Apify Actors
Apify Actors is an MCP server from Apify that exposes its cloud scraping and automation actors to an AI client over stdio. You point a client at @apify/actors-mcp-server, it authenticates to your Apify account, and the actors you pick become callable tools. It runs your scrapes on Apify's platform, not locally, and bills your account.
How we started it
npx -y @apify/actors-mcp-serverWe could not get a tool list out of it, because it refuses to start without credentials: our clean-env run exited with code 1 before initialize completed (measured 2026-08-19), with stderr saying APIFY_TOKEN is required but not set in the environment variables or in ~/.apify/auth.json. Use it if you already pay Apify and want your agent to reach the actors you run there anyway; the token requirement is honest, since there is no useful local mode to fall back on. Skip it if you were hoping for a scraper you can try before you have an account, and note that everything this server does costs Apify credits, so a chatty agent is a billing surface as much as a context one.
Use it if
Skip it if
The bill for your context window
There is no Context Tax to report here: the server never answered tools/list, so toolsCount and estTokens are zero for the reason that it exited, not because it is lean. What we can say is what to expect once you supply a token. The tool surface is dynamic, driven by which actors you enable, so this is one of the few servers where the context cost is a dial you control rather than a fixed number you inherit. Enable a single actor and the payload stays small; enable a shelf of them and you can outweigh the heaviest fixed-tool server in this directory without noticing you did it. Whatever you enable, the estimate method is the same chars/4 count we apply to every server here, so you can compare once you have your own list.
Setup reality
One env var stands between you and a tool list, and the harness found exactly that one: APIFY_TOKEN, scraped from the server's own error output. It also accepts a token sitting in ~/.apify/auth.json, which is what the Apify CLI writes when you log in, so on a developer machine that has used the CLI it will often appear to need no configuration at all. That is worth knowing before you copy a working config to a server and watch it die. Transport is stdio via npx, no build step, and the install pulled a deprecation warning about lodash.isequal on the way past. Which actors show up as tools depends on your account and on the actor selection you pass, so two people running the same command get different tool surfaces.
APIFY_TOKENQuestions people ask
Why did the Apify MCP server fail to start in your test?
We run every server as an unprivileged user with a clean environment and no secrets, which is deliberate. Apify's server checks for APIFY_TOKEN in the environment or in ~/.apify/auth.json, finds neither, prints an error and exits with code 1 before the MCP initialize handshake.
Can I use the Apify MCP server without an Apify account?
No. The token is not optional and there is no local mode, because the actors run on Apify's infrastructure rather than on your machine. Signing up is the first setup step, not an upsell you can defer.
How many tools does it expose?
That depends on you. The tool list is built from the actors you enable for the server, so the count and the context cost vary per account. We could not measure a number for it, since our run never reached tools/list.
Does running it cost money?
Yes, in Apify platform credits, on the same meter as running those actors by hand. The difference is that an agent decides how often to launch them, so set actor limits before you hand the token over.
Other web servers we started
How this page is made: the server is spawned as an unprivileged user with a clean environment and no credentials, then asked for its tools, resources and prompts over stdio. Token figures are estimates at four characters per token, not a tokenizer count. One run, one machine. Corrections: contact the desk.