Apify Performance Tuning

Overview

Optimize Apify Actors for speed, cost, and reliability. Covers Crawlee concurrency settings, memory profiling, proxy rotation strategies, request batching, and crawler selection for different workloads.

Prerequisites

• Existing Actor with measurable baseline performance
• Understanding of apify-sdk-patterns
• Access to Actor run stats in Apify Console

Performance Baseline

Measure before optimizing. Key metrics from run stats:

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.run('RUN_ID').get();

console.log({
  totalDurationSecs: run.stats?.runTimeSecs,
  pagesPerMinute: (run.stats?.requestsFinished ?? 0) / ((run.stats?.runTimeSecs ?? 1) / 60),
  failedRequests: run.stats?.requestsFailed,
  retryRequests: run.stats?.requestsRetries,
  memoryAvgMb: run.stats?.memAvgBytes ? run.stats.memAvgBytes / 1e6 : null,
  memoryMaxMb: run.stats?.memMaxBytes ? run.stats.memMaxBytes / 1e6 : null,
  computeUnits: run.usage?.ACTOR_COMPUTE_UNITS,
  costUsd: run.usageTotalUsd,
});

Instructions

Step 1: Choose the Right Crawler

Crawler	Speed	JS Rendering	Memory	Use When
CheerioCrawler	Very fast	No	Low (~50MB)	Static HTML, SSR pages
PlaywrightCrawler	Moderate	Yes	High (~200MB/page)	SPAs, dynamic content
PuppeteerCrawler	Moderate	Yes	High (~200MB/page)	Chromium-specific needs
HttpCrawler	Fastest	No	Minimal	APIs, JSON endpoints

// Switch from Playwright to Cheerio for 5-10x speed improvement
// (if pages don't require JavaScript rendering)
import { CheerioCrawler } from 'crawlee';

const crawler = new CheerioCrawler({
  // Cheerio parses HTML without launching a browser
  requestHandler: async ({ $, request }) => {
    const title = $('title').text();
    await Actor.pushData({ url: request.url, title });
  },
});

Step 2: Tune Concurrency

const crawler = new CheerioCrawler({
  // --- Concurrency controls ---
  minConcurrency: 1,        // Start with 1 parallel request
  maxConcurrency: 50,       // Scale up to 50 (CheerioCrawler can handle more)

  // For PlaywrightCrawler, use lower values (each page = ~200MB)
  // maxConcurrency: 5,

  // Auto-scaling pool adjusts between min and max based on system load
  autoscaledPoolOptions: {
    desiredConcurrency: 10,
    scaleUpStepRatio: 0.05,   // Increase concurrency 5% at a time
    scaleDownStepRatio: 0.05,
    maybeRunIntervalSecs: 5,
  },

  // Rate limiting (protect target site)
  maxRequestsPerMinute: 300,  // Hard cap
});

Step 3: Optimize Memory

// CheerioCrawler memory optimization
const crawler = new CheerioCrawler({
  // Don't keep full HTML in memory
  requestHandlerTimeoutSecs: 30,

  // Process and discard — don't accumulate
  requestHandler: async ({ $, request }) => {
    // Extract only what you need
    const data = {
      url: request.url,
      title: $('title').text().trim(),
      price: parseFloat($('.price').text().replace(/[^0-9.]/g, '')),
    };

    // Push immediately (don't collect in array)
    await Actor.pushData(data);
  },
});

// PlaywrightCrawler memory optimization
const playwrightCrawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
  maxConcurrency: 3,  // Key: fewer concurrent browsers

  launchContext: {
    launchOptions: {
      headless: true,
      args: [
        '--disable-gpu',
        '--disable-dev-shm-usage',
        '--no-sandbox',
        '--disable-extensions',
      ],
    },
  },

  preNavigationHooks: [
    async ({ page }) => {
      // Block heavy resources to save memory and bandwidth
      await page.route('**/*.{png,jpg,jpeg,gif,svg,webp,ico}', route => route.abort());
      await page.route('**/*.{css,woff,woff2,ttf}', route => route.abort());
      await page.route('**/analytics*', route => route.abort());
      await page.route('**/tracking*', route => route.abort());
    },
  ],

  postNavigationHooks: [
    async ({ page }) => {
      // Close unnecessary page resources
      await page.evaluate(() => {
        window.stop();  // Stop loading remaining resources
      });
    },
  ],
});

Step 4: Memory Allocation Strategy

Actor memory affects both performance and cost:

