Apify Free Plan Explained: What $5 of Monthly Credit Actually Buys
Last fact-checked: November 8, 2026
"Free" on a pricing page rarely tells you what you can actually do before the meter stops. Apify's free plan gives you $5 of platform usage per month, and that number only becomes useful once you convert it into something concrete: how long a scraper can run, and how many times.
Note on experience: we have not run production workloads on Apify. Everything below comes from Apify's own pricing page and its usage and resources documentation, both checked on November 8, 2026. The arithmetic is ours and is shown so you can check it.
1. What the free plan includes (per Apify's pricing page)
| Item | Free plan |
|---|---|
| Monthly price | $0 — "No credit card is required." |
| Included platform usage | $5 per month |
| Price per compute unit (CU) | $0.20 |
| Max memory per run | 16 GB |
| Max concurrent runs | 5 |
| Rollover | Unused credit does not roll over; it expires at the end of the billing cycle |
| When the credit runs out | Access to Apify's services is blocked until the beginning of the next monthly cycle |
The first paid tier, Starter, is listed at $19 per month ($17 per month billed annually) with $19 of included usage, the same $0.20 per CU, 64 GB max memory and 32 concurrent runs.
2. Turning dollars into run time
Apify bills Actor runs in compute units. Its documentation gives this example: running an Actor with 1024 MB of memory for 1 hour consumes 1 CU, and CUs are calculated by multiplying memory by duration. At $0.20 per CU, the $5 credit equals 25 CU.
If the whole credit went to compute, that would buy:
| Memory per run | CU per hour | Cost per hour | Hours per $5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 512 MB | 0.5 | $0.10 | 50 |
| 1024 MB | 1 | $0.20 | 25 |
| 2048 MB | 2 | $0.40 | 12.5 |
| 4096 MB | 4 | $0.80 | 6.25 |
Memory also sets CPU. Per the documentation, every 4096 MB of memory gives the Actor one full CPU core, with smaller allocations scaled proportionally (512 MB is 1/8 of a core). So the cheap option is not free of trade-offs: a 512 MB run is slower than a 4096 MB run on CPU-bound work.
3. A small calculator
Pick a memory size and how long one run takes. This is an estimate that uses only the formula above (memory × time × $0.20 per CU) and ignores everything else that can appear on a bill.
Worked examples from the same formula: a 10-minute run at 1024 MB is 1/6 CU (about $0.033), so roughly 150 runs fit in $5. A 10-minute run at 4096 MB is about 0.67 CU ($0.13), so roughly 37 runs. A 2-minute run at 512 MB is about $0.0033, so roughly 1,500 runs.
4. What this estimate leaves out
- Other line items. Apify's pricing page lists residential proxy at $8 per GB and SERPs at $2.50 per 1,000 on the free plan, and describes Store Actors priced per event, per usage, or both (one example shown is $2.30 per 1,000 results). We did not verify how these are drawn against the $5 credit, so treat the table above as a ceiling for compute alone, not a promise.
- Proxy limits. The page states that the free plan includes Apify Proxy limited to use within the platform and not for external clients.
- Third-party summaries disagree. Pricing roundups we saw in search results list different Starter prices and memory limits from each other. We used only Apify's own page; check it again before you rely on any number here, because plans change.
5. Is the free plan enough?
It is a reasonable place to find out whether Apify fits your workflow: a few hundred short test runs, or a few dozen heavier ones, fit inside the credit under the formula above. It is a poor fit if your agent needs a steady, always-on scraper, because the credit is a monthly cap and access is blocked once it is spent. If you are still deciding between a general automation hub and a scraping-specific platform, read our comparison: Make vs Apify: Which Should You Try First? To see how Apify's free offer stacks up against other web-data tools, see Free Tiers of Web-Data Tools for AI Agents, Compared.
Sources (checked November 8, 2026)
- Apify pricing — plan prices, $5 free usage, $0.20 per CU, limits, no credit card, no rollover, access blocked when exhausted
- Apify docs: usage and resources — CU example (1024 MB for 1 hour = 1 CU), memory-to-CPU ratio