Zameen Scraper: Pakistan Property Listing Alerts

Watch a city, get only what's new. This actor runs against Zameen.com's own search-results pages — Pakistan's largest property portal — and returns one clean row per listing: price, rooms, baths, area, agency, and a permanent link. Turn on monitoring and it becomes a watchlist: new listings and price drops since your last run, charged per new row, free on quiet days. Schedule it hourly and send the results to Discord, Slack, Google Sheets, or n8n.

Who it's for

A property agent or investor watching a city for freshly listed houses before anyone else sees them, a renter tracking price drops on apartments in a specific area, or a research team pricing a neighbourhood gets a live feed of what's actually on Zameen right now, without refreshing the site by hand. The current Store leader for Zameen has 93 lifetime users and a 5-star rating but no monitoring mode at all — three independent Zameen scrapers exist on GitHub, none of them alerting.

This actor is Zameen's member of the same EMPG/Dubizzle-Group platform family as olx-pakistan-listing-lookup and dubizzle-egypt-listing-lookup in this catalogue — all three server-render the identical underlying search-result JSON, so the same monitoring model works the same way on each.

Why this one

• Monitoring first, not a one-off dump. Turn on "Only return results that are new, or dropped in price" and this actor becomes a watchlist: it remembers every listing ID it has already shown you, and only bills you for what's actually new or has dropped in price since the last run.
• Reads Zameen's own server-rendered listing data — the same JSON its search pages embed for every visitor, not text scraped off rendered HTML — so price, rooms, baths, area, and agency are exact, typed values.
• Never charged for a miss, or a quiet monitoring run. A search that finds nothing, or a scheduled watchlist run where nothing changed, still gets a row explaining what happened — and costs nothing.
• Property-specific fields a generic classifieds actor wouldn't have. Rooms, bathrooms, floor area, purpose (for sale / for rent), and the listing agency's business name.
• Business-only seller identity, by design. Zameen listings carry a real phone number directly in the search payload — this actor never reads it, not even to redact it. You get an anonymous seller hash and the agency's public business name, never a phone number.

What you get

One row per listing by default (turn off "Expand rows" in Advanced to get one row per search instead, with the listings nested under listings).

query	found	status	searchQuery	listingCount	totalAvailable	truncated	newCount	priceDropCount	monitorStatus	listings	listingId	title	price	currency	purpose	postedAt	updatedAt	city	area	category	rooms	baths	areaSqm	agencyName	isVerified	isFeatured	imageUrl	photoCount	changeType	isNew	previousPrice	priceDropPct	firstSeenAt	url	scrapedAt
Lahore	true	OK							<monitoring status (quiet / seeded runs)>	<all listings found (full list)>			<price (pkr)>						<area / neighbourhood>		<rooms / bedrooms>		<area (sq. meters)>	<listing agency (business name)>		<is this a featured/boosted ad?>			<new / price-drop / seen>	<is this listing new?>	<previous price (pkr)>	<price drop %>			1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Field	Type	Description
query	text	The location you submitted, echoed back
found	boolean	true if Zameen returned a real search-results page for this location
status	text	OK on a match; NOT_FOUND, BLOCKED, or BAD_FORMAT on a miss
message	text	Plain-English reason for a miss — only present when found is false
searchQuery	text	The location actually searched
listingCount	number	Listings returned and billed for this search
totalAvailable	number	Total listings Zameen reports matching this search, including ones not returned
truncated	boolean	true if more results existed than were returned
newCount	number	New listings this run (monitoring only)
priceDropCount	number	Price drops this run (monitoring only)
monitorStatus	text	NO_NEW_ROWS on a quiet monitoring run, WATCHLIST_SEEDED on a silent first run, otherwise empty
listingId	text	Zameen's own numeric listing ID
title	text	Listing title
price	number	Price in PKR
currency	text	Always PKR
purpose	text	for-sale or for-rent
postedAt	date	When the ad was first posted
updatedAt	date	When the ad was last bumped or edited
city	text	City, from Zameen's own location hierarchy
area	text	Neighbourhood / area, when Zameen's hierarchy has one
category	text	Full property category path, e.g. "Homes > Houses"
rooms	number	Rooms / bedrooms
baths	number	Bathrooms
areaSqm	number	Floor/plot area in square meters
agencyName	text	The listing agency's public business name (never a private individual's name)
isVerified	boolean	Zameen's own listing-verification flag
isFeatured	boolean	true for a paid featured/boosted ad
imageUrl	text (link)	First listing image
photoCount	number	Number of photos on the ad
changeType	text	new, price-drop, or seen (monitoring only)
isNew	boolean	true on this listing's first appearance (monitoring only)
previousPrice	number	The price last recorded for this listing, when it dropped (monitoring only)
priceDropPct	number	Percentage drop from the previous recorded price (monitoring only)
firstSeenAt	date	When this watchlist first saw this listing (monitoring only)
url	text (link)	Permanent listing link
scrapedAt	date	When this row was fetched