CU = (Memory in GB) x (Duration in hours)
CU cost = $0.25 - $0.30 per CU (plan-dependent)

Actor Type	Recommended Memory	Reasoning
CheerioCrawler (simple)	256-512 MB	HTML parsing is lightweight
CheerioCrawler (complex)	512-1024 MB	Large pages, many concurrent
PlaywrightCrawler	2048-4096 MB	Each browser page ~200MB
Data processing	1024-2048 MB	In-memory transforms

// Start low, let the platform auto-scale if needed
const run = await client.actor('user/actor').call(input, {
  memory: 512,    // Start here for Cheerio
  timeout: 3600,  // 1 hour max
});

Step 5: Proxy Rotation for Speed and Reliability

import { Actor } from 'apify';

// Datacenter proxy (fast, cheap, may be blocked)
const dcProxy = await Actor.createProxyConfiguration({
  groups: ['BUYPROXIES94952'],
});

// Residential proxy (slower, expensive, higher success rate)
const resProxy = await Actor.createProxyConfiguration({
  groups: ['RESIDENTIAL'],
  countryCode: 'US',
});

// Smart rotation: try datacenter first, fall back to residential
const crawler = new CheerioCrawler({
  proxyConfiguration: dcProxy,  // Start with fast proxy

  async failedRequestHandler({ request }, error) {
    if (error.message.includes('403') || error.message.includes('blocked')) {
      // Re-enqueue with residential proxy
      request.userData.useResidential = true;
      await crawler.requestQueue.addRequest(request, { forefront: true });
    }
  },

  async requestHandler({ request, session, ...ctx }) {
    if (request.userData.useResidential) {
      // Switch proxy for this request
      session?.retire();  // Force new IP
    }
    // ... extraction logic
  },
});

Step 6: Request-Level Optimizations

const crawler = new CheerioCrawler({
  // Retry configuration
  maxRequestRetries: 3,           // Default: 3
  requestHandlerTimeoutSecs: 30,  // Kill slow pages

  // Navigation settings (CheerioCrawler-specific)
  additionalMimeTypes: ['application/json'],  // Accept JSON responses
  suggestResponseEncoding: 'utf-8',

  // Session pool (IP rotation and ban detection)
  useSessionPool: true,
  sessionPoolOptions: {
    maxPoolSize: 100,                    // Sessions in pool
    sessionOptions: {
      maxUsageCount: 50,                 // Requests per session
      maxErrorScore: 3,                  // Errors before retiring session
    },
  },

  // Pre-navigation hooks for request modification
  preNavigationHooks: [
    async ({ request }) => {
      // Add headers that help avoid blocks
      request.headers = {
        ...request.headers,
        'Accept-Language': 'en-US,en;q=0.9',
        'Accept': 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml',
      };
    },
  ],
});

Performance Monitoring in Actors

import { Actor } from 'apify';
import { log } from 'crawlee';

// Log performance metrics during the crawl
let processedCount = 0;
const startTime = Date.now();

const crawler = new CheerioCrawler({
  requestHandler: async ({ request, $ }) => {
    processedCount++;

    if (processedCount % 100 === 0) {
      const elapsed = (Date.now() - startTime) / 1000;
      const rate = processedCount / (elapsed / 60);
      log.info(`Progress: ${processedCount} pages | ${rate.toFixed(1)} pages/min`);
    }

    await Actor.pushData({
      url: request.url,
      title: $('title').text().trim(),
    });
  },
});

Performance Comparison

Optimization	Before	After	Impact
Cheerio instead of Playwright	3 pages/min	30 pages/min	10x speed
Block images/CSS	5 pages/min	12 pages/min	2.4x speed
Increase concurrency	5 pages/min	25 pages/min	5x speed
Reduce memory 4GB to 512MB	$0.04/run	$0.005/run	8x cost savings
Batch dataset pushes	1000 API calls	1 API call	Eliminates rate limits

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
Out of memory crash	Too many concurrent browsers	Reduce maxConcurrency
Slow crawl speed	Low concurrency	Increase maxConcurrency
High failure rate	Anti-bot blocking	Add proxy, reduce concurrency
Expensive runs	Over-provisioned memory	Profile and reduce allocation
Stalled crawl	Request handler timeout	Set requestHandlerTimeoutSecs

Resources

• Crawlee Performance Guide
• Actor Memory & Performance
• Proxy Management

Next Steps

For cost optimization, see apify-cost-tuning.