Apify’s pricing is notoriously hard to predict before you actually run a job. The pricing page shows compute unit costs, but the actual cost of a run depends on machine type, memory allocation, run duration, and proxy usage — factors that vary between actors.
This guide decodes Apify’s pricing model and compares it to Seek API’s per-result pricing across several real-world scenarios.
How Apify pricing works
Apify measures and charges for Actor Compute Units (ACUs) — a normalized unit based on:
ACU = (memory in GB × runtime in hours) × machine_type_multiplier
At the time of writing:
- $0.25 per ACU
- 1024 MB × 1 hour = 1 ACU = $0.25
- A 15-second run at 1024 MB = 0.004 ACU = $0.001
That sounds cheap — until you account for:
- Most scraping actors require 512–2048 MB to run a headless browser
- Heavy sites (LinkedIn, Google Maps) take 10–45 seconds per page
- Proxies are billed separately at $10–$16/GB for residential traffic
There’s also a minimum billing of 0.001 ACUs per run, so short warm-up times still count.
Scenario 1: LinkedIn profiles (1,000 profiles)
On Apify:
- Average LinkedIn actor: 1024 MB, ~25 seconds per profile
- 1,000 profiles × (1024 MB / 1024 GB × 25/3600 hours) = ~6.9 ACU
- At $0.25/ACU: compute cost = $1.73
- Residential proxies required: ~0.5–1 GB = $5–$10
- Total: $6.73–$11.73
On Seek API:
- LinkedIn profile worker: $0.01/profile
- 1,000 profiles = $10
- Proxies included, no extra charge
Result: Comparable at this scale. On Apify, costs are harder to predict; on Seek API, you know before you run.
Scenario 2: Google Maps business search (5,000 listings)
On Apify:
- Google Maps actors typically need 2048 MB
- ~8 seconds per listing
- 5,000 × (2048/1024 × 8/3600) = ~22.2 ACU = $5.56
- Proxies: ~1–2 GB residential = $10–$20
- Total: $15.56–$25.56
On Seek API:
- Google Maps worker: $0.005/listing
- 5,000 listings = $25
Result: Seek API costs slightly more on Paper but includes proxies, has predictable pricing, and requires no actor configuration.
Scenario 3: Instagram profile + recent posts (500 influencers)
On Apify:
- Instagram actor: 1024 MB, ~15 seconds per profile with posts
- 500 × (1 × 15/3600) = ~2.1 ACU = $0.52
- Proxies: 0.3 GB residential = $3–$5
- Total: $3.52–$5.52
On Seek API:
- Instagram worker: $0.008/profile
- 500 profiles = $4
Result: Very similar. Apify is slightly cheaper in compute but adds proxy cost. Both land around $4–5.
Scenario 4: Large-scale news scraping (100,000 articles/month)
On Apify:
- News actor: 512 MB, ~3 seconds per article
- 100,000 × (0.5 × 3/3600) = ~41.7 ACU = $10.42
- Proxies: minimal (news sites = datacenter proxies) = $2–$5
- Total: $12–$15
On Seek API:
- News article worker: $0.002/article
- 100,000 articles = $200
Result: Apify wins decisively for high-volume commodity content. When proxy costs are low and articles are simple, Apify’s compute model beats per-article pricing.
The key insight
Apify’s compute model is more cost-efficient for high-volume, simple targets where jobs run fast and don’t need expensive proxies.
Seek API’s per-result model is more cost-efficient for complex targets (social media, platforms with heavy anti-bot) where proxy and session management add significant overhead to compute billing.
| Use case | Apify | Seek API |
|---|---|---|
| Social media (Instagram, LinkedIn) | $5–$25 / 1K | $8–$10 / 1K |
| Google Maps | $15–$25 / 5K | $25 / 5K |
| News scraping (100K articles) | $12–$15 | $200 |
| Price monitoring (1K products) | $8–$15 | $8–$10 |
The non-cost differences
Beyond price, consider:
Predictability: Apify costs vary with run duration and proxy consumption. A misbehaving actor that enters a retry loop doubles your bill. Seek API bills per result regardless of execution complexity.
Setup time: Apify requires finding the right actor, configuring inputs, understanding the output schema, and testing. Seek API has standardized inputs/outputs per worker category.
Maintenance: If an Apify actor you depend on stops being maintained, you need to find a replacement or fork and maintain it yourself. Seek API guarantees worker maintenance.
Which to choose
Choose Apify for high-volume, simple targets — news, RSS, public HTML — where the compute model is cost-effective and you want to build your own custom actors.
Choose Seek API for complex social and platform targets, when billing predictability matters, or when you want a simple API call without actor configuration complexity.