Apify Common Errors

Overview

Quick diagnostic reference for the most common Apify errors. Covers Actor run failures, API errors, proxy problems, anti-bot blocks, and platform-specific issues. The full per-error catalog — raw signature, cause, diagnosis, and copy-paste fix for all ten errors — lives in references/error-reference.md; this file is the lean triage path that points you there.

Prerequisites

• An Apify API token exported as APIFY_TOKEN (Console > Settings > Integrations).
• Access to the Apify Console for reading run and build logs.
• curl and jq on PATH for the diagnostic commands below; apify CLI optional for build inspection.

Instructions

Work the failure from signal to fix:

1. Capture the exact error. Grab the Status / StatusMessage from the run, or the ApifyApiError message and HTTP code from the API response. The raw string is the key you match on.
2. Match the signature. Find the matching entry in the table below, then open references/error-reference.md at that number for the cause, diagnosis, and fix.
3. Diagnose before changing code. For run failures, pull the log via the API or Console (see the FAILED entry). For auth/rate/payload errors, the HTTP code already tells you the class — see Error Handling.
4. Apply the fix from the reference, re-run, and confirm with the diagnostic commands.

Error signature → reference

#	Error	Signature to match
1	Actor run FAILED	Status: FAILED / exited with code 1
2	Actor run TIMED-OUT	Actor timed out after N seconds
3	Rate limited	Rate limit exceeded (429)
4	Unauthorized	Authentication required (401)
5	Build failed	Build failed: npm ERR!
6	Proxy connection failed	502 Bad Gateway / Could not connect to proxy
7	Anti-bot block	status 403 / Captcha detected
8	Out of memory	JavaScript heap out of memory
9	Dataset push too large	Payload too large (413)
10	Actor not found	Actor '…' not found (404)

Full detail for every row: references/error-reference.md.

Output

Working through this skill yields:

• The identified error class (matched signature + the one of ten catalog entries).
• The root cause and a copy-paste fix (config change, code edit, or token/proxy action).
• A verification command whose output confirms the run recovered (status SUCCEEDED, valid username, etc.).

Error Handling

HTTP Code	Meaning	Retryable	Action
400	Bad request	No	Fix input/params
401	Unauthorized	No	Check token
403	Forbidden	No	Check permissions
404	Not found	No	Verify resource ID
408	Timeout	Yes	Retry with backoff
413	Payload too large	No	Reduce batch size
429	Rate limited	Yes	Auto-retried by client
500+	Server error	Yes	Auto-retried by client

Examples

Diagnostic commands for the most common triage steps:

# Check Apify platform status
curl -s https://api.apify.com/v2/health | jq '.'

# Verify your auth (fixes 401 diagnosis)
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  https://api.apify.com/v2/users/me | jq '.data.username'

# Check installed package versions
npm list apify-client apify crawlee 2>/dev/null

# Get last run status (find why a run FAILED / TIMED-OUT)
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/USER~ACTOR/runs?limit=1&desc=true" | \
  jq '.data.items[0] | {status, statusMessage, startedAt, finishedAt}'

For the worked fix behind each error — e.g. reading a run log to find a stack trace, batching dataset pushes under 9MB, or switching to residential proxies to clear a 403 — see the matching entry in references/error-reference.md.

Resources

• Apify API Error Codes
• Apify Status Page
• Actor Run Statuses
• Full error catalog (all 10, with fixes)

Next Steps

For comprehensive multi-error debugging across a whole Actor project — log correlation, proxy rotation strategy, and build-cache issues — see the apify-debug-bundle skill in this pack.