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Monetize your Actor

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Apify Store allows you to monetize your web scraping, automation, and AI agent projects by publishing them as paid Actors.

Pricing models

You can publish Actors on Apify Store under one of the following pricing models:

  • Pay per event (PPE): Users pay for specific events that are programmatically triggered from the Actor's source code. You can define these events and include actions such as generating a single result or starting an Actor. You can also choose whether to pass the platform usage costs on to users.
  • Pay per usage: Users can run the Actor without any additional charges beyond the platform usage costs generated by the Actor.

For a detailed comparison of pricing models from the perspective of your users, see Actors in Store.

Set up monetization

To set up monetization for your Actor, first complete your billing and payment details. Then, you can define the pricing for your Actor:

  1. Log in to Apify Console.
  2. In the left-side panel, go to Development > My Actors.
  3. From the table, select the Actor you want to monetize.
  4. Go to the Publication tab.
  5. In Monetization section, select Set up monetization.

The monetization setup consists of three steps:

  1. In the Actor pricing step, you can:
  2. In the Primary event step, select the event that best represents the main value of your Actor. By default, the dataset event or the only existing event is used.
  3. In the Review step, verify the final pricing for your Actor before confirming.

Publication tab in Apify Console

Change monetization

You can change the monetization setting of your Actor by using the same wizard as for the setup in the Monetization section of your Actor's Publication tab.

Most changes take effect immediately. However, major changes require a 14-day notice period and are limited to once per month to protect users.

Major changes that require 14-day notice include:

  • Changing the pricing model (e.g., from rental to pay-per-event)
  • Increasing prices
  • Adding new events

All other changes (such as decreasing prices, adjusting descriptions, or removing events) take effect immediately.

Frequency of major monetization adjustments

You can make major monetization changes to each Actor only once per month. After making a major change, you must wait until it takes effect (14 days) plus an additional period before making another major change. For further information & guidelines, please refer to the Terms & Conditions

Make your Actor eligible for agentic payments

Agentic payments let AI agents discover, run, and pay for your Actor without an Apify account, using protocols such as x402 and Skyfire. Eligible Actors are flagged with allowsAgenticUsers=true and surface in agentic discovery, for example when searching the store via API with allowsAgenticUsers=true.

To be eligible for agentic payments, your Actor must:

  • Use the pay per event pricing model. Rental and pay-per-usage Actors are not supported.
  • Run with limited permissions. Actors that request full permissions are excluded.
  • Not use Standby mode for now. Standby support is coming later.

Actors that meet these criteria become available to agentic users automatically - there is no separate opt-in.

Handle free users

When monetizing your Actor, you might want to limit features or usage for users on the Apify free plan. If you choose to do this, you must handle it transparently:

  • Communicate upfront: Clearly state any limitations in your Actor's README and input schema. Users should know about restrictions before they run the Actor.
  • Graceful exits: If a free user hits a limit, don't crash the Actor or return a system error. Instead, exit gracefully with a clear status message explaining the limit (e.g., "Free tier limit reached").
  • Avoid confusion: Never make a policy restriction look like a bug or platform error.

Actor analytics

Monitor your Actors' performance through the Actor Analytics dashboard under Development > Insights > Analytics.

The analytics dashboard allows you to select specific Actors and view key metrics aggregated across all user runs:

  • Revenue, costs and profit trends over time
  • User growth metrics (both paid and free users)
  • Cost per 1,000 results to optimize pricing
  • Run success rate statistics
  • User acquisition funnel analytics
  • Shared debug runs from users

All metrics can be exported as JSON for custom analysis and reporting.

Promote your Actor

Create search-engine-optimized descriptions and README files to improve search engine visibility. Share your Actor on multiple channels:

  • Post on Reddit, Quora, and social media platforms
  • Create tutorial videos demonstrating key features
  • Publish articles about your Actor on relevant websites
  • Consider creating a product showcase on platforms like Product Hunt

Remember to tag Apify in your social media posts for additional exposure. Effective promotion can significantly impact your Actor's success, differentiating between those with many paid users and those with few to none.

Learn more about promoting your Actor with Apify's marketing checklist.