Developer Builds 85 Pay-Per-Use Scraper APIs and Shares Key Lessons

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A developer frustrated with expensive data subscriptions began building targeted web scrapers and publishing them as small, pay-per-use APIs on the Apify platform. The catalog has grown to roughly 85 live scrapers, built with Node.js, Crawlee, and Playwright, with new ones shipping every few days. Key technical challenges included bypassing anti-bot systems, while free public endpoints like SEC EDGAR and openFDA proved unexpectedly valuable. The developer found that chaining multiple scrapers into enrichment pipelines and framing products around buyer outcomes drove more value than raw features. Power users running high job volumes were identified as more profitable than a large base of casual testers.

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