Deselect any field in the Input tab's column picker to drop it from every row — query, found, status, message, and scrapedAt always stay.

Pricing

Pay-per-event. A flat per-run fee covers session/proxy warmup; you're billed per item only when data is actually found and returned — see .actor/pay_per_event.json for exact prices. A miss is never charged.

Monitoring / only new results

Turn on "Only return results that are new, or dropped in price" and a location line becomes a watchlist instead of a one-off dump:

• A listing counts as new the first time its Zameen listing ID is returned by this watchlist.
• A listing counts as a price drop when its price falls by at least "Minimum price drop" (5% by default) since it was last seen — measured against the most recently seen price.
• Already-seen, unchanged listings are dropped before you're billed. A quiet run still finishes and returns one free row with monitorStatus: NO_NEW_ROWS.
• The first run has nothing to compare against. By default it returns everything it finds as "new". Turn on "Seed silently" to instead have the first run bank everything quietly with zero rows and zero charge.
• Sort is always Zameen's own newest-first order (sort=date_desc), so two runs of the same watchlist are always comparing the same ordering.

Schedule recipe. Save this actor as an Apify Task with deltaMode: true and a deltaName you choose, add an hourly (or daily) Schedule, and point the task's webhook at Discord, Slack, Google Sheets, or an n8n/Make webhook URL.

Price-drop window limitation. A price drop is only ever seen while the listing is still inside what a run actually fetches — if a listing falls out of your maxListingsPerSearch window or your price filters between runs, this actor has no way to notice it dropped. Watch a specific area or a narrow price band rather than an entire large city if price-drop coverage matters to you.

How to use

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the searches field is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found.
2. Via the API. Call it directly with a POST request — no Console needed once you have an API token:

   curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~zameen-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"searches":["Lahore"]}'
   

3. On a schedule. Save this actor as an Apify Task with the input you want, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) so it runs on its own — no server of your own required.

4. Turn on "Only return results that are new, or dropped in price" under Monitoring once you want a watchlist instead of a one-off dump — see "Monitoring / only new results" above.

Input

{
  "searches": [
    "Lahore"
  ]
}

One per line. "Lahore" or "Karachi", a "Name-id" location slug copied from any zameen.com URL (e.g. "Islamabad-3" or a specific neighbourhood), or a full search-results URL copied from zameen.com. Zameen has no free-text keyword search — it's browsed by location. No login required. Accepted formats: Lahore, Karachi, https://www.zameen.com/Homes/Lahore-1-1.html?sort=date_desc.

Set Purpose to "For rent" and/or Property type to "Plots" or "Commercial" in Advanced to change what a plain city name searches (a pasted URL always keeps its own category).

Sample output

See the table under "What you get" above for field-by-field detail. A search that finds nothing comes back as a row with "found": false and is never charged. A quiet monitoring run comes back as a row with "found": true, "monitorStatus": "NO_NEW_ROWS" and is also never charged.

Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent

This actor runs synchronously over plain HTTP — call it directly from a script, a workflow tool, or an AI agent, no Apify Console needed once you have an API token.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~zameen-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searches":["Lahore"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~zameen-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"searches":["Lahore"]} (swap in an expression from an earlier node for a real value).

Clay. Add an "HTTP API" column: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~zameen-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"searches":["{{location}}"]}, mapping the row's location into the searches array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "Zameen Scraper | Apify" — the agent will find and run this actor.

