PPE Test Actor

This actor is designed for property data scraping and quota-based usage testing on the Apify platform. It demonstrates how usage-based charging and multipliers work for item scraping scenarios.

📥 Input Parameters

• recordsToPush (integer, required)
  • Number of random items to push to the Apify dataset. This simulates the number of items processed in a run.
• addAdditioanalUsageFull (boolean, optional)
  • If enabled, simulates scraping full property details. Increases your usage multiplier by 1x, causing your quota to be used up faster.
• addAdditioanalUsageHalf (boolean, optional)
  • If enabled, simulates scraping nearest schools. Increases your usage multiplier by 0.5x, causing your quota to be used up faster.

💸 Understanding the Pricing

This actor uses a transparent and predictable pricing model based on two main events:

1️⃣ Monthly Subscription

• 💲 Price: $1 USD per <1,000 items
• 📦 Included Usage: Up to <1,000 items scraped per month
• 🟢 Platform Usage Included: The $1 subscription now includes all Apify platform usage costs for this actor—no separate Apify platform charges apply for your scraping runs.
• When you start using the actor, a monthly subscription event is triggered and you are billed $1. This covers your first 1,000 items scraped in that month, including all platform usage.

2️⃣ Over-usage Charges

• 💲 Price: $0.10 USD per additional 100 items
• 🔄 How it works: If you exceed the 1,000 items included in your monthly subscription, you will be billed $0.10 for every additional 100 items scraped. This ensures you only pay for what you use beyond your included quota.

📊 Example:

• If you scrape 2,000 items in a month, you will pay $1 for the subscription and $1 for the extra 1,000 items (10 x $0.10), for a total of $2.

⚡ Additional Usage Parameters (Multipliers)

The actor may apply additional usage multipliers based on your input settings. These do not directly charge you extra, but they affect how quickly you use up your monthly quota. The more features you enable, the faster your included usage is consumed.

• 🌐 Residential Proxy Usage: If you use a residential proxy, an additional 1x usage multiplier will apply. This is due to the higher cost and complexity of residential proxy traffic.
• 🧠 Memory Usage: If you run the actor with more than 256 MB of memory, you will be charged an additional usage multiplier. For example, running at 512 MB will double your usage cost.
• 🏷️ Full Property Details: Enabling addAdditioanalUsageFull will increase your usage multiplier by 1x, as it requires scraping more data per property.
• 🏫 Include Nearest Schools: Enabling addAdditioanalUsageHalf adds 0.5x to your usage multiplier.

These multipliers are cumulative. For example, if you enable both addAdditioanalUsageFull and addAdditioanalUsageHalf, your usage for each property will be multiplied by 1.5x.

🧮 How Multipliers Affect Your Quota

• Multipliers do not bill you directly. Instead, they reduce the number of items you can scrape before hitting your monthly quota.
• Example:
  • If you scrape with default settings (no multipliers), you can scrape 1,000 items before any over-usage charge applies.
  • If you enable addAdditioanalUsageFull (1x additional), your usage is burned at double rate, so you can scrape 500 items before any over-usage charge applies.
  • If you enable both addAdditioanalUsageFull and addAdditioanalUsageHalf (1x + 0.5x = 1.5x), you can scrape 400 items before hitting your quota.

🚨 When Do Over-usage Charges Apply?

• Over-usage charges ($0.10 per 100 items) are only billed when your monthly quota is exceeded.
• Additional usage multipliers do not result in extra charges—they simply cause your quota to be used up faster.

💡 Tip: For best cost efficiency, run this actor on 256 MB memory. The actor is highly optimized for this setting, and using more memory will increase your additional usage charges. Only increase memory if you have a specific need.

📝 How Charging Logic Works

• Subscription and over-usage checks are handled in src/check-subscription.js.
• Additional usage multipliers are calculated in src/additional-charges.js.
• Usage is tracked and charged as you push items using src/push-data.js.

See the code for more details on how these mechanisms work.