug, description, and canonical URL
• Extracts the number of likes (crowd-sourced ranking signal)
• Lists all supported platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iPhone, Web, Self-Hosted, etc.
• Lists license/pricing types: Free, Freemium, Open Source, Paid, Proprietary, etc.
• Detects whether each alternative is open source or has a free tier
• Exports the official website link where available
• Paginates automatically to collect all alternatives up to your requested limit
• Returns data in JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML

💡 Why it matters: Most software evaluation happens through expensive analyst reports or manual research. AlternativeTo aggregates real user votes across 300,000+ software products. This actor gives you programmatic access to that intelligence at scale.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon

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⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
softwareName	string	Yes	slack	The software name or slug to find alternatives for (e.g. notion, figma, jira)
maxItems	integer	No	10	Maximum number of results. Free users: limited to 10. Paid users: up to 1,000,000.

Example - Find alternatives to Slack:

{
    "softwareName": "slack",
    "maxItems": 50
}

Example - Find alternatives to Notion:

{
    "softwareName": "notion",
    "maxItems": 100
}

⚠️ Good to Know: Use the URL slug for best results. For example, for "Microsoft Teams" use microsoft-teams, not Teams. The slug is the part after alternativeto.net/software/ in the URL. Simple one-word names like slack, notion, figma work directly.

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📊 Output

Field	Type	Description
🖼 imageUrl	string	High-resolution app icon URL (280px)
📌 name	string	Name of the alternative software
🔗 url	string	AlternativeTo page URL
🔤 slug	string	Software slug used in AlternativeTo URLs
📝 description	string	Short crowd-sourced description
❤️ likes	integer	Number of user likes on AlternativeTo
💬 comments	integer	Number of comments (null - not available in listing)
💻 platforms	array	Supported platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, etc.)
📜 licenses	array	License/pricing types (Free, Open Source, Freemium, etc.)
🏷 category	string	Software category (e.g. Social & Communications)
🔓 isOpenSource	boolean	Whether the software is open source
🆓 isFree	boolean	Whether the software has a free tier
🔀 alternativeTo	string	The software name this is an alternative to
🌐 website	string	Official website URL (when available)
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp
❌ error	string	Error message if scraping failed

Sample records:

[
  {
    "imageUrl": "https://img.alternativeto.net/icons/280/element-app_245901.svg",
    "name": "Element",
    "url": "https://alternativeto.net/software/element-app/",
    "slug": "element-app",
    "description": "Provides secure collaboration with end-to-end encryption, supporting chat, voice, and video calls. Available on all major platforms, it enables digital sovereignty with a decentralized design and interoperability through bridges to systems like Slack and Teams. Includes enterprise-grade SaaS.",
    "likes": 815,
    "comments": null,
    "platforms": ["Mac", "Windows", "Linux", "Online", "Android", "iPhone", "Android Tablet", "iPad", "Self-Hosted", "Snapcraft", "Matrix.org", "Flathub", "F-Droid", "Cloudron"],
    "licenses": ["Free Personal", "Open Source"],
    "category": "Social & Communications",
    "isOpenSource": true,
    "isFree": true,
    "alternativeTo": "slack",
    "website": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-05-22T01:44:21.947Z",
    "error": null
  },
  {
    "imageUrl": "https://img.alternativeto.net/icons/280/zulip-chat-server_251998.svg",
    "name": "Zulip",
    "url": "https://alternativeto.net/software/zulip-chat-server/",
    "slug": "zulip-chat-server",
    "description": "Threaded group conversations combine live and asynchronous messaging, separating topics for organized collaboration, supporting open-source, cloud, and self-hosted deployments, secure communication with encryption, and multi-platform access for diverse teams.",
    "likes": 271,
    "comments": null,
    "platforms": ["Mac", "Windows", "Linux", "Online", "Android", "iPhone", "Android Tablet", "BSD", "iPad", "Self-Hosted", "F-Droid"],
    "licenses": ["Free Personal", "Open Source"],
    "category": "Social & Communications",
    "isOpenSource": true,
    "isFree": true,
    "alternativeTo": "slack",
    "website": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-05-22T01:44:21.948Z",
    "error": null
  }
]

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✨ Why choose this Actor

Feature	Benefit
🔓 No API key needed	Works out of the box, no registration required
🌐 Real browser scraping	Bypasses Cloudflare protection reliably
🔀 Search any software	Works for 300,000+ software products on AlternativeTo
💻 Full platform list	Extracts every supported platform per alternative
📜 License detection	Automatically flags open source and free tools
❤️ Likes ranking	Get crowd-sourced popularity signals
📦 Paginated	Collects all results, not just the first page
🚀 Apify proxy	Residential proxy rotation built in

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Feature	This Actor	Manual Research	AlternativeTo UI
Programmatic access	Yes	No	No
Bulk export	Yes	No	No
Structured JSON/CSV	Yes	No	No
All platforms listed	Yes	Manual	Yes
License detection	Yes	Manual	Yes
Pagination	Yes	Manual	Yes
Free tier	10 items	Unlimited	Unlimited

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🚀 How to use

1. Create a free account on Apify (includes $5 free credit)
2. Open the AlternativeTo Scraper actor page
3. Enter the software name you want alternatives for (e.g. slack, notion, figma)
4. Set maxItems to control how many results you need
5. Click Start and wait for the run to complete
6. Download results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML from the dataset tab

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💼 Business use cases

Competitive Intelligence

Track what alternatives users recommend to your product on AlternativeTo. Monitor likes trends over time. Identify which features competitors emphasize in their descriptions. Build a real-time competitive radar.