For monitoring, point the Task's webhook (Console → your Task → Webhooks) at a Discord or Slack incoming-webhook URL, a Google Sheets automation, or an n8n/Make workflow's own webhook trigger.

Tips

• Start monitoring with "Seed silently" on for any watchlist you're setting up on a schedule — it avoids a wall of "new" alerts for your entire current search result on day one.
• Watch a specific area (paste that area's own zameen.com URL, or its "Name-id" slug) rather than a whole city for tighter price-drop coverage — see "Price-drop window limitation" above.
• Only "Lahore" and "Karachi" are recognized as plain city names; for any other city, copy the "Name-id" slug from its zameen.com URL and paste that instead (or paste the full search URL).
• A BLOCKED status means Zameen didn't serve a normal page — lowering "Max concurrency" or trying again shortly usually clears it; this actor doesn't need a proxy by default.

vs. Zameen's leading Store actor, and doing it by hand

The current Apify Store leader for Zameen (shahidirfan) has 93 lifetime users and a 5-star rating — strong evidence of real demand — but no monitoring mode: it's a one-off dump, the same job manually re-running a search does. Three independent hand-built Zameen scrapers on GitHub confirm the same gap.

	What it costs	What you get	Trade-off
This actor	Pay per listing returned; nothing for a miss or a quiet monitoring run	Rooms/baths/area/agency, monitoring mode (new + price drop), for-sale and for-rent	Only Lahore and Karachi are recognized city names out of the box; other cities need a copied slug
Store leader (shahidirfan)	Per the Store listing	Zameen coverage, well-rated	No monitoring mode
Doing it yourself	Your time to build and maintain a scraper, a seen-listing store, and a price-tracking layer	The same data	This actor's window.state parsing, monitoring state, and phone-number handling are the maintenance burden it absorbs

Data & privacy

This actor reads public search results that anyone can see without logging in. It doesn't log in, solve CAPTCHAs, or reveal hidden contact details. Seller identity is business-only: you get the listing agency's public name and an anonymous sellerHash, never a private individual's name. Zameen's search payload carries a real phone number directly on every listing — this actor never reads that field at all, not even to redact it. Turning on "Include raw agency info" only adds the agency's own internal ID, still a business identifier, not a phone number. Seller phone numbers and emails are never collected. Not affiliated with Zameen / EMPG.

Is this allowed? It collects the same public listing data your browser shows, for the locations you choose. It's built for monitoring a search, not for copying the marketplace. Check that your use fits Zameen's terms and your local law.

FAQ

Why is a row empty, or why does found say false? Either the input line was blank or an unrecognized location (status: BAD_FORMAT), Zameen returned a block page (status: BLOCKED), or the search matched nothing right now (status: NOT_FOUND). Check the message column for the specific reason. None of these are billed.

Am I charged for a quiet monitoring run? No. When monitoring finds nothing new and no price drops, you get one row with monitorStatus: NO_NEW_ROWS and listingCount: 0 — billing only fires when listingCount is greater than zero.

Why can't I just type any city name? Zameen's search pages require a numeric location ID in the URL, not just a name, and this actor only independently confirmed two (Lahore, Karachi) live. For any other city, browse zameen.com yourself, copy the "Name-id" from the URL (or the full URL itself), and paste that as a search line — it works the same way.

Does this collect seller phone numbers? No. Zameen's search payload carries a real phone number on every listing, and this actor never reads that field — not even to redact it, since it's simply never accessed at all.

Do I need to configure proxies? No. This actor uses Apify's default proxy configuration out of the box. A per-request RESIDENTIAL Pakistan fallback kicks in automatically only if a request gets blocked.

Can an AI agent call this directly? Yes. It's registered on the Apify MCP server — an agent in Claude, Cursor, or another MCP client can find and run it by name ("Zameen Scraper | Apify"), or you can call the REST endpoint shown above from any script or workflow tool.

Related actors

• OLX Pakistan Scraper — the same platform family (EMPG / Dubizzle Group), for Pakistan's largest general classifieds site.
• dubizzle Egypt Scraper — the same platform family's Egypt classifieds site.