Apify has introduced significant upgrades to Apify AI and officially launched Server Actors, expanding the ways developers and AI agents discover, create, and use tools. The enhancements enable users to build and coordinate tools using natural language, deploy continuously available services, and connect AI agents to a marketplace featuring more than 100,000 Actors.
As businesses move AI agents from experimentation into production, they need reliable ways to access external data, execute complex workflows, and interact with tools in real time. Apify addresses these challenges through its platform of Actors, web data automations that power AI and operations that developers can run in the cloud or locally to scrape websites, process data, or connect APIs. The company’s latest enhancements were introduced at Run, Apify’s inaugural user conference focused on building, connecting, and monetizing tools for the next generation of AI applications. The agenda featured world-class experts from OpenAI, Stripe, WorkOS, Workato, and IBM.
“AI agents need high-quality web data and reliable tools to get work done. As AI code generation drives the cost of building software and workflows toward zero, discovery and distribution become the real challenge,” said Jan Curn, founder and CEO of Apify. “Our goal is to make Apify the most trusted place for people and their agents to find the right data and tools, and for creators to reach users and earn from what they build.”
Apify AI helps developers move from tool discovery to end-to-end workflow creation
First introduced in July 2026, Apify AI enables users to discover and run Actors through a conversational interface within Apify Console. With the newest updates, users can now execute code, orchestrate multiple Actors, and build entirely new Actors using natural-language instructions, eliminating the need to manually connect tools or transform outputs.
Unlike a one-time AI-generated response, the resulting workflow becomes a reusable Actor that can be scheduled, integrated into other applications, or published to Apify Store. The update also expands Apify AI’s access to MCP tools—including tasks and schedules—enabling developers to build and automate more complex AI workflows.
Server Actors bring real-time, always-ready tools to AI agents
Apify also announced the general availability of Server Actors, a new way to deploy always-ready services on the Apify platform. While traditional Actors are designed for jobs such as web scraping, crawling, and large-scale data processing, Server Actors support workloads that require immediate responses, including AI agent tool calls, real-time applications, and high-frequency data lookups. Server Actors operate like APIs, allowing applications and AI agents to send requests and receive responses without starting a new execution for each interaction.
By introducing Server Actors alongside its existing jobs-based infrastructure, Apify enables developers to build both large-scale data processing workflows and responsive, always-available services within the same platform. From competitive monitoring and lead generation to recruitment research and software development, businesses can connect Apify to AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to access real-time web data and automate everyday tasks. Apify’s official plugin in Claude’s directory ranks among the 50 most-used plugins as of October 31, 2026, with more than 57,000 lifetime installs and over 12,000 active accounts.
Founded in 2015, Apify’s continued expansion comes amid growing demand for tools and infrastructure to support AI applications. As of October 2026, Actor executions on the platform have increased fivefold, from 50 million per week at the end of 2025 to 267 million per week. The same month, Apify Store surpassed 100,000 Actors, built by a community of more than 4,500 independent developers and official partners. Collectively, creators earn more than $1.7 million per month through the platform. As AI accelerates tool development, Apify continues to raise its quality standards and improve discovery, so developers and AI agents find the right tools to get their work done reliably.
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