Apify Pricing: Real Costs, Free Plan Limits & Hidden Fees
Apify's Free plan is $0/month with $5 in monthly platform credits, 25 concurrent runs, and 8 GB RAM, no credit card required (apify.com/pricing). The cheapest paid tier is Starter at $29/month (32 GB RAM, 32 concurrent runs, $0.20/CU). The biggest hidden-cost gotcha: many Store Actors add pay-per-result or pay-per-event fees on top of compute units. A $4/1,000-results Maps scraper can burn your $29 budget without the usage chart ever looking scary.
Apify's bill has two layers and most first-time buyers miss the second. Layer one is your plan: a monthly fee with a matching dollar amount of prepaid platform usage. Layer two is per-Actor pricing: many Store Actors charge per result, per event, or monthly rental on top of the compute your run consumed. You can blow through a $29 budget on a pay-per-result Actor without the platform usage chart ever looking scary.
This is an independent explainer. Numbers below were verified against apify.com/pricing on 2026-05-18.
Quick reference: plans and credits
| Plan | Price / month | Monthly credits | CU price | Max RAM / concurrent runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $5 (does not roll over) | $0.20/CU | 8 GB / 25 runs |
| Starter | $29 | $29 included | $0.20/CU | 32 GB / 32 |
| Scale | $199 | $199 included | $0.16/CU | 128 GB / 128 |
| Business | $999 | $999 included | $0.13/CU | 256 GB / 256 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Numbers verified against apify.com/pricing on 2026-05-18. For deeper cost-per-run math, see our compute units explainer.
Hidden-cost gotchas: (1) Monthly credits expire each cycle; they do not roll over. (2) Many Store Actors add per-result or per-event fees on top of CUs, so check each Actor's Pricing tab. (3) Heavy Playwright runs burn CUs fast (GB × hours), so memory tuning matters more than people expect. See cost optimization tips.
How Apify pricing works (3 steps)
- Pick a plan for account limits and monthly credits.
- Spend credits on compute units (CUs) as your Actors run.
- Add Actor-level fees if a Store Actor charges per result/event or monthly rental.
Annual billing saves approximately 10%. Unused monthly credits expire at the end of each billing cycle; they do not roll over. Paid plans include Bronze/Silver/Gold Store discounts. See Apify Discounts for details.
Key Takeaways
- The Free plan gives you $5 in monthly credits, enough to run hundreds of small scrapes for common targets (Google Maps, Amazon product pages, Instagram profiles).
- The Starter plan at $29 is sufficient for most individual developers and small teams with regular scraping needs.
- The Scale plan at $199 is the right tier for teams running scheduled pipelines at volume or using memory-intensive Actors.
- Business and Enterprise are for high-frequency, large-scale operations with SLA requirements.
What Are Compute Units (CUs)?
A Compute Unit (CU) is Apify's billing metric for platform resource consumption. One CU = 1 GB RAM used for 1 hour.
Formula:
CUs = (memory in GB) × (runtime in hours)
Examples (Free/Starter rate, $0.20/CU):
| Actor | Memory | Runtime | CUs | Cost at $0.20/CU |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light scrape (Cheerio) | 128 MB | 1 min | 0.002 | $0.0004 |
| Standard scrape (Playwright) | 1 GB | 5 min | 0.083 | $0.017 |
| Large crawl (1 GB, 30 min) | 1 GB | 30 min | 0.5 | $0.10 |
| Heavy browser crawl (4 GB, 1 hr) | 4 GB | 60 min | 4.0 | $0.80 |
Most Store Actors run comfortably in 256–512 MB with short runtimes. Your cost per scraping job is typically $0.001–$0.05 for common targets. Apify's own benchmarks put Cheerio-based scraping at roughly 3,000 pages per CU and browser-based scraping at 300 pages per CU (help.apify.com).
Actor-Level Pricing Models
On top of platform CUs, Store Actors can choose their own pricing model:
| Model | How It Works | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Pay per usage | You pay only CUs consumed | Generic scrapers and crawlers |
| Pay per result | Fixed price per output record | High-value data (leads, products) |
| Pay per event | Price per specific action (search, download, etc.) | Action-driven workflows |
| Rental | Monthly flat fee for unlimited access | Heavy users of one Actor |
Important: Check an Actor's Pricing tab before using it at scale. Some Actors combine platform CUs with result-level charges. Example rates vary by Actor and target site.
