<!-- twin of https://specstream.ai/apify-pricing -->
# Apify pricing in 2026: plans from $19, and what an Actor costs

Compared on Nov 12, 2026. The page: https://specstream.ai/apify-pricing

Apify plans cost $0, $19, $199 or $999 a month, each paid back as usage that expires with the cycle. Actors then bill per event, such as $2.30 per 1,000 Instagram results, or $0.13 to $0.20 a compute unit.

SpecStream has one rate card: $0.80 per 1,000 pages, $1 per 1,000 searches with `speed=fast`, and 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row for a dataset you describe in plain words. There is no Actor to pick.

[Get an API key](https://specstream.ai/signup?src=alternatives-apify-pricing&utm_source=alternatives-md&utm_campaign=apify-pricing&returnTo=%2Fworkspace%2Fagents%3Ftab%3Dkeys) New accounts get $10 of credit, no card. It covers 12,500 pages or 10,000 fast searches.

## What Apify costs, and the same job on SpecStream

| | SpecStream | Apify |
|---|---|---|
| Plans | None needed: pay from a balance topped up from $10. Pro $19, Scale $99 and Team $499 a month each turn their whole price into credit | Free $0, Starter $19, Scale $199 and Business $999 a month, or $17, $179 and $899 a month billed yearly. Each fee comes back as the same amount of usage |
| Free to start | $10 of credit once, no card: 12,500 pages or 10,000 fast searches | $5 of usage a month on Free, no card. A Free account is blocked until the next cycle once it is spent |
| Unused credit | Credit you buy never expires | Unused usage expires at the end of the billing cycle |
| Reading pages | Extract API: $0.80 per 1,000 pages, rendered or not, up to 20 URLs a call. A page that gives no text is not charged | Website Content Crawler bills compute: about $0.2 per 1,000 pages with the raw HTTP crawler and $0.5 to $5 per 1,000 with a headless browser, by Apify's tests |
| Google results | $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results with `speed=fast`. The default search, with the answer, is $5 per 1,000 | Google Search Results Scraper: $2.50 per 1,000 result pages on Starter, $1.95 on Scale and $1.80 on Business |
| Store Actors, per 1,000 results | One rate on every site: $0.80 per 1,000 pages read, and 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row for a dataset you describe | Set by each Actor's developer. Tweet Scraper V2: $0.40 per 1,000 tweets on every plan. Instagram Scraper: $2.70 on Free to $1.50 on Business. Amazon Bestsellers Scraper: $5.90 on Free to $3.20 on Business |
| Compute | Nothing to meter. One price per page, per search or per row | $0.2 a compute unit on Free and Starter, $0.16 on Scale and $0.13 on Business. 1 CU is 1 GB of RAM running for 1 hour |
| Proxies | None to buy. A page that refuses a plain read is tried again as a browser would ask for it, then in a real browser, then from the site's own feed, then from its newest public archive capture | Residential $8 per GB on Starter and $7 on Business. SERPs proxy $2.5 per 1,000 and Unblocker $1.5 per 1,000 requests on Starter |
| A dataset | Deep Search: describe the data in plain words and get every match on the live web as structured rows, at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row, plus 5¢ for an email and 15¢ for a phone | Pick an Actor in Apify Store and pay the price its developer set per event, with platform usage on top for some |
| The cost cap | The most a run can cost is quoted before it starts, and nothing runs until you approve it | A maximum charge limit you set when you start a run. Overage on Starter runs up to a usage limit you set, at most $100 |
| Add-ons | None. Every key gets the same rates | Concurrent runs $5 a run, Actor RAM $1 per GB, datacenter proxy from $0.6 an IP and personal training $150 an hour |

## What an Apify plan buys, Actor by Actor

### What $19 buys on each

On Starter, $19 of usage buys about 8,260 Instagram Scraper results at $2.30 per 1,000, or 7,600 Google result pages at $2.50 per 1,000. On SpecStream $19 reads 23,750 pages or runs 19,000 fast searches, and the credit stays until you spend it.

### Usage that expires raises the price

Apify usage that is not spent disappears at the end of the billing cycle. A Starter month that uses $9.50 of its $19 pays twice the listed rate. SpecStream credit you buy never expires, and a top-up of $1,000 or more adds 20% more credit.

### A compute unit has no fixed number of pages

A pay per usage Actor bills compute units, proxy and storage, so a run costs more with more memory, longer runs and more retries. Apify's own tests put Website Content Crawler at $0.5 to $5 per 1,000 pages with a headless browser. SpecStream charges $0.0008 for each page read with text.

### What three popular Actors cost

Tweet Scraper V2 costs $0.40 per 1,000 tweets on every plan, with rules of its own: each query must return at least 50 tweets, one run goes at a time with up to 5 batched queries, and the same query must not run again in short intervals. On the Free plan it allows 5 runs a month of 10 items each. Apify's Instagram Scraper costs $2.70 per 1,000 results on Free, $2.30 on Starter, $1.90 on Scale and $1.50 on Business. The Amazon Bestsellers Scraper costs $5.90, $5.00, $4.10 and $3.20 per 1,000 items on the same four plans.

So the price of a result moves with the Actor and the plan. On SpecStream a page read costs $0.80 per 1,000 and a row you describe 5¢, 15¢ or $1, the same on every plan and every site. How the Instagram and Amazon Actors compare with a request in plain words is on the [Instagram profiles dataset](https://specstream.ai/instagram-profiles-dataset?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=apify-pricing) and [Amazon reviews dataset](https://specstream.ai/amazon-reviews-dataset?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=apify-pricing) pages.

