Pay per result vs. monthly vs. "free" confusion
My example use case: I want to track 1000 TikTok profiles over time. So, let's say, once, a week, i want to scrape 1000 profiles page and their each most recent video. I set up Apify, and it seems to work well. But i have three different options and I'm not certain how the cost works out for each. For my example, I took 100 random profiles and gave it to each of these actors. Each returns 89 results, asking for one video per profile. (the other 11 I assume were broken / private / bad links, that's fine)
(1) TikTok Scraper Actor: https://console.apify.com/actors/GdWCkxBtKWOsKjdch/information/latest/readme - for $49/mo. Scraping 100 example profiles with 89 results cost me $0.439, ~ 0.50 cent per result, above the $49/month(?) as well. So crawling 4000 profiles a month would cost me $49 + $20 = $69 a month.
(2) TikTok Profile Scraper Actor: https://console.apify.com/actors/0FXVyOXXEmdGcV88a/information/latest/readme - for $5 / 1000 videos (0.50 cent per video). This does end up charging me 0.50c/result. This would cost me $20 a month.
(3) Free TikTok Scraper Actor: https://console.apify.com/actors/OtzYfK1ndEGdwWFKQ/information/latest/readme - for (free?), cost me $0.379. , 0.43 cent per result. this would cost me $17.20 a month.
My question is, why would i use (1) , when it'll cost me $49/mo + 0.50 cents per result, when I can use (2) or (3)? And also, what makes (3) "free"? I'm still being charged a fee per result. What am i missing?
(1) TikTok Scraper Actor: https://console.apify.com/actors/GdWCkxBtKWOsKjdch/information/latest/readme - for $49/mo. Scraping 100 example profiles with 89 results cost me $0.439, ~ 0.50 cent per result, above the $49/month(?) as well. So crawling 4000 profiles a month would cost me $49 + $20 = $69 a month.
(2) TikTok Profile Scraper Actor: https://console.apify.com/actors/0FXVyOXXEmdGcV88a/information/latest/readme - for $5 / 1000 videos (0.50 cent per video). This does end up charging me 0.50c/result. This would cost me $20 a month.
(3) Free TikTok Scraper Actor: https://console.apify.com/actors/OtzYfK1ndEGdwWFKQ/information/latest/readme - for (free?), cost me $0.379. , 0.43 cent per result. this would cost me $17.20 a month.
My question is, why would i use (1) , when it'll cost me $49/mo + 0.50 cents per result, when I can use (2) or (3)? And also, what makes (3) "free"? I'm still being charged a fee per result. What am i missing?
