# DANE Colombia Statistics Scraper (`acquistion-automation/dane-colombia-statistics-scraper`) Actor

Scrapes official Colombian statistics from DANE's public catalog by topic category. Returns dataset metadata and download links as flat rows. No API key required.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/dane-colombia-statistics-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Acquisition Automation Co.](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation) (community)
- **Categories:** Automation, Integrations
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $7.50 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

![Acquisition Automation Co. Search less. Close more.](https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/AOdPHdOpeDpzEPS5f/records/banner.jpg)

## 🇨🇴 DANE Colombia Statistics Scraper

> **Pull Colombia's official statistics straight from DANE and get each indicator as a flat row with its number, its reference period and its unit.** Pick a topic, such as labour market, prices, national accounts or international trade, and the Actor returns the published figures with the date DANE released them. No API key, no registration, no login.

DANE is Colombia's national statistics office. It publishes the country's inflation, unemployment, GDP, trade and poverty figures, and it publishes them the way a ministry does: as a Spanish sentence inside a web page, with the tables locked in a PDF bulletin and a stack of Excel annexes beside it. There is no public API and nothing on the page exports. This Actor reads the topic's statistical operations, lifts the indicator name, the figure, the unit and the reference period out of what DANE actually published, checks when the matching bulletin file went live, and writes it all into a dataset you can open in a spreadsheet.

| Who uses it | What they use DANE for |
|---|---|
| 🏢 Buyers of Colombian businesses | Checking a seller's growth story against the sector's real numbers before signing |
| 📈 Deal teams and analysts | Building the macro page of a model: inflation, wage pressure, unemployment, GDP |
| 💵 Lenders and valuation teams | Indexing prices and construction costs to the official series rather than an estimate |
| 🌎 Market researchers and journalists | Tracking Colombian indicators over time without opening twenty PDF bulletins |

### 📋 What it does

> 💡 **Why it matters:** a Colombian target's numbers only mean something next to the country's. If a company grew revenue 5% in a year when the IPC rose 6.24%, it shrank.

- 🗂 **Covers twelve DANE topics.** Labour market, prices and costs, national accounts, international trade, industry, construction, agriculture, demography, poverty, education, health, security.
- 🔢 **Returns the figure as a number**, parsed out of Colombian notation, so `0,39%` arrives as `0.39` and `US$4.690,7 millones` arrives as `4690.7`.
- 📅 **Keeps the reference period with the figure.** A July 2026 unemployment rate is labelled July 2026, not the day you ran it.
- 📆 **Records the release date.** Taken from the timestamp on the technical bulletin DANE published for that operation.
- 🏛 **Names the statistical operation.** Every row says which DANE survey or index it came from, such as the Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares.
- 💾 **Exports to CSV, Excel, JSON or XML**, from the run page or the API.

### 📊 Output

Every indicator is one flat row. Indicator names are in Spanish, as DANE publishes them. `N/A` means DANE states no value for that field on the page the figure came from.

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 📊 `indicator` | string | Indicator name as DANE writes it, for example `tasa global de participación` |
| 🔢 `value` | number | The published figure, parsed to a number |
| 📅 `period` | string | Reference period the figure belongs to, for example `julio de 2026` |
| 🗂 `category` | string | Topic slug you asked for, for example `mercado-laboral` |
| 📐 `unit` | string | Unit of the figure, for example `%`, `percentage points`, `USD million`, `years` |
| 🏛 `source` | string | The DANE statistical operation the figure came from |
| 📆 `release_date` | string | ISO timestamp of the bulletin file DANE published for that operation |
| 🔗 `url` | string | The DANE page the figure was read from |
| 🕒 `scrapedAt` | string | ISO timestamp of collection |
| ⚠️ `error` | string | `null` on a normal row |

#### Example rows

```json
{
  "indicator": "tasa global de participación",
  "value": 64.8,
  "period": "julio de 2026",
  "category": "mercado-laboral",
  "unit": "%",
  "source": "Gran encuesta integrada de hogares (GEIH) Mercado laboral - Empleo y desempleo",
  "release_date": "2026-08-31T14:38:10.000Z",
  "url": "https://www.dane.gov.co/index.php/estadisticas-por-tema/mercado-laboral/empleo-y-desempleo",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-22T19:10:06.365Z",
  "error": null
}
```

```json
{
  "indicator": "déficit en la balanza comercial colombiana",
  "value": 2797.8,
  "period": "julio de 2026",
  "category": "comercio-internacional",
  "unit": "USD million",
  "source": "Balanza comercial",
  "release_date": "2026-09-21T14:54:21.000Z",
  "url": "https://www.dane.gov.co/index.php/estadisticas-por-tema/comercio-internacional/balanza-comercial",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-22T19:10:21.071Z",
  "error": null
}
```

### ✨ Why choose this Actor

| | What you get |
|---|---|
| **The official source** | Figures come from dane.gov.co, the statistics office itself, not from a news summary or a data reseller. |
| **A number, not a sentence** | DANE writes its results as Spanish prose. You get a numeric `value` with a unit beside it. |
| **Period and release date** | Each figure carries the period it measures and the date DANE put the bulletin out, so you can tell fresh from stale. |
| **No credentials** | DANE publishes openly. No API key, no account, no request quota to negotiate. |
| **You pay per row** | No subscription. A topic that publishes nothing new costs nothing. |

### 🚀 How to use it

1. [Create a free Apify account](https://console.apify.com/sign-up). New accounts start with $5 of credit.
2. Open the Actor and select **Try for free**.
3. Pick a topic in `category`. Labour market is the default.
4. Set `maxItems` to cap the run.
5. Select **Start**, then export from the **Dataset** tab as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML.

