Synthetic start event for PPE actor: First 5 seconds of compute cost covered by Apify?

When reading the developer documentation it is mentioned that Apify will cover the compute unit cost of the first 5 seconds of every Actor run when you use the apify-actor-start event. Link: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/publishing/monetize/pay-per-event?fpr=7p4wu#use-synthetic-start-event-apify-actor-start

Is it then correct to assume that Apify won't cover the compute unit cost of the first 5 seconds of every Actor run if we don't use the apify-actor-start event in our PPE actor?

I'm asking this, because there was some confusion about this in the last Creator Cantina call. @Saurav Jain recommended not to charge a start event to be more competitive as we get the first 5 seconds for free. But as far as I understand it, we only get the first 5 seconds for free if we charge the apify-actor-start event.

Can we get some clarification on this?
Learn how to monetize your Actor with pay-per-event (PPE) pricing, charging users for specific actions like Actor starts, dataset items, or API calls, and understand how to set profitable, transparent event-based pricing.
Was this page helpful?