### The call, before and after

```
# Before: an Actor run, then its dataset
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(APIFY_TOKEN)
run = client.actor("apify/website-content-crawler").call(
    run_input={"startUrls": [{"url": "https://docs.apify.com/"}], "maxCrawlPages": 10}
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["url"], item["text"][:300])

# After: one call to the SpecStream Extract API
import requests

reply = requests.post(
    "https://api.specstream.ai/v1/extract",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {SPECSTREAM_KEY}"},
    json={"urls": ["https://docs.apify.com/"], "format": "markdown"},
    timeout=60,
).json()["data"]
for page in reply["results"]:
    print(page["url"], page["status"], (page.get("text") or "")[:300])
```

There is no run to wait for and no dataset to read: the reply holds the main text of up to 20 URLs. More on the [Extract API](https://specstream.ai/extract-api?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=apify-pricing) page.

### Scored on the official benchmarks

The SpecStream Search API scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 SimpleQA Verified questions and 64.0 item F1 on all 200 WideSearch tasks, and the Extract API scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. Every score and its method is on the [benchmarks](https://specstream.ai/benchmarks?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=apify-pricing) page.

## What other scraping platforms cost

### Bright Data

Scraper API at $1.50 per 1,000 records pay as you go and $1.30 beyond the volume of its Scale plan, with 5,000 free credits a month. SpecStream returns structured rows for any request you describe, at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row. How the two compare is on the [Bright Data alternatives](https://specstream.ai/alternatives/brightdata?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=apify-pricing) page.

### Firecrawl

Hobby at $19 a month for 5,000 credits, and 1 credit is 1 page on a basic scrape. SpecStream answers Firecrawl's scrape call at `https://api.specstream.ai/firecrawl` for $0.80 per 1,000 pages.

### ZenRows

Build at $19 a month for 45,000 credits, and a page rendered with JavaScript costs 5 credits. SpecStream answers ZenRows' call at `https://api.specstream.ai/zenrows/v1/` for $0.80 per 1,000 pages.

## How to pay $0.80 per 1,000 pages with no plan

1. Create a key under Agents & API in the workspace. A new account gets $10 of credit, no card, which covers 12,500 pages.

2. Send the URLs you give an Actor's `startUrls` today to `POST https://api.specstream.ai/v1/extract`, up to 20 a call, with the key as a Bearer token. The call is above.

3. For Google results, send the query to `GET https://api.specstream.ai/v1/web-search` with `q` and `speed=fast`, at $1 per 1,000 searches:

```
reply = requests.get(
    "https://api.specstream.ai/v1/web-search",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {SPECSTREAM_KEY}"},
    params={"q": "web scraping platform pricing", "num": 10, "speed": "fast"},
).json()["data"]

for source in reply["sources"]:
    print(source["url"], source["title"], source["snippet"])
```

4. For a dataset, write the request in plain words in the workspace or through [Deep Search](https://specstream.ai/deep-search?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=apify-pricing). You see the most it can cost before it runs, and only delivered rows are charged. An agent connects through the MCP server at `https://api.specstream.ai/mcp` and spends from the same balance.

## Frequently asked questions

### How much does Apify cost?

Apify costs $0 on Free, $19 a month on Starter, $199 on Scale and $999 on Business, or $17, $179 and $899 a month billed yearly. Each fee is included usage, and Actors spend it per event or per compute unit.

### Is Apify free?

Yes, the Free plan gives $5 of usage a month with no card, and the account is blocked until the next cycle once it is spent. A new SpecStream account gets $10 of credit once, no card, which reads 12,500 pages.

### Does unused Apify usage roll over?

No. Unused usage credits expire at the end of the billing cycle. SpecStream credit you buy never expires.

### How much is an Apify compute unit?

$0.2 on Free and Starter, $0.16 on Scale and $0.13 on Business. 1 compute unit is 1 GB of RAM running for 1 hour.

### How much does the Apify Google Search Results Scraper cost?

$2.50 per 1,000 scraped result pages on Starter, $1.95 on Scale and $1.80 on Business. The SpecStream Search API costs $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results with `speed=fast`.

### How much does Tweet Scraper V2 cost on Apify?

$0.40 per 1,000 tweets on every Apify plan. Each query must return at least 50 tweets, and on the Free plan the Actor allows 5 runs a month, each capped at 10 items.

### Is there an Apify alternative with no monthly plan?

Yes. SpecStream bills every call from a balance: $0.80 per 1,000 pages, $1 per 1,000 fast searches and 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a delivered row. A top-up starts at $10 and never expires.

## Sources

SpecStream wrote this page. Each figure about Apify and other providers comes from that company's own page, read on the date shown.

- [Apify pricing](https://apify.com/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Apify pricing reference](https://apify.com/pricing.md), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Apify Actors in Store docs](https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store.md), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Apify Website Content Crawler](https://apify.com/apify/website-content-crawler), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Apify Google Search Results Scraper pricing](https://apify.com/apify/google-search-scraper/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Apify Tweet Scraper V2](https://apify.com/apidojo/tweet-scraper), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Apify Tweet Scraper V2 pricing](https://apify.com/apidojo/tweet-scraper/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Apify Instagram Scraper pricing](https://apify.com/apify/instagram-scraper/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Apify Amazon Bestsellers Scraper pricing](https://apify.com/junglee/amazon-bestsellers/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Bright Data Scraper API FAQs](https://docs.brightdata.com/products/scrapers/scrapers-library/faqs.md), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Firecrawl pricing](https://www.firecrawl.dev/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [ZenRows pricing docs](https://docs.zenrows.com/first-steps/pricing.md), read Nov 12, 2026
- [SpecStream benchmarks](https://specstream.ai/benchmarks), read Nov 12, 2026
- [SpecStream for agents](https://specstream.ai/agents.md), read Nov 12, 2026