Apify pricing explained, with a calculator for your own runs
An Actor run costs compute units, event charges or both, and all of it comes out of the prepaid usage in your plan first. Here is how the bill adds up, worked through three scenarios on the public prices of 2026-10-23.
The Apify price list names three ways an Actor in Apify Store can charge you: pay per event, pay per usage, and pay per event + usage. Whichever the Actor uses, the cost first comes out of the prepaid usage included in your plan, and only the rest reaches an invoice. I run 26 Actors on this platform; what follows is the arithmetic I use to read my own bills.
How a run turns into a bill
How one Actor run turns into a line on the bill
public price list · 2026-10-23- Input · you start an Actor with its settings and a memory size
- Actor run · the platform runs it; memory and run time are measured
- Usage · compute units (1 GB for one hour) for pay per usage, or the Actor's events for pay per event
- Prepaid usage · each plan includes an amount that pays for usage first and expires with the billing cycle
- Invoice · paid plans add the overage to the next invoice; the free plan blocks runs until the next cycle
Pay per usage bills compute units. One compute unit is 1 GB of RAM for one hour, so a run with 1 GB that takes one minute uses a sixtieth of a unit. The price per unit depends on the plan, as the table below shows.
Pay per event bills the events the Actor's developer defines, for example each result or each Actor start. The price is on the Actor's page. In a sample of 9,929 popular Store Actors counted on 2026-10-23, 7,720 of the 9,493 that charge per event include the platform usage in the event price. Pay per event + usage adds the platform usage on top of the event price, so check the pricing section before a large run.
The arithmetic for pay per usage fits in three lines:
compute units per run = memory in GB × run time in hours
cost per run = compute units per run × price per unit
1 GB × 1/60 h = 0.0167 CU → 0.0167 × $0.20 = $0.0033 per run
Each plan includes prepaid usage, the same amount as the monthly fee on the paid plans:
| Plan | Monthly fee | Prepaid usage | Price per compute unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $5 | $0.20 |
| Starter | $19 | $19 | $0.20 |
| Scale | $199 | $199 | $0.16 |
| Business | $999 | $999 | $0.13 |
The prepaid usage expires at the end of the billing cycle. Paid plans add any usage above it to the next invoice. The free plan does not bill an overage: it blocks runs until the next monthly cycle.
Calculate your own runs
Pick the plan and the way the Actor charges, then enter how many runs you expect a month. For pay per usage, take the memory and run time from a test run. For pay per event, the price is on the Actor's page and the number of results is what you plan to fetch.
The calculator counts pay per event + usage as pay per event only. If the Actor you picked uses that model, add the platform usage of a test run on top of the result.
Three scenarios
Monthly usage in the three scenarios
Data table
| Item | USD of usage a month |
|---|---|
| Small job on Free | 1 |
| Heavy job on Free | 6.67 |
| Pay per event on Starter | 125 |
A small scheduled job on the free plan: 1 GB of memory, one minute per run, 300 runs a month. Each run uses 0.0167 compute units and costs $0.0033, so the month uses $1.00 of the $5 prepaid usage and the bill is $0.
A heavier job on the free plan: 4 GB of memory, five minutes per run, 100 runs a month. Each run costs $0.0667, so the month would need $6.67. The free plan stops at $5 of usage, which is 75 runs; the remaining 25 wait for the next cycle.
A pay-per-event Actor on Starter, at an example price of $2.50 per 1,000 results (not a specific Actor), with 500 results per run and 100 runs a month. Each run costs $1.25 and the month $125. The $19 prepaid usage covers the first $19, the other $106 goes on the invoice, and the bill is $125.
The third case shows how prepaid usage works on a paid plan. It is not a discount on top of the fee: it is what the fee buys, so the bill is the fee plus whatever goes past it.
What the calculator leaves out
The calculator counts compute units and event charges only. Storage, data transfer, proxies, add-ons and Store discounts are not included, and annual billing, shown on the price list as 10% off, is not modelled. The price list, as read for this page on 2026-10-23, lists no rental model, so the calculator has none.
What I tested and what is untested
The scenario numbers come from the calculator's tests, which run the same formulas on the saved price list. I did not run the three jobs on a real account for this page, so the scenarios show how the price list adds up, not a measured bill. Prices change; the date on the price list is the date these numbers are valid for.
Drafted with an agent from the repository and the owner's notes; measurements in this page were run by the agent on 2026-10-23.
Reviewed by David S on 2026-10-25.