Apify Store gives web scraper developers and scraping companies a chance to find new leads, customers, and a reliable source of monthly recurring revenue. It’s very similar to Apple's App Store or Google Play Store. You can publish your web scraper, set a price, and get paid when Apify users use your scraper.
How do you get paid?
You can choose either a monthly subscription (typically $20 - $50) or payment for successfully scraped results (e.g., $5 for 1000). You will see all your earnings in your personal dashboard, and we will pay you the proceeds every month.
Who pays for the infrastructure, proxies, and storage?
The most important fact is that Apify covers all the platform costs, so you will never have to pay anything to Apify for other users running your scrapers. You can’t lose money on this.
What does Apify get out of it then? When you choose the monthly subscription scheme, we will keep a 20% commission from your earnings. That’s it, no other hidden fees. We’re only making money if you’re making money.
When you choose the pay-per-result scheme, we will deduct the Apify platform costs plus a 20% commission from your profits, and again, we won’t charge you anything unless you’re actually making money with us.
How much can you earn?
The most successful Actors in Apify Store are the ones owned and operated by Apify, bringing in hundreds of thousands of USD of monthly recurring revenue. But it's not our goal to keep it that way. Ideally, we want all the best Actors to be created and maintained by our developer community, just like in any other app store.
We can't share detailed names and numbers, but at the time of writing this, in July 2023, the most successful independent creator on Apify Store makes over $4,000 monthly recurring revenue, and there are several others who make more than $1,000 every month. This has grown from around $700 for the best one and from almost nothing a year ago. That’s almost 480% year-over-year growth.
The best time to join is now because you can start capturing users and building a brand early.
What about competition between web scrapers?
Just like in the Apple App Store, Google Play, or other stores, competition between Actors is permitted. You can publish a scraper for a website even if one (or many) is already there. The only thing we penalize is copyright infringement. If someone copies elements of your Actor, such as readme, input, or output structure, we would take the infringing Actor down
Do I have to pay to test my scraper?
Just like with any other Actor run, the usage of your scraper will be deducted from your Apify credits. However, with the Creator plan, you get $500 of bonus usage to test your Actors for the price of $1/month.