WebPerception API vs Apify

The Core Difference

Feature Comparison

Code Comparison

Extracting product data from any e-commerce page

With Apify:

# Step 1: Find the right actor for your target site
# Step 2: Configure the actor with site-specific settings
from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("apify/web-scraper").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": [{"url": "https://example.com/product"}],
    "pageFunction": """
        async function pageFunction(context) {
            const $ = context.jQuery;
            return {
                title: $('h1.product-title').text(),  // breaks if class changes
                price: $('.price-current').text(),      // fragile selector
                inStock: $('.stock-status').text()       // site-specific
            };
        }
    """
})

# Different actor/config needed for each site

With WebPerception:

import requests

response = requests.post("https://api.mantisapi.com/extract", json={
    "url": "https://example.com/product",
    "schema": {
        "title": "string",
        "price": "number",
        "currency": "string",
        "in_stock": "boolean"
    }
})

data = response.json()["data"]
# Works on ANY e-commerce site. No selectors. No actors.