Open Source Discovery

Filter by isOpenSource: true to find every open-source alternative to commercial tools. Evaluate self-hosted options. Build curated lists for developer communities or internal tooling decisions.

Market Research & Product Strategy

Map the software landscape for any category. Count how many alternatives exist, what platforms they support, what licensing models dominate. Use data to identify whitespace and market positioning opportunities.

Vendor Evaluation & Procurement

Automatically generate shortlists of alternatives to tools your organization already uses. Filter by platform requirements (Self-Hosted, Windows, etc.) and licensing constraints (Open Source, Free). Speed up vendor selection.

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🔌 Automating AlternativeTo Scraper

Integrate this actor into your workflows using the Apify platform:

• Make (Integromat): Trigger the actor on a schedule, send results to Google Sheets or Airtable
• Zapier: Connect actor runs to Slack notifications, Notion databases, or CRM systems
• Apify Scheduler: Run automatically every week to track new alternatives
• Apify API: Call directly from your application using the REST API
• Webhooks: Get notified via HTTP when a run completes

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Academic Research

Study software ecosystem evolution. Analyze open-source adoption rates across categories. Map platform support trends over time.

Creative Projects

Build your own alternative finder app. Create curated technology stacks for specific use cases. Generate comparison articles with real data.

Non-Profit Use

Identify free and open-source alternatives to expensive tools for budget-constrained organizations, schools, and NGOs.

Experimentation

Test hypotheses about software markets. Which categories have the most alternatives? Which platforms are underserved? What license models dominate in each category?

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Want to understand what this scraper can do for your specific use case? Paste this into your favorite AI assistant:

"I have access to the ParseForge AlternativeTo Scraper on Apify, which can extract software alternatives for any product including name, URL, description, likes, platforms, licenses, isOpenSource, and isFree. I want to [describe your goal]. How can I use this data?"

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🔍 What software names can I search for?

Any software listed on AlternativeTo. Use the slug from the URL - e.g., for https://alternativeto.net/software/microsoft-teams/, the slug is microsoft-teams. Simple names like slack, notion, figma, zoom, jira work directly.

📊 How many alternatives are there per software?

Varies by popularity. Slack has 100+ alternatives. Niche tools may have 5-20. The actor paginates automatically to collect all available alternatives.

❤️ What is the "likes" field?

On AlternativeTo, users vote to say "this is a good alternative to X." The likes count reflects crowd-sourced popularity. Higher likes = more users recommend it as an alternative.

💬 Why are comments null?

Comment counts require fetching individual item UUIDs that are only available through a private API endpoint. The listing page shows likes but not comments in an accessible format. This field is reserved for future implementation.

🔓 How does "isOpenSource" detection work?

The actor reads the "Cost / License" section on each card. If any license tag contains "Open Source," isOpenSource is set to true.

🆓 How does "isFree" detection work?

Any license tag containing "Free" (including "Free Personal," "Freemium," "Free") sets isFree to true. Purely paid/proprietary tools get isFree: false.

🌐 When is the "website" field populated?

For sponsored/featured listings, AlternativeTo shows an external link. For regular listings, no direct website link is shown on the listing page. The actor captures the external link when present.

💻 What platforms are listed?

AlternativeTo lists platforms like Mac, Windows, Linux, Online (web-based), Android, iPhone, Android Tablet, iPad, Self-Hosted, BSD, and many technology-specific tags (JavaScript, Go, Snapcraft, F-Droid, Cloudron, etc.).

🛡️ Is this scraper reliable?

The actor uses a real Firefox browser with residential proxies to reliably bypass Cloudflare protection on AlternativeTo. Runs are stable across thousands of items.

💰 How much does it cost?

Free users get 10 items per run. Paid users can extract up to 1,000,000 items. Typical runs use minimal compute - costs are very low.

🔄 Can I run this on a schedule?

Yes. Use Apify's built-in scheduler to run the actor on a recurring basis and track new alternatives over time.

📁 What export formats are supported?

JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, and JSONL. Download from the Apify Console dataset tab or via the API.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

Connect the AlternativeTo Scraper to your favorite tools:

App	Use Case
Google Sheets	Automatic spreadsheet with all alternatives
Airtable	Database of competitive alternatives
Notion	Research database for product teams
Slack	Notify your team when new alternatives appear
Make (Integromat)	Multi-step automation workflows
Zapier	No-code integrations with 5,000+ apps
REST API	Direct programmatic access
Webhooks	Event-driven notifications

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection on the Apify Store for more data extraction tools across every category.

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Disclaimer: This actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with AlternativeTo or its parent company. Data is scraped from publicly available web pages. Use responsibly and in accordance with AlternativeTo's Terms of Service.