Dockerfile

Learn about the available Docker images you can use as a base for your Apify Actors. Choose the right base image based on your Actor's requirements and the programming language you're using.

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When developing an Actor on the Apify platform, you can choose from a variety of pre-built Docker images to serve as the base for your Actor. These base images come with pre-installed dependencies and tools, making it easier to set up your development environment and ensuring consistent behavior across different environments.

Base Docker images

Apify provides several Docker images that can serve as base images for Actors. All images come in two versions:

• latest - This version represents the stable and production-ready release of the base image.
• beta - This version is intended for testing new features. Use at your own risk.

Pre-cached Docker images

All Apify Docker images are pre-cached on Apify servers to speed up Actor builds and runs. The source code for generating these images is available in the apify-actor-docker repository.

Node.js base images

These images come with Node.js (versions 16, 18, 20, or 22) the Apify SDK for JavaScript, and Crawlee preinstalled. The latest tag corresponds to the latest LTS version of Node.js.

Image	Description
actor-node	Slim Alpine Linux image with only essential tools. Does not include headless browsers.
actor-node-puppeteer-chrome	Debian image with Chromium, Google Chrome, and the puppeteer library.
actor-node-playwright-chrome	Debian image with Chromium, Google Chrome, and the playwright library.
actor-node-playwright-firefox	Debian image with Firefox and the playwright library .
actor-node-playwright-webkit	Ubuntu image with WebKit and the playwright library.
actor-node-playwright	Ubuntu image with playwright and all its browsers (Chromium, Google Chrome, Firefox, WebKit).

See the Docker image guide for more details.

Python base images

These images come with Python (version 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, or 3.12) and the Apify SDK for Python preinstalled. The latest tag corresponds to the latest Python 3 version supported by the Apify SDK.

Image	Description
actor-python	Slim Debian image with only the Apify SDK for Python. Does not include headless browsers.
actor-python-playwright	Debian image with playwright and all its browsers.
actor-python-selenium	Debian image with selenium, Google Chrome, and ChromeDriver.

Custom Dockerfile

Apify uses Docker to build and run Actors. If you create an Actor from a template, it already contains an optimized Dockerfile for the given use case.

To use a custom Dockerfile, you can either:

• Reference it from the dockerfile field in .actor/actor.json,
• Store it in .actor/Dockerfile or Dockerfile in the root directory (searched in this order of preference).

If no Dockerfile is provided, the system uses the following default:

FROM apify/actor-node:20

COPY package*.json ./

RUN npm --quiet set progress=false \
 && npm install --only=prod --no-optional \
 && echo "Installed NPM packages:" \
 && (npm list --only=prod --no-optional --all || true) \
 && echo "Node.js version:" \
 && node --version \
 && echo "NPM version:" \
 && npm --version

COPY . ./

For more information about Dockerfile syntax and commands, see the Dockerfile reference.

Custom base images

While apify/actor-node is a base Docker image provided by Apify, you can use other Docker images as the base for your Actors.
However, using the Apify images has some performance advantages, as they are pre-caches on Apify servers.

By default, Apify base Docker images with the Apify SDK and Crawlee start your Node.js application the same way as npm start, i.e, by running the command specified in package.json under scripts - start. The default package.json is similar to:

{
    "description": "Anonymous Actor on the Apify platform",
    "version": "0.0.1",
    "license": "UNLICENSED",
    "main": "main.js",
    "scripts": {
        "start": "node main.js"
    },
    "dependencies": {
        "apify": "^3.0.0",
        "crawlee": "^3.0.0"
    },
    "repository": {}
}

This means the system expects the source code to be in main.js by default. If you want to override this behavior, use a custom package.json and/or Dockerfile.

Optimization tips

You can check out various optimization tips for Dockerfile in our Performance documentation.