Realistic Monthly Cost Estimates
| Use Case | Volume | Estimated Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Personal research (occasional scrapes) | < 100 pages/month | Free plan covers it |
| Lead gen for small biz (Google Maps, 500 records/wk) | ~2,000 records/month | ~$5–15 (Free or Starter) |
| E-commerce price monitoring (1,000 products daily) | ~30,000 records/month | ~$30–80 (Starter to Scale) |
| Social media tracking (Instagram + TikTok, daily) | ~50,000 records/month | ~$80–150 (Scale) |
| Large enterprise crawl (entire website monthly) | Millions of pages | Business or Enterprise |
These are rough estimates based on typical Actor configurations. Always run a sample and measure actual CU consumption before projecting.
Add-ons and proxy costs
Beyond CUs, these line items land on your invoice. Numbers verified against apify.com/pricing on 2026-05-18.
| Item | Free | Starter | Scale | Business |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Datacenter proxy IPs (extra) | included allotment | from $1/IP | from $0.80/IP | from $0.60/IP |
| Residential proxy | $8/GB | $8/GB | $7.50/GB | $7/GB |
| SERP proxy | $2.50/1k | $2.50/1k | $2/1k | $1.70/1k |
| Extra concurrent runs | n/a | $5/run/month | $5/run/month | $5/run/month |
| Extra Actor RAM | n/a | $1/GB/month | $1/GB/month | $1/GB/month |
| Priority support add-on | n/a | $100/month | $100/month | $100/month |
| Personal training | n/a | $150/hour | $150/hour | $150/hour |
At moderate volume on protected sites (ecommerce, social), residential proxy bandwidth often becomes the dominant cost, not CUs. Always measure GB/run, not just CU/run. If proxies dominate your bill, run the math against dedicated providers in our web scraping pricing guide.
Free plan reality check
No credit card. $5 in credits each month. Credits reset on your billing anniversary and do not roll over.
What $5 realistically covers depends almost entirely on whether the Actor is pay-per-usage or pay-per-result:
- Pay-per-usage Cheerio Actors on light pages: thousands of records, since you are only paying CUs at $0.20.
- Pay-per-result Actors (common for Google Maps, Instagram, LinkedIn): the Actor sets the rate. A Maps Actor at $4/1,000 places burns $5 in 1,250 records regardless of how efficient its compute is.
- Playwright crawls at 2 GB: a single 30-minute run costs $0.20, so ~25 runs per month before credits are gone.
Run your specific Actor on 20 items first, then read Usage in the run detail view. Extrapolating from blog-post averages is how budgets blow up. For a deeper breakdown of what really fits in $5, see the Apify free plan guide.
Building your own Actors? The Creator Plan costs $1/month plus pay-as-you-go and includes a one-time $500 prepaid-usage bonus you can spend within 6 months. It is capped at 10 GB residential proxy and 10,000 SERPs per month and limited to Apify's universal Actors. Learn more →
See the full free plan guide for limits on storage, data retention, and concurrent runs.
How to Reduce Your Apify Bill
- Use lighter Actors where possible: Cheerio-based scraping costs 8–16× less than Playwright. Use browser-based Actors only when JavaScript rendering is required.
- Reduce memory: Lower Actor memory to the minimum stable setting. Many Actors default to 1 GB but work reliably at 256 MB.
- Batch efficiently: Avoid one-run-per-URL patterns. Group inputs and use pagination logic to maximize data per run.
- Set max limits: Most Actors support
maxItemsormaxConcurrencyinputs to cap per-run cost. - Schedule off-peak: No cost difference, but scheduling avoids overlapping runs that exceed concurrent limits.
- Pay per result Actors: For some use cases, pay-per-result pricing is more predictable than usage-based billing.
Full guide: Apify Cost Optimization.
