Apify is a web-scraping + automation platform with thousands of pre-built actors covering everything from social-media scraping to e-commerce extraction to email marketing. Connecting Apify to clariBI gives you on-demand access to any of those actors as MCP tools.
Why connect Apify
Apify's actor marketplace covers many tools that lack their own hosted MCP server — Mailchimp marketing, Ecomail, niche scrapers — so a single Apify connection backs analyses across many vendors.
You can ask "What's the engagement on @username's last 50 Instagram posts?" or "List the top 10 Amazon competitors for product X" or "Pull the latest Mailchimp campaign open rates" — the AI engine routes to the right Apify actor.
How the connection works
clariBI talks to Apify through its hosted MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com. Authentication uses an OAuth flow that clariBI registers itself for (no developer console setup on your side). Tokens stay encrypted server-side and never leave clariBI in clear form.
sequenceDiagram
actor U as You
participant C as clariBI
participant V as Apify
U->>C: Click Authorize with Apify
C->>V: Open OAuth authorization
V-->>U: Grant read access?
U->>V: Approve
V-->>C: Authorization code
C->>V: Exchange code for tokens
V-->>C: Access + refresh tokens
C->>C: Encrypt and store credentials
C-->>U: Connection ready
Available tools
clariBI exposes the read-only Apify tools that the vendor's MCP server publishes at connection time. Write operations (create, update, delete, send, refund) are filtered out by a name-pattern blocklist before any tool reaches the analysis engine, so connecting Apify cannot modify data on the vendor side.
The exact tool inventory depends on the Apify features your account has access to. After connecting, try a few natural-language questions to see what Apify data clariBI can pull.
Data flow during analysis
When you ask a question that maps to Apify, the AI engine routes to the right tool, reads the result, and pairs the answer with a chart you can pin to a dashboard.
sequenceDiagram
actor U as You
participant C as clariBI
participant AI as AI engine
participant V as Apify
U->>C: Ask a question about web-scraped + actor-extracted data
C->>AI: Plan the analysis
AI->>V: Call the right tool
V-->>AI: Tool result
AI->>AI: Summarize and chart
C-->>U: Answer plus visual
Setting up the connection
- Open Data Sources in the clariBI sidebar.
- Click Add data source.
- Open the MCP Servers tab.
- Click the Apify card.
- Click Authorize with Apify.
- Sign in to Apify in the popup window and grant the requested read scopes.
- Back in clariBI, give your data source a name.
- Click Finish.
Permissions and data access
clariBI requests OAuth access to your Apify account, which lets the AI engine list actors, trigger runs, and read run results. No actor configuration is modified. Revoke from your Apify account settings or from clariBI Settings.
Troubleshooting
| Error | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| "Actor quota exceeded" | Apify enforces compute-unit quotas per plan. | Upgrade your Apify plan or wait for the quota window to reset. |
| "Actor not found" | You tried to run an actor that isn't in your account or has been removed from the marketplace. | Search the Apify Actor marketplace for an alternative. |