Where to take an Apify problem, and who actually fixes it
Apify splits help by who owns the thing that broke, not by how much you pay. Platform, billing and account problems belong to Apify: community support on the Free plan, in-app chat from Starter upward. A misbehaving Store Actor belongs to the independent developer who published it, and you reach them through that Actor's Issues tab.
That second half is the part people get wrong, and Apify says so plainly. Its help centre states that Support "cannot evaluate whether a run was successful, as they don't have sufficient background knowledge about community Actors" (help.apify.com, checked 2026-09-09). Email a support agent about a scraper returning empty rows and you get routed back to the Issues tab.
Changed on 2026-09-09. This page used to state that Priority Support is a $100/month add-on. Neither of Apify's own pages supports that price today, so the figure is gone and the conflict between the two pages is documented below. The page also understated the Store at 30,000 Actors; Apify publishes 70,000+.
Which Apify channel fixes which problem?
| What is broken | Who owns it | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| A Store Actor returns nothing, or the wrong fields | The Actor's developer | The Issues tab on that Actor's page |
| A paid Actor charged you for a run that failed | The developer, then Apify | Issues tab first; Support processes the credit afterwards |
| Billing, invoices, plan changes, account limits | Apify | In-app chat (Starter and above) or support@apify.com |
| A Crawlee exception or a library bug | Crawlee maintainers | GitHub Issues on the relevant repo |
| "How should I structure this crawl?" | Peers | Discord or GitHub Discussions |
| "How does feature X work?" | Nobody, yet | docs.apify.com, then help.apify.com |
| A contractual response window | Apify sales | Enterprise only. No self-serve plan publishes one |
| Conduct in a community space | Apify | community@apify.com, per the Community Code of Conduct |
Who fixes a broken Store Actor?
The developer who published it. Apify runs an automated quality test across Actors and flags the failing ones with an under maintenance badge, which means the Actor "is undergoing improvements or bug fixes and might not function as expected during this period." Actors that stay broken for more than a month are deprecated (help.apify.com, checked 2026-09-09).
The Issues tab is the channel. Only signed-in users can post and reply, but every visitor can read the thread, which makes it a diagnostic tool before you commit: open an Actor's Issues tab and read what has gone wrong for other people. Threads are filed as Open, Closed or All, and each Actor's page carries an average response-time metric (docs.apify.com, checked 2026-09-09).
If that response time is measured in weeks and the Actor sits in a production pipeline, replace it rather than wait. Choosing a maintained Actor is a faster fix than any support queue.
Can I get a refund for a failed Actor run?
No. You can get platform credits. Apify's help centre is direct about it: "we do not return money," and compensation arrives as credit rather than cash (help.apify.com, checked 2026-09-09).
The documented sequence:
- Create an issue on the Actor's Issues tab and share the run. The run link carries the context the developer needs.
- The developer evaluates whether the claim is valid.
- The developer files a support request naming the User ID, Actor ID, amount and reason.
- Apify Support processes the compensation, and Console issues a gift invoice and notifies you.
Every step after the first depends on the developer. Contacting Support first does not skip the queue; the documented outcome is that Support navigates you back to the Issues tab. The exception Apify names is an accidental rental, where Support may act without the developer if the claim looks justified.
What support does each Apify plan include?
Support type is a plan feature, and it is the only support commitment Apify publishes on self-serve tiers.
| Plan | Monthly | Included usage | Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $5 | Community support |
| Starter | $19 ($17 annual) | $19 | Chat support |
| Scale | $199 ($179 annual) | $199 | Priority chat support |
| Business | $999 ($899 annual) | $999 | Account manager |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | "SLAs with guaranteed data, Dedicated team of experts" |
Source: apify.com/pricing, checked 2026-09-09.
The arithmetic that matters when you are deciding whether to leave the Free plan: Starter's $19/month subject to change · verified 2026-09-09 is included usage, not an access fee. You spend it on Actor runs either way. So if your monthly consumption is already above the Free plan's $5, moving to Starter costs you nothing you were not going to spend, and chat support comes with it.
The honest counter-case: if you burn less than $5 of usage a month, Starter is a real $19 you did not previously pay, and you are buying chat support alone. Stay free and use Discord. What the free plan actually blocks has the limits, and the full pricing breakdown covers the Actor fees that stack on top of the plan.
Compare the plans on apify.com/pricing →
Is Priority Support a paid add-on, and what does it cost?
Apify's two pages disagree, and neither publishes a price. Both were read on 2026-09-09.
| Source | What it says |
|---|---|
| apify.com/pricing | Prices exactly four add-ons: concurrent runs $5/run, Actor RAM $1/GB, datacenter proxy from $0.6/IP, personal training $150/hour. There is no standalone Priority Support line. "Priority chat support" appears instead as a feature of the Scale plan. |
| docs.apify.com/account/subscriptions | Lists "Get priority chat support" among the add-ons you can buy, and gives no price for it. |
Treat Scale at $199/month as the priced route to priority chat, and confirm add-on availability in the Console billing screen or with Apify sales before you budget for it. Do not plan against the $100/month figure that circulates in older write-ups, including an earlier version of this page. Nothing on Apify's own surfaces supports it today.
Where is the Apify Discord?
At apify.com/discord. Bookmark that URL rather than a raw invite code: on 2026-09-09 it returned a 307 redirect to discord.gg/w3e2v7rWDw, a server named Apify & Crawlee. Invite codes rotate and older ones circulate in blog posts and Stack Overflow answers; Apify maintains the redirect.
