Optimize Apify platform costs through memory tuning, compute unit management, and proxy budgeting.
Use when analyzing Apify billing, reducing Actor run costs,
or implementing usage monitoring and budget alerts.
Trigger: "apify cost", "apify billing", "reduce apify costs",
"apify pricing", "apify expensive", "apify budget", "compute units".
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Optimize Apify platform costs through memory tuning, compute unit management, and proxy budgeting.
Use when analyzing Apify billing, reducing Actor run costs,
or implementing usage monitoring and budget alerts.
Trigger: "apify cost", "apify billing", "reduce apify costs",
"apify pricing", "apify expensive", "apify budget", "compute units".
allowed-tools
Read, Grep
version
1.0.0
license
MIT
author
Jeremy Longshore <jeremy@intentsolutions.io>
tags
["saas","scraping","automation","apify"]
compatible-with
claude-code
Apify Cost Tuning
Overview
Apify charges based on compute units (CU), proxy traffic (GB), and storage. One CU = 1 GB memory running for 1 hour. This skill covers how to analyze, reduce, and monitor costs across all three dimensions.
Pricing Model
Compute Units (CU)
CU = (Memory in GB) x (Duration in hours)
Example: 2048 MB (2 GB) running for 30 minutes = 2 x 0.5 = 1 CU
Plan
CU Price
Included CUs
Free
N/A
Limited trial
Starter
$0.30/CU
Varies by plan
Scale
$0.25/CU
Volume discounts
Enterprise
Custom
Negotiated
Proxy Costs
Proxy Type
Cost
Use Case
Datacenter
Included in plan
Non-blocking sites
Residential
~$12/GB
Sites that block datacenters
Google SERP
~$3.50/1000 queries
Google search results
Storage
Named datasets and KV stores persist indefinitely but count against storage quota. Unnamed (default run) storage expires after 7 days.
Memory is the biggest cost lever. Most CheerioCrawler Actors are over-provisioned.
// Test with progressively lower memory to find the sweet spotfor (const memory of [4096, 2048, 1024, 512, 256]) {
try {
const run = await client.actor('user/actor').call(testInput, {
memory,
timeout: 600,
});
console.log(
`${memory}MB: ${run.status} | ` +
`${run.stats?.runTimeSecs}s | ` +
`${run.usage?.ACTOR_COMPUTE_UNITS?.toFixed(4)} CU | ` +
`$${run.usageTotalUsd?.toFixed(4)}`
);
if (run.status !== 'SUCCEEDED') break;
} catch (error) {
console.log(`${memory}MB: FAILED — ${(error asError).message}`);
break;
}
}
Typical memory sweet spots:
Actor Type
Start At
Sweet Spot
CheerioCrawler (simple)
256 MB
256-512 MB
CheerioCrawler (complex)
512 MB
512-1024 MB
PlaywrightCrawler
2048 MB
2048-4096 MB
Data processing
1024 MB
1024-2048 MB
Step 3: Optimize Crawl Duration
Faster crawls = fewer CUs consumed:
const crawler = newCheerioCrawler({
// Higher concurrency = faster completionmaxConcurrency: 30,
// Don't wait too long on slow pagesrequestHandlerTimeoutSecs: 20,
// Stop early when you have enough datamaxRequestsPerCrawl: 1000,
// Avoid unnecessary retriesmaxRequestRetries: 2, // Default: 3requestHandler: async ({ request, $, enqueueLinks }) => {
// Only extract what you needawaitActor.pushData({
url: request.url,
title: $('title').text().trim(),
// Don't scrape entire page body if you don't need it
});
// Only enqueue relevant links (not every link on the page)awaitenqueueLinks({
selector: 'a.product-link', // Specific selector, not 'a'strategy: 'same-domain',
});
},
});
Step 4: Minimize Proxy Costs
// Strategy 1: Use datacenter proxy first (free with plan)const dcProxy = awaitActor.createProxyConfiguration({
groups: ['BUYPROXIES94952'],
});
// Strategy 2: Only use residential proxy when needed// Don't waste residential bandwidth on non-blocking sites// Strategy 3: Minimize data transfer through residential proxyconst crawler = newPlaywrightCrawler({
proxyConfiguration: resProxy,
preNavigationHooks: [
async ({ page }) => {
// Block images, fonts, CSS (saves residential proxy GB)await page.route('**/*.{png,jpg,jpeg,gif,svg,webp,ico,woff,woff2,ttf,css}',
route => route.abort()
);
},
],
});
// Strategy 4: Session stickiness (reduces new proxy connections)const crawler = newCheerioCrawler({
proxyConfiguration: resProxy,
useSessionPool: true,
sessionPoolOptions: {
sessionOptions: {
maxUsageCount: 100, // More reuse = fewer new connections
},
},
});
