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Development

Read about the technical part of building Apify Actors. Learn to define Actor inputs, build new versions, persist Actor state, and choose base Docker images.

This section will guide you through the whole story of Actor development.

You can follow chapters sequentially from Quick start, where you learn how to create your first Actor in just a few minutes, through the more technical sections describing the whole Actor model, up to the Performance section, where you learn how to fine-tune your Actor to get the most out of the Apify platform.

Quick start

Create your first Actor using Apify Console IDE or locally.

Actor definition

Learn how to turn your arbitrary code into an Actor simply by adding an Actor definition directory.

Programming interface

Learn about the programming interface of Apify Actors, important commands and features provided by the Apify SDK, and how to use them in your Actors.

Deployment

Learn how to deploy your Actors to the Apify platform and build them.

Builds and runs

Learn about Actor builds and runs, their lifecycle, versioning, and other properties.

Performance

Learn how to get the maximum value out of your Actors, minimize costs, and maximize results.

If your Actor allows for integration with external services, or performs some post-processing of datasets generated by other Actors, check out the section integration-ready Actors.

After your development, you can jump to the section Publishing and monetization to learn about how to publish your Actor in Apify Store and monetize it by renting it out to users of the platform.