The Apify $1M Challenge

Actors are a new way to package software tools to make them easy to develop, share, integrate, and build upon. They are based on Docker images, they accept a well-defined JSON input, perform an action, and optionally produce a well-defined JSON output. Actors are useful for shipping automation tools for web scraping, automation, data processing, MCP servers, AI agents, and more. See Apify Store, which contains 8,000+ Actors for all kinds of use cases.

The best Actors solve real user problems and can be plugged into an automated software workflow. Here are several types of problems that make for great Actors:

• Web scrapers and crawlers — Turn websites into an API. Most Actors on Apify Store fall into this category. Beware that scrapers for some popular services are not eligible for awards (see below).
• Open-source tools — Many automation or data processing tools on GitHub do not have a presence in the cloud. Wrap those tools into Actors and make it easy for users to try and integrate them.
• SaaS wrappers — There are thousands of SaaS APIs out there that would benefit from being wrapped as Actors to make them easy to integrate into workflows and AI apps.
• Tools for AI or MCP servers — Hundreds of MCP servers are only available as NPM packages, and these would benefit from being Actors in the cloud. Actors are secure sandboxes that can run any AI-generated code.
• Other — There are lots of other possibilities. You might create a tool to download invoices from SaaS services and email them to accounting departments. Or build a tool to send an image as a postcard to all partners via n8n or Zapier. Any easy-to-do high-frequency effort is suitable for Actorization. Be creative!

For inspiration on what to build, here's our list of ideas for new Actors. Avoid copying existing Actors, unless you can make them significantly better.

Before you start building an Actor, it's a good idea to validate that there is demand for it:

• Check Google Trends, Reddit, and Stack Overflow for people discussing the problem.
• Study competitors on Apify Store, Product Hunt, and GitHub to find gaps.
• Ask potential users if they would use (or even pay for) your solution.

Learn more in Apify Academy about selecting the right Actor idea to work on.

Yes. The following Actor types are not eligible for rewards:

• Actors using third-party software with a license that prohibits commercial use or redistribution.
• Actors that scrape the following services: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, Apollo.io, Amazon, Google Maps, Google Search, or Google Trends. Note that Actors performing non-scraping functions, such as AI agents, are eligible.
• Rental or pay-per-result (PPR) Actors. More on pricing models here.

You can find the complete list in the official Challenge Terms. Key prohibited activities include any form of fraud or metrics gaming, spamming Apify community channels to promote your Actors, and reusing old Actor code or creating duplicates just for the challenge. We regularly check for violations, and any of these may lead to immediate disqualification of not just the offending Actor, but also its developer.

Actors must meet the following technical criteria:

• A unique, legitimate, and comprehensive README.
• A defined and validated input schema or use of standby mode.
• A defined output schema.
• A minimum Actor Quality score of 65 out of 100.

You can find tutorials and examples in the Apify Academy. We have also prepared a whole playlist of creator videos that you can view here.

Yes, we have a guide for building Actors with AI.

Just remember that you must make sure the resulting Actor meets the quality criteria to be eligible for rewards.

The first five (5) Actors you publish after registration are automatically entered into the challenge. Only these five Actors are eligible for any rewards. This rule is in place to encourage quality over quantity and to prevent spamming with low-quality Actors.

No, Actors published before the start of the challenge (November 3, 2025) are not eligible for any rewards.

You can participate both as an individual or as a team. If your email is linked to both personal and organization accounts, your organization account is registered by default. In all other cases, your personal account is registered. To change which account is registered, contact support@apify.com.

All prize payouts require you to successfully complete Apify's Know Your Customer (KYC) verification and provide complete payment data. The grand prize and weekly spotlight prizes will be paid out in a timely manner right after their announcement, while prizes from the $1M pool will be paid out after the challenge concludes, during February and March 2026.

A monthly active user is a user who ran your Actor within the 30 days immediately preceding the calculation date. This activity only counts if it occurred on or after the eighth (8th) day following that user's signup date.

Apify internal accounts, test accounts, and users blocked by Apify are excluded from this definition. For prize evaluation, we will use data from a system snapshot as of the challenge end date (January 31, 2026).

Note that both free users and customers are considered active users.

The $1M prize pool is a maximum payout, not a guaranteed total. On January 31, 2026, a final usage snapshot will be taken. We will create a list of all submitted Actors that meet all challenge requirements, ranked by the highest number of monthly active users. Payouts will be distributed sequentially, starting with the highest-ranked Actor on the list, and continuing down the list until the total distributed rewards reach the Challenge Bonus Pool of $920,000. Once the Challenge Bonus Pool is depleted, no further Actors will receive this reward, regardless of their monthly active user count.

The reward per monthly active user is evaluated only at the end of the challenge based on a snapshot of monthly active user data. It is not a recurring monthly reward.

Yes, all proceeds from rewards must be properly taxed. In the case of a withholding tax obligation, we will deduct the appropriate amount from the payout.

This will vary greatly based on your Actor's type and its target community or customers, but you should consult this marketing checklist to help you get started.

The weekly spotlight winner will be selected from a shortlist of Actors that meet all required technical criteria at that time. The final winner will be chosen by either a community vote, an industry expert pick, or a jury panel. The first weekly spotlight prize will be awarded in the week of November 17.

The grand prize is awarded to the developer who demonstrates the highest overall success in the challenge. The judging panel will evaluate developers based on several criteria: they must have at least one published Actor eligible for a per-user reward payout; the cumulative number of monthly active users across all of their eligible Actors; the average Actor Quality Score and technical excellence demonstrated across their portfolio; and the novelty, usefulness, and real-world problem-solving value their Actors provide. To encourage newcomers, the panel will also give favorable consideration to developers with lower total prior payouts.

Yes! Hundreds of developers earn regular passive income from their Actors published on Apify Store. In September 2025 alone, we paid out more than $560K to our community creators, 6x higher than the year before. To make money from your Actors, you have two options:

• Add pay-per-event monetization to the Actor
• Enroll in Apify's open source fair share program and earn affiliate revenue from open-source Actors

This clause is a standard legal protection, and we have no plans to change or cancel the challenge. We would only invoke this as a last resort in extreme, unforeseen circumstances, such as widespread fraudulent or scammy activity that compromises the integrity of the competition. In that highly unlikely event, we would honor all prizes that were officially awarded before the cancellation or change date.

You can email support@apify.com with your questions or join the Apify & Crawlee Discord server to get support from the Apify team and Creator community.

We'll be running regular office hours and other online events on Discord. Join the challenge-specific announcement channel to find out more.