Apify Pricing 2026: The Compute Unit Catch

TL;DR: Apify pricing runs on a prepaid-usage model: Free ($0 with $5 usage), Starter ($29/mo), Scale ($199/mo), and Business ($999/mo), each priced per compute unit from $0.13 to $0.20. The catch is that your monthly fee is prepaid credit that expires at cycle end, and heavy runs bill overage on top.

Last updated: August 2026 · By Sandeep Singh, DailyFix

Apify pricing tiers and the compute-unit catch, checked August 2026.

Apify is a web scraping and automation platform with 55,000+ ready-made tools, called Actors, plus proxies and storage. As of August 2026, its pricing confuses new users because the plan price is not a flat subscription. It is a bucket of prepaid usage you spend on compute, proxies, and data. This breakdown shows what each tier really buys and where the meter bites.

How does Apify pricing work in 2026?

Apify pricing has four tiers, and each one is a monthly fee that doubles as prepaid platform usage. According to Apify's pricing page (checked August 2026), Free is $0 with $5 of usage, Starter is $29/month, Scale is $199/month, and Business is $999/month, with annual billing taking 10% off.

The plan fee is not the whole bill. Running an Actor consumes compute units, and proxies, storage, and data transfer are billed separately. So two people on the same $29 Starter plan can pay very different totals depending on how much they actually run.

What is a compute unit on Apify?

A compute unit (CU) on Apify equals one gigabyte of memory running for one hour. Per Apify's pricing page (checked August 2026), you pay $0.20 per CU on Free and Starter, $0.16 on Scale, and $0.13 on Business. That per-CU rate, not the plan name, is what drives most scraping bills.

Because a CU blends memory and time, a heavy Actor with lots of RAM burns units fast, and failed requests that retry cost extra. Residential proxies add $8 per GB on the lower tiers, so a big job's proxy line can rival its compute line.

What does the Apify free plan include?

The Apify free plan costs $0 and includes $5 of monthly platform usage, a $0.20 per-CU rate, 16 GB of Actor RAM, up to 25 concurrent runs, and community support. No credit card is required, and you get access to most of the platform.

The limit is that $5. It is enough to test an Actor and see its real cost, but a production scrape or a scheduled monitor drains it quickly. When a free account runs out of usage, Apify blocks your access until the next monthly cycle rather than charging overage.

Do Apify prepaid credits roll over?

No, Apify prepaid usage does not roll over. Per Apify's pricing FAQ (checked August 2026), unused usage credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. Buying a bigger plan for safety means paying for headroom you lose if you do not spend it in time.

There is a second edge for paid plans: once you exhaust prepaid usage, Apify keeps running and bills the excess as overage on your next invoice. That pay-as-you-go overage is convenient but means a busy month can land a bill well above the sticker price of your tier.

Is Apify worth it for scraping at scale?

Apify is worth it when you need scale, ready-made Actors, and proxies in one place, and when you can estimate compute from a test run. The huge Actor store and pay-as-you-go overage make it flexible for spiky workloads that a fixed-credit tool would choke on.

It is less friendly for beginners who want a predictable flat fee, because the compute-unit meter and expiring prepaid usage make the monthly total hard to guess up front. Here is how the tiers compare on the numbers that decide your bill.

Plan	Monthly price	Prepaid usage	Per compute unit	Actor RAM	Concurrent runs
Free	$0	$5	$0.20	16 GB	25
Starter	$29	$29 + PAYG	$0.20	64 GB	32
Scale	$199	$199 + PAYG	$0.16	256 GB	128
Business	$999	$999 + PAYG	$0.13	512 GB	256

Prices and limits change often — verify on the official pricing page before deciding.

FAQ

Is Apify free to use?
Yes, Apify has a free plan that costs $0 and includes $5 of monthly platform usage, 16 GB of Actor RAM, up to 25 concurrent runs, and community support. No credit card is required. The $5 usage is enough to test Actors, but it runs out fast on production scraping, and a free account is blocked until the next cycle once it is spent.

How much does Apify actually cost per month?
Apify plans are $29 (Starter), $199 (Scale), and $999 (Business) per month, each 10% cheaper on annual billing. But the fee is prepaid usage, and you pay per compute unit plus proxies and storage on top, so real monthly totals depend on how much you run and can exceed the sticker price through overage.

What is a compute unit on Apify?
A compute unit is 1 GB of memory running for 1 hour. Apify charges $0.20 per compute unit on Free and Starter, $0.16 on Scale, and $0.13 on Business. Compute units, not the plan name, drive most of your scraping cost, and high-memory Actors or retried failed requests burn them faster.

Do unused Apify credits roll over?
No. Apify prepaid platform usage expires at the end of each billing cycle and does not roll over. On paid plans you can keep running past your prepaid amount and pay the excess as overage on the next invoice; on the free plan you are blocked until the cycle resets.

How much do Apify proxies cost?
Residential proxies cost $8 per GB on Free and Starter, dropping to $7 per GB on Business. Datacenter proxies include a handful of IPs, then cost from $0.6 to $1 per IP depending on tier. Proxy spend is billed from your usage, so a heavily proxied scrape can cost as much in bandwidth as in compute.

Is Apify better than Browse AI?
Apify suits developers and scaled, spiky scraping thanks to its 55,000+ Actor store, proxies, and pay-as-you-go overage. Browse AI suits no-code users who want fixed monthly credits and a simpler recorder. Apify is more flexible and often cheaper at volume, but its compute-unit meter makes costs harder to predict up front.

Bottom Line

Apify is the right pick if you scrape at scale or on a spiky schedule and can read compute usage from a test run, because the per-compute-unit rate and pay-as-you-go overage flex with your workload. Skip it, or budget carefully, if you want a fixed, predictable monthly fee, since the prepaid usage expires and overage can push a busy month well past your tier price. Always run a small test to measure compute units before committing to a plan.

Sources

About the author — Sandeep Singh. Sandeep builds and tests AI tools and automations daily, and runs DailyFix to show solopreneurs which ones actually save time.

Sandeep Singh Founder & Editor, DailyFix

Sandeep Singh is the founder and editor of DailyFix. He served in the Border Security Force for five years before moving into software, where he now builds and tests AI automations for solopreneurs and small teams — mostly in n8n, Make, and Zapier, plus voice agents on Vapi and Synthflow. He runs DailyFix on the same principle he uses in his own work: no tool goes into a post unless he'd actually put it into a client build. Every review, prompt and workflow on the site is tested end-to-end on real projects before it's written up. Alongside DailyFix, Sandeep ships SwiftSite Studio. Recent focus: AI receptionists for contractors, and turning ranking-audit output into repeatable, one-person publishing systems. Reach him on GitHub.

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