{
  "id": 5861642,
  "title": "I measured what my 11 Actors cost to run. The 96x spread was mostly one config field.",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/05/i-measured-what-my-11-actors-cost-to-run-the-96x-spread-was-mostly",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-05T23:23:04.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/apify/i-measured-what-my-11-actors-cost-to-run-the-96x-spread-was-mostly-one-config-field-hoj"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "I measured the costs of running 11 Actors on a platform. The results showed a 96 times spread, primarily due to one configuration field. The source material highlights the costs per 1,000 rows for various jobs and mentions that the most expensive Actor, despite being free, had 8 times more RAM than the others. The investigation revealed that the high cost was due to memory usage rather than the Actor's code. Upon testing with different memory settings, the throughput remained the same, showing that the RAM cost was not being utilized. The corrected ranking of Actors based on cost and rows per second is provided, with the free Actor now in the middle of the spread. The article emphasizes that the initial story was well-supported but incorrect, and that a single derived number can give a confidently wrong ranking if not properly checked.",
  "summary": "I wrote this article twice. The first version was finished, proofread, and queued to publish. Then someone asked a question about one number in it, and the thesis came apart. I am publishing the second version, along with the part where I was wrong, because the mistake turned out to be more useful than the article I meant to write. What I set out to do Pay-per-event pricing asks you to name a…",
  "key_points": [
    "I measured costs for running 11 Actors on a platform",
    "96x cost spread mainly due to one configuration field",
    "Free Actor ranked middle after cost and throughput analysis"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}