The Apify $1M Challenge Hackathon
💥 Join the Apify $1M Challenge Hackathon! This is your chance to build, deploy, and monetize Actors—serverless cloud programs for web data extraction and automation. The $1M Challenge rewards published Actors with a $1,000,000 prize pool and a clear path to recurring passive income. Form a team or work solo and start building your monetizable tool today!
➡️ What to expect
Hands-on hacking with Apify
Workshop and real-world use cases
Networking
Money and credit prizes, demos, and lots of swag for everyone!
💡 Not sure what Actor to build and how?
Here are some ideas, and here is how to find some more.
Building Actors is easy, you can do it in Node.js, Python, or even shell scripts. Here's a quick start, including instructions on how to use AI coding tools.
🏆 Win $10k in prizes on the spot
Best project overall: $3,000 cash + $2,000 Apify credits
Best AI tool or agent: $2,000 cash + $1,000 Apify credits
Best idea: $1,000 cash + $1,000 Apify credits
+ shot at more prizes as part of the Apify $1M Challenge
📝 Jury and mentors
Jan Čurn [CEO, Apify], Conor Kelly [PMM, Anthropic], Nandini Singh [Sr. Tech PM, Google], Ruggiero Dargenio [Founder, Duenders] Anubhav Sharma, [Head of Agentic AI, Jeeva AI], Luca Stirbat [CEO, ReaktorX], Muhammed Adeem Shaik, [Software Engineer, TikTok], Kalyan Inturi, [Principal member of Technical Staff, Oracle], Saraswati Mishra, [Sr. Software Engineer, SoundHound], Kamal Kishore, [Sr. Software Engineer, Google]
Agenda (9:00 AM –7:30 PM)
9:00 AM – Doors open and breakfast
10:00 AM – Team finalizing
10:20 AM – Apify fundamentals, Apify $1M challenge details, judging criteria & inspiration for projects
11:00 AM – Actor building workshop with Patrick [optional]
11:30 AM – Start hacking!
1:00 PM – Lunch
1:30 PM – Expert office hours [optional]
5:00 PM – Finish hacking & submit projects
5:10 PM - Dinner time
5:30 PM – Project demos (finalists pitch live!)
7:00 PM – Demo wrap-up and time for judging
7:30 PM – Winner announcement! 🏆
About Apify
Apify is the world's largest marketplace for tools that enable web scraping, data extraction, and AI agents. It allows you to get up-to-date data from social media sites, search engines, online maps, or any other website.
On the Apify platform, developers can build their own tools (called Actors), then publish and monetize them. It’s trusted by enterprises like Siemens, Intercom, Groupon, and Microsoft, as well as 25,000+ customers around the world.
Join the Apify $1M Challenge, open until January 31, 2026 → apify.com/challenge