Apify vs Competitors: Pricing Comparison
| Apify Free | Bright Data | Firecrawl | Self-Hosted Crawlee | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $0 ($5 credits) | No free tier (trials available) | $0 (500 free credits) | $0 (hosting costs) |
| Billing model | Compute units + Actor fees | GB bandwidth + dataset pricing | API credit per page | Server cost only |
| Scalability | Plan upgrade | Volume-based | Plan upgrade | Infra-limited |
| Maintenance | Fully managed | Fully managed | Fully managed | You manage |
| Best value for | Pre-built scraping at moderate volume | High-volume proxy and datasets | LLM content pipelines | High-volume, custom needs |
- Apify vs Bright Data: full comparison
- Apify vs Firecrawl vs Jina: head-to-head on price-per-page for LLM pipelines
- Apify Alternatives: all major alternatives reviewed
- Best Apify Alternatives 2026: pricing-first ranking of the top 6 alternatives
Choosing the Right Plan
Start on Free if:
- You're evaluating Apify for the first time
- Your monthly scraping volume is low or irregular
- You want to test a specific workflow before committing
Choose Starter ($29) if:
- You run scheduled Actors daily or weekly
- You need more than 25 concurrent runs, or in-app chat support
- You need a longer storage retention window than the Free plan's default, where unnamed storages expire after 7 days. See the data retention guide
Choose Scale ($199) if:
- You run multiple simultaneous pipelines
- You use memory-intensive browser-based Actors at volume
- Your team needs 128+ concurrent run slots
Choose Business or Enterprise if:
- You have SLA requirements or compliance needs (SOC2, GDPR audits)
- You need dedicated support and custom contract terms
- Your usage regularly exceeds Scale plan limits
Apify has four main plans: Free ($0, includes $5 credits), Starter ($29), Scale ($199), and Business ($999). Most small to medium projects run comfortably on Starter or Scale. Enterprise pricing is custom. See the live pricing page at apify.com/pricing for current rates.
A Compute Unit equals 1 GB of RAM running for 1 hour. CU cost = (memory in GB) × (runtime in hours). Most scraping runs consume 0.01–0.5 CUs. CU rates as of May 2026 range from $0.13/CU (Business) and $0.16/CU (Scale) to $0.20/CU (Free and Starter).
Yes. The Free plan is $0 with no credit card required and includes $5 in monthly credits, enough for hundreds of moderate scraping tasks. Credits do not roll over between months.
The Creator Plan costs $1/month plus pay-as-you-go and includes a one-time $500 prepaid-usage bonus usable within 6 months, for developers building and publishing their own Actors. It is capped at 10 GB residential proxy and 10,000 SERPs per month and limited to Apify's universal Actors. Learn more at apify.com/pricing/creator-plan.
Named storages (datasets, key-value stores, request queues you give a name) are retained indefinitely. Default unnamed storages expire after 7 days unless you change the data-retention setting. Apify keeps your 10 most recent runs indefinitely; older runs follow your plan's data-retention period. Rename or export anything you need to keep.
Plan pricing covers your CU budget and account limits (concurrent runs, RAM, retention). Actor pricing is an additional layer set by the Actor developer: some Actors charge per result, per event, or via monthly rental on top of CUs. Check the Actor's Pricing tab before scaling.
Run a small sample (10–50 records), look at actual CUs consumed in the Run detail view, then extrapolate to your full volume. Add a 2× safety buffer. For pay-per-result Actors, check the price per result shown on the Actor page.
Depends on the use case. For pre-built scraping at low to medium volume, Apify is typically more cost-effective. For very high-volume proxy usage or large managed datasets, Bright Data may be more predictable. The two tools serve different primary needs: Apify is a scraping platform, Bright Data is primarily a proxy and data network.
The Free plan includes limited proxy access. Paid plans include higher proxy usage. For heavy proxy needs (thousands of requests/day), you may need to add extra proxy units or upgrade to a higher plan.
Sources
- Apify pricing page: official plans and pricing (verified 2026-05-18)
- Apify docs: Pricing and costs
- Apify help: What is pay per event?
- Apify help: Compute unit estimation
- Apify docs
- Apify Storage Guide
Common mistakes and fixes
My bill is higher than expected.
Check both platform usage and Actor-level pricing. Some Actors charge per event or result in addition to CU consumption. Review the Actor's Pricing tab before scaling.
I cannot predict costs before production runs.
Run a small sample first (10–20 records), inspect Run usage, then project to your full volume with a 2× safety buffer.
I'm unsure which plan to choose.
Run your actual workflows on Free first. Once monthly CU usage is measurable, pick the lowest plan that covers observed baseline plus 30% growth headroom.