The Apify $1M Challenge

For three months, developers all over the world competed to build the best Actors on the Apify platform. The results are in. See who won, what they built, and how the community came together.

See the winners

For three months, developers all over the world competed to build the best Actors on the Apify platform. The results are in. See who won, what they built, and how the community came together.

Challenge overview Grand prize winners Special recognition Regional prizes Weekly spotlight prize winners Browse Actors

Challenge overview

AI needs infrastructure that doesn't exist yet, and from November 2025 to January 2026, developers stepped up to build it on Apify. Thank you to the 704 developers from all over the world who took part, publishing 3,329 Actors, resulting in 1,086 that fulfilled the qualifying conditions. These Actors, including web scrapers, MCP servers, automation workflows, and AI agent tools, are now live on Apify Store.

Grand prize winners

The top three participants were chosen by a jury based on overall success: monthly active users, Actor quality, technical excellence, and real-world usefulness.

First place

$30,000

Second place

$20,000

Third place

$10,000

Special recognition

In addition to the grand prize, we wanted to recognize developers who stood out in specific ways.

Regional prizes

While selecting grand prize winners, the jury noticed that the top Actors came from an impressively broad geographic spread. Here are the regional standouts.

Weekly spotlight prize winners

Each week, the community, a jury, or industry expert awarded $2,000 to an Actor that stood out for its code quality, concept, or user experience. Here are all the winners.