Apify Free Tier: How Many Scraper Runs Does $5 a Month Buy?
In one line: The Apify free tier gives $5 of usage credit a month, no credit card required, and only charges when an Actor actually returns data — a different billing logic from a flat monthly subscription; running the numbers on ptt-scraper, that $5 covers roughly 2,500 scraped PTT posts in list mode alone.
Why this gets confused with a subscription fee
Most of the tools a developer reaches for to build an AI or automation project — hosted AI APIs, workflow platforms, cloud hosting — charge a fixed amount every billing cycle, whether that cycle was busy or idle. It’s a reasonable default assumption to carry into Apify: a marketplace of ready-made web scrapers (“Actors”) that looks, on the surface, like just another SaaS tool in the same stack.
It isn’t priced that way. If you only want to run a scraper for a personal side project or a one-off analysis, understanding the difference can mean paying nothing at all.
Two billing logics, side by side
| Typical subscription tool (flat monthly fee) | Apify Free plan + Pay-Per-Event | |
|---|---|---|
| What you’re billed on | A fixed amount per month, regardless of whether — or how much — you used it that month | The “events” an Actor’s developer defines, charged only when one is actually triggered (for example, a result is written to the output) |
| Free tier, if any | Often limited in features; many advanced capabilities require upgrading to a paid plan first | $0/month, no credit card, with $5 of platform usage credit included every month |
| What happens when you hit the limit | The bill keeps accruing, or you’re prompted to upgrade to keep using the product | The Free plan is paused for the rest of that billing cycle once the $5 is used up — no overdraft, no silent auto-upgrade (official pricing page) |
| Value for a small personal project | You pay the full monthly fee even for occasional use | At $0.002 per post for ptt-scraper’s board-listing mode, a modest research or learning project often finishes the month with credit to spare |
What Apify’s free plan actually includes
According to the official Apify pricing page (checked while writing this, October 2026), the plan structure is:
- Free: $0/month, no credit card required, $5 of platform usage credit included every month.
- Starter: $19/month, $19 of included usage.
- Scale: $199/month, $199 of included usage.
- Business: $999/month, $999 of included usage.
The pricing page states that once a Free plan account uses up its prepaid monthly credit, “access to Apify’s services will be blocked until the beginning of the next monthly cycle.” In other words, the credit resets every billing cycle — it isn’t a one-time signup bonus — and running out doesn’t trigger an automatic upgrade or a surprise charge; it simply pauses usage until the next cycle.
That lines up with how Apify documents its Pay-Per-Event mechanism: an Actor’s developer defines one or more “events” (for example, “a result was returned”) and sets a price for each. You’re billed only when an event actually fires, not for the ability to run the Actor in the first place. That’s also why a hobbyist pulling a few hundred rows and a company running scheduled jobs at tens of thousands of rows a day can end up with bills that differ by two orders of magnitude — the meter runs on data volume, not on having a subscription.
Running the numbers with ptt-scraper: how far does $5 go?
Using ptt-scraper — one of the Actors on this site — as a worked example. Its per-event pricing is listed on its Store page:
- Board-listing mode (
search-listingevent): $0.002 per post for title, author and vote-count data. - Full post text (
product-detailevent): $0.008 per post for the complete post body. - Push comments (
review-itemevent): $0.003 per push/boo/arrow comment.
The input schema (see its Store page) uses mode: "board" with board names in the array field boards, plus an optional keywords array to filter titles — for example, to watch popular discussion on the Stock board:
{
"mode": "board",
"boards": ["Stock"],
"keywords": ["台積電"],
"maxItems": 50
}(PTT posts are written in Chinese, so the title filter has to be the Chinese term that would actually appear — here, “台積電” is TSMC’s Chinese name.)
Scenario one: list-only, for a quantitative pass. If you just want post counts and vote distribution per day on a board and don’t need full text, run board-listing mode only. $5 ÷ $0.002/post ≈ 2,500 posts (this ignores the platform’s small separate run-start fee, so the real number will be a little lower). That’s comfortably enough for a single person’s analysis project.
Scenario two: list, plus full text and comments on a subset. Say you pull 500 posts in list mode first ($1.00), then grab full text for 50 of them (50 × $0.008 = $0.40), plus roughly 1,000 push comments across those 50 posts (1,000 × $0.003 = $3.00). That totals $4.40 — still inside the $5 free credit, but with little room left; the next run either waits for next month’s reset or calls for an upgrade.
If you consistently go over $5 a month: the next step up is the Starter plan at $19/month with $19 of included usage — close to 4x the budget (official pricing page). For occasional or learning use, though, the free plan’s monthly reset is usually enough.
From least effort to most freedom
FAQ
Does Apify’s free plan need a credit card? How much credit do I get a month? No credit card required. The Free plan costs $0 a month and includes $5 of platform usage credit, which renews every billing cycle — it is not a one-time trial credit (official pricing page).
What happens when the $5 runs out? Does it auto-upgrade and start billing me? No automatic upgrade or charge. Once a Free plan account uses up its $5 for the month, access to Apify’s services is blocked until the next billing cycle starts, so there is no surprise invoice (official pricing page).
Scraping PTT posts with ptt-scraper, how far does $5 actually go? Board-listing mode charges $0.002 per post for title, author and vote-count data only. At that rate, $5 covers roughly 2,500 posts, ignoring the platform’s small separate run-start fee. Pulling full post text ($0.008 each) or individual comments ($0.003 each) uses up credit faster, so the real number depends on which modes you run.
How is Apify’s Pay-Per-Event different from a subscription tool’s billing? A subscription charges the same fixed amount every month whether you use the tool heavily or barely at all. Pay-Per-Event bills for events the Actor’s developer defines, only when they actually fire — for ptt-scraper that means you are charged when a post is actually written to the output, not for a search that returns nothing (official Pay-Per-Event documentation).
I keep going over the free $5 every month — which plan should I move to? If you consistently exceed the $5 free credit, the next plan is Starter at $19 a month with $19 of included usage, nearly 4x the budget. Scale ($199 a month, $199 of usage) and Business ($999 a month, $999 of usage) sit above that, depending on how much you scrape (official pricing page).
Further reading
- Three ways to scrape Threads posts by keyword: another concrete Pay-Per-Event example — threads-feed-scraper charges $0.005 per post, a useful comparison against ptt-scraper’s per-event breakdown here.
- Build a no-code forum sentiment pipeline with Apify + n8n + GPT: once you’ve pulled PTT data and know what it costs, this shows how to wire the same ptt-scraper into n8n for automatic sentiment tagging and alerts.
- DIY social listening vs. buying an enterprise tool: if your usage grows from “occasional project” to “ongoing monitoring across several forums,” this breaks down the monthly cost of building it yourself versus buying a packaged tool.
Chad runs 30+ Apify Actors in production. The $5 free-tier credit, plan prices and Pay-Per-Event mechanism cited here come from the official Apify pricing page and the official Pay-Per-Event documentation; ptt-scraper’s per-event pricing follows its Store page. Numbers without a checkable source don’t make it into this piece.