# Apify

Collect posts, profiles and pages with Apify scrapers

Запуск actor'ов Apify и выгрузка датасетов — парсинг публичных страниц и соцсетей

## How the agent works with Apify

The agent does not write a scraper of its own, it runs a ready-made actor from the Apify Store: an actor has a name like apify~instagram-hashtag-scraper and an input — JSON with hashtags, accounts and a result limit. Short jobs go synchronously: a single request waits up to 300 seconds and returns the collected items in the response. Long ones go asynchronously: the agent starts a run, polls its status and, once it reaches SUCCEEDED, pulls the dataset by defaultDatasetId.

A run goes through the statuses READY → RUNNING → SUCCEEDED, FAILED or ABORTED, and the agent reads not only the result but the log: it shows whether the scraper hit a site's protection, returned an empty result or died on a bad input. A stuck run it aborts so that it stops burning compute units, and instead of polling the status forever it can register a webhook on completion and take the data once it fires.

Through Apify the agent reads public data — the same thing a logged-out visitor sees on the page: posts, Reels and videos by hashtag, feeds and profiles of accounts, search results, cards from directories and maps. Publishing a post, leaving a like or messaging someone else's account through Apify is not possible: the platform only collects. The one thing that does change is your own Apify account: every run creates a run and a dataset and spends plan credits.

Usage is counted both by the platform and by the actor itself. The platform part is in compute units: 1 CU is 1 GB of memory for one hour, costing $0.2 per CU on the free plan and Starter, while the free plan gives $5 of usage a month with no card, 25 concurrent runs and up to 16 GB of memory per run. Some Store actors charge their own price per result on top, so a large collection is sized by its result count up front rather than launched blind. The dataset is pulled right after the run: on the free plan only the 10 most recent runs are kept, and only for 4 months.

## Integration scenarios

### Collect by hashtag
The agent runs an Instagram or TikTok scraper on the hashtags you need and returns posts and Reels with author, date, views and likes.

### Go through competitor accounts
The agent collects the latest posts of the accounts you pick, sorts them by popularity and shows what works for the competitor.

### Pick out viral content
The agent filters the results by like count and date window — for example, videos on a topic from the last 30 days with more than 10,000 likes.

### Re-run a saved task
The agent runs a task saved in Apify with the scraper already configured and pulls a fresh dataset — no need to set the parameters again.

### Run a long collection unattended
The agent starts a large run asynchronously, hangs a webhook on completion and pulls the dataset by defaultDatasetId as soon as the status reaches SUCCEEDED.

### Look into a failed run
The agent opens the run log and shows what the scraper hit — site protection, an empty result or a bad input — and aborts a stuck run so it stops burning credits.

## How to connect

**Before you connect**

- An Apify account and a personal API token from Settings → API & Integrations
- The free plan gives $5 of usage a month with no card
- A paid plan from $29 a month for long runs and large result sets

### Sign up at console.apify.com
The free plan gives $5 of usage a month with no card, 25 concurrent runs and up to 16 GB of memory per run. A card is only needed for long, large collections.

### Open Settings → «API & Integrations»
That account settings section is where the personal token is created. There is one token per account, and it carries the same rights over runs and datasets you have.

### Copy the personal API token in full
The value is hidden and reveals on click. Copy the string with no spaces at the edges — one extra character gives an unauthorized error.

### Find the actor you need in Apify Store
The agent runs a ready-made scraper by a name like apify~instagram-hashtag-scraper. Open Apify Store and note the name of the actor you need.

## FAQ

### How do I connect Apify?
With a personal API token from the console.apify.com console: the Settings → API & Integrations section, where it is also created. Copy the whole string with no spaces at the edges — one extra character gives an unauthorized error.

### What does the agent see through Apify?
Whatever the actor it ran collected: public posts, videos, profiles and pages. Plus the housekeeping side of your account — run statuses and logs, dataset contents and the remaining plan limits.

### Does the agent write anywhere?
Not to social networks or websites: publishing a post, leaving a comment or sending a message through Apify is not possible. Records appear only inside your Apify account — actor runs, their datasets and, if needed, a webhook on run completion.

### What about cost and limits?
The free plan gives $5 of usage a month with no card, 25 concurrent runs and up to 16 GB of memory per run; a compute unit is 1 GB of memory for one hour, at $0.2 per CU on the free plan and Starter. A synchronous run waits for the result no longer than 300 seconds: anything longer the agent runs asynchronously with status polling.

[Open Apify](https://console.apify.com)