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We are Launching Pay-Per-Result Pricing on 7 Web Scraping APIs on April 17

#webdev #python #tutorial #news

We have been building web scrapers on Apify for a while now, and one thing kept bothering us: traditional SaaS pricing for data tools just does not make sense for most use cases.

You pay a monthly subscription. Some months you scrape a lot. Some months you barely touch it. Either way, you pay the same. And when your scraper hits a rate limit or a page returns empty — you still paid for that failed request.

So we decided to fix that.

What We Are Launching

On April 17, we are switching 7 of our web scraping actors to pay-per-result (PPE) pricing. You pay $0.005 per result — and only when you actually get data back.

No monthly subscription. No "credits" that expire. No paying for failed requests or empty pages. If the actor returns 1,000 results, you pay $5. If it returns zero, you pay nothing.

The 7 Actors

Here is what is launching on April 17:

Actor Platform Use Cases
Twitter/X Scraper Twitter/X Trend monitoring, sentiment analysis, brand tracking
Facebook Ads Scraper Facebook Competitor ad research, creative inspiration
Reddit Scraper Reddit Community insights, topic research, lead discovery
Etsy Scraper Etsy Product research, pricing intelligence, trend spotting
Instagram Scraper Instagram Influencer research, content monitoring
LinkedIn Profile Scraper LinkedIn Lead generation, talent sourcing
Amazon Scraper Amazon Price tracking, product research, review analysis

Seven platforms. One pricing model. $0.005 per result across all of them.

Why This Pricing Model Is Better

The standard model for data tools is: pay upfront, hope you use enough to justify the cost. It creates weird incentives — you feel pressure to over-scrape just to get your money's worth, or you under-use an expensive tool because the ROI is uncertain.

PPE flips that. You run what you need. You pay for what you get. For one-off research projects, small automations, or teams that scrape irregularly, this is a much better deal.

At $0.005 per result:

  • 1,000 results = $5
  • 10,000 results = $50
  • 100,000 results = $500

You know your cost before you run. No surprises.

No Infrastructure Needed

All 7 actors run on the Apify platform, which means:

  • No servers to spin up
  • No proxies to manage
  • No rate limit logic to write
  • No maintenance on your end

You call the API, you get data. That is it.

Quick Start Example

Here is how to use the Reddit scraper in Python — the same pattern works for all 7 actors:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

# Example: Scrape Reddit posts
run = client.actor("cryptosignals/reddit-scraper").call(
    run_input={"subreddits": ["python", "datascience"], "maxItems": 100}
)

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["title"], item["score"])
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Install the client with pip install apify-client, grab a free API token from Apify, and you are collecting data in under 5 minutes.

What About Free Tier?

Apify gives every new account $5 in free platform credits. That is 1,000 results across any of our actors — enough to test your use case before committing anything.

Sign up here and try any of the 7 actors before April 17. The PPE pricing will be live across all of them on launch day.

The Actors, Again

Bookmark these or star them on Apify before the 17th:

We are excited about this launch. Fair pricing for data access — you pay for results, not promises. See you on April 17.

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