The server covers Crawlee in both JavaScript and Python, Actor debugging, proxy behaviour and integrations. Apify publishes no member or online count on that page, so treat any figure you see quoted elsewhere as unsourced. Read the Community Code of Conduct before posting; it names support@apify.com and community@apify.com as the reporting addresses.
Which GitHub repo should a bug go to?
Star counts and Discussions status read from the GitHub API on 2026-09-09.
| Repository | Stars | Discussions | What belongs there |
|---|---|---|---|
apify/crawlee | 25,706 | Enabled | JavaScript and TypeScript crawler bugs, browser automation behaviour |
apify/crawlee-python | 9,497 | Enabled | The Python crawling library |
apify/apify-mcp-server | 6,510 | Issues only | The MCP server. Open an Issue; there is no Discussions tab |
apify/apify-sdk-python | 175 | Enabled | Actor lifecycle, storages, charging in Python |
apify/apify-client-js | 89 | Enabled | The JavaScript API client |
One trap worth naming: the Apify MCP server is a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.apify.com, not an Actor you run from the Store. So a failed MCP connection is a repository issue, not an Actor issue, and the Issues-tab route above does not apply to it. How Apify MCP is wired up covers the setup side.
Use Issues for a bug with a minimal reproduction. Use Discussions, where the repo has them, for open-ended design questions.
What should a support post contain?
The difference between one reply and four round-trips is what you attach. Apify's own guidance to reporters is to share the run, because it hands the developer the full context in one link.
- The run URL from Console, in the form
https://console.apify.com/actors/runs/<runId>. - Your input JSON, with cookies, tokens and proxy credentials redacted.
- The last 20 lines of the run log, including the error string verbatim rather than paraphrased.
- The build number shown on the run, so the developer knows which version produced it.
- What you already tried, and what changed between the last working run and this one.
Is Apify Academy free?
Yes. Apify describes it as "free courses that will turn you into an expert scraper developer" (docs.apify.com/academy, checked 2026-09-09). No subscription is required.
The beginner track covers web scraping basics in JavaScript and in Python plus an Apify platform course. The advanced track covers API scraping, anti-scraping protections, and expert scraping with Apify. Take the platform course before your first paid run; it is cheaper than learning the billing model by overspending. If you would rather build than read, publishing your own Actor starts from the same material.
When Apify support is the wrong place to ask
Three cases, stated plainly because getting this wrong wastes days.
You need a contractual response time. No self-serve plan publishes one. Free, Starter, Scale and Business list a support type only, and the word SLA appears on the pricing page solely in the Enterprise block. If a guaranteed response window is a procurement requirement, this is an Enterprise sales conversation from the start, and a managed data vendor that publishes an SLA on a self-serve plan will suit you better than Apify's Starter or Scale tier.
You want someone to confirm an Actor's output is correct. No one at Apify owns a community Actor's logic, which is exactly what the help centre says. Validate the output yourself against a handful of known records.
You want a legal ruling on what you may scrape. Support does not give one, and neither does this page. What the law actually turns on is the starting point; a lawyer is the finishing one.
Apify handles the platform: billing, account limits, and infrastructure. Free accounts get community support; chat support starts on the Starter plan at $19/month, priority chat on Scale at $199/month, and an account manager on Business at $999/month (apify.com/pricing, checked 2026-09-09). Problems with a community-built Store Actor go to that Actor's developer through its Issues tab, not to Apify Support.
Community support only. That means the Apify Discord at apify.com/discord, the Help Center at help.apify.com, GitHub Issues on the open-source repositories, and the free Academy. In-app chat begins on the Starter plan.
Apify compensates in platform credits rather than money. Its help centre states plainly that it does not return money. You open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab and share the run; the developer evaluates it and files the compensation request, then Apify Support processes it and Console issues a gift invoice (help.apify.com, checked 2026-09-09).
No verified price exists. On 2026-09-09 apify.com/pricing listed only four priced add-ons (concurrent runs, Actor RAM, datacenter proxy, personal training) with no Priority Support line, while docs.apify.com/account/subscriptions still described priority chat support as a purchasable add-on without a price. Priority chat support is a listed feature of the Scale plan at $199/month. Confirm current availability in the Console billing screen.
Use apify.com/discord rather than a raw invite code. On 2026-09-09 it redirected to discord.gg/w3e2v7rWDw, a server named Apify & Crawlee. Invite codes rotate, so older ones quoted in articles can go stale while the apify.com redirect keeps working.
Yes. Apify calls them free courses and no subscription is required. The beginner track covers web scraping basics in JavaScript and Python plus an Apify platform course; the advanced track covers API scraping, anti-scraping protections, and expert scraping with Apify.
Common mistakes and fixes
I emailed Apify Support about a Store Actor returning empty results and got routed elsewhere.
That is the documented behaviour. help.apify.com states Support "cannot evaluate whether a run was successful, as they don't have sufficient background knowledge about community Actors" and will navigate you to the Actor's Issues tab (checked 2026-09-09). Open the issue there and attach the run.
The Actor I depend on shows an 'under maintenance' badge.
Apify tests Actors automatically and flags the ones failing. Per help.apify.com (checked 2026-09-09), Actors broken for more than a month are deprecated. Check the Issues tab for a developer reply, and line up a replacement Actor rather than waiting.
The Discord invite I bookmarked no longer matches Apify's.
Use the apify.com/discord redirect instead of a raw invite code. On 2026-09-09 it 307-redirected to discord.gg/w3e2v7rWDw (server name: Apify & Crawlee). Apify maintains the redirect; invite codes rotate.