Actors
Learn how to develop, run and share serverless cloud programs. Create your own web scraping and automation tools and publish them on the Apify platform.
What is an Actor?
Actors are serverless programs running in the cloud. They can perform anything from simple actions (such as filling out a web form or sending an email) to complex operations (such as crawling an entire website or removing duplicates from a large dataset). Actor runs can be as short or as long as necessary. They could last seconds, hours, or even infinitely.
To get better idea of what Apify Actors are, visit Apify Store, and try out some of them!
You can use Actors manually in Apify Console, by using the API or scheduler. You can easily integrate them with other apps and share your Actors with other Apify users via Apify Store or access rights system.
Actors are containers
A single isolated Actor consists of source code and various settings. You can think of an Actor as a cloud app or service that runs on the Apify platform. The run of an Actor is not limited to the lifetime of a single HTTP transaction. It can run for as long as necessary, even forever.
Basically, Actors are programs packaged as Docker images, which accept a well-defined JSON input, perform an action, and optionally produce an output.
Public and private Actors
Actors can be public or private. Private Actors are yours to use and keep; no one will see them if you don't want them to. Public Actors are available to everyone in Apify Store. You can make them free to use, or you can charge for them.