Apify Common Errors Skill

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:

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.
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.
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.
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

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. </content>

Agent Skills: Apify Common Errors

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