Apify: Marketplace of ready-to-run tools for AI

# Apify > Apify is a marketplace of ready-to-run tools for AI that automate work on the web. Thousands of _Actors_ get web data, generate leads, monitor social media, track competitors, and integrate with existing apps and agents. Actors are created by a global community of builders who earn from them, while Apify manages infrastructure, billing, and distribution. AI agents reach Apify in three ways. An interactive agent connects the MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com and signs in through the browser. Code that outlives the session — a server, a scheduled job, a product feature — uses the `apify-client` package or the REST API with an API token. An autonomous agent with a wallet and nobody to sign in buys a prepaid, spend-capped token at https://agi.apify.com through x402 or MPP. The quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md walks through all three. **Important notes:** - No account is needed to explore. Search the Store with `GET https://api.apify.com/v2/store?search={keywords}`, read any Actor by appending `.md` to its page URL, or connect the anonymous MCP tools at https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=search-actors,fetch-actor-details,search-apify-docs,fetch-apify-docs. Running Actors and reading private run or storage data requires authentication. - Creating an account is free and requires no credit card: the free plan renews $5 of usage credit every month, and if that credit runs out, access pauses until the next month instead of being billed. There is nothing to cancel. - An Actor is not an AI agent. It is a serverless cloud program that takes JSON input, runs on Apify’s infrastructure, and returns structured output. On Apify, "Actor" always means this and is always capitalized, i.e. "Actor", not "actor". - Apify Store is a marketplace: most Actors are built, priced, and maintained by independent creators rather than by Apify, so each one has its own owner, pricing model, and README. - Install `apify-client`, not `apify`, to call Actors from your own code.