A first run:

```json
{
  "category": "mercado-laboral",
  "maxItems": 10
}
```

Inflation and cost indices:

```json
{
  "category": "precios-y-costos",
  "maxItems": 50
}
```

### ⚙️ Input

| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `category` | No | DANE topic slug. One of `mercado-laboral`, `precios-y-costos`, `cuentas-nacionales`, `comercio-internacional`, `industria`, `construccion`, `agropecuario`, `demografia-y-poblacion`, `pobreza-y-condiciones-de-vida`, `educacion`, `salud`, `seguridad-y-defensa` |
| `maxItems` | No | Maximum rows to collect in a run, from 1 to 1,000,000 |

### 💰 Pricing

Pay per result. No subscription, and no Apify platform usage on top.

| Apify plan | Free | Bronze | Silver | Gold | Platinum | Diamond |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per indicator row | $0.0085 | $0.00817 | $0.00783 | $0.0075 | $0.0075 | $0.0075 |

| Rows collected | Cost on the Free plan |
|---|---|
| 100 | $0.85 |
| 1,000 | $8.50 |
| 10,000 | $85.00 |

**Free plan runs** return up to 10 rows as a preview. Any paid Apify plan lifts that to 1,000,000 per run.

### 🔌 Integrate with any app

The dataset is available through the Apify API as soon as the run finishes. Use `run-sync-get-dataset-items` for a one-shot call, webhooks to trigger what happens next, or the Make, Zapier, Airbyte and LangChain integrations listed on the Actor page.

### 🤖 Use with an AI agent

Give an agent live access to Colombian statistics over the Model Context Protocol:

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=acquistion-automation/dane-colombia-statistics-scraper"
```

Then ask it in plain language for Colombia's latest inflation or unemployment figure and read the result back.

### ❓ Frequently asked questions

**Why are the indicator names in Spanish?**
Because that is how DANE publishes them. Translating them would put a name on the row that does not appear in the source, and you would lose the ability to match a figure back to the bulletin it came from.

**How many rows does a topic return?**
It depends on how much DANE has published for it. Labour market and national accounts run to a few dozen figures. Security and defence, which DANE updates once a year, returns a handful. Set `maxItems` high and take what the topic has.

**Is this the full historical series?**
No. It returns the figures DANE currently states on its topic pages, which are the latest results and the comparisons it draws against earlier periods. Full series live in the Excel annexes linked from each page, and the row's `url` takes you there.

**Why is `period` sometimes `N/A`?**
Some DANE sentences state a figure without repeating the period. When nothing on the page ties the figure to a date, the Actor says so instead of guessing.

**What does `release_date` mean?**
It is when DANE published the technical bulletin for that statistical operation, read from the file itself. It is not the date you ran the Actor, and it is usually later than the `period` the figure measures.

**Do I need a proxy?**
No. Requests, retries and a Colombian residential fallback are handled inside the Actor and included in the price.

### 🔗 More from Acquisition Automation Co.

- [BizBuySell Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/bizbuysell-scraper)
- [SAM.gov Contract Opportunities Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/sam-gov-contracts-scraper)
- [IRS Exempt Organizations Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/irs-eo-master-file-scraper)
- [MLIT Japan Real Estate Prices Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/mlit-japan-real-estate-prices-scraper)
- [OLX Polska Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/olx-polska-scraper)

### About Acquisition Automation Co.

We build automation for people buying businesses. The repetitive part of an acquisition search, checking listings, pulling public records, tracking owners and assets, is work a machine should do, so the buyer's time goes into judging deals instead of collecting them.

We add new Actors regularly. If there is a source you need and do not see here, tell us.

### 🆘 Support

Open an issue in the **Issues** tab of this Actor with your run ID, the input you used, and what you expected to get back.

### ⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística or any government agency. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using that data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable law.

# Actor input Schema

## `category` (type: `string`):

DANE topic category slug.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of statistical datasets to collect per run.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "category": "mercado-laboral",
  "maxItems": 10
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "category": "mercado-laboral",
    "maxItems": 10
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("acquistion-automation/dane-colombia-statistics-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "category": "mercado-laboral",
    "maxItems": 10,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("acquistion-automation/dane-colombia-statistics-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "category": "mercado-laboral",
  "maxItems": 10
}' |
apify call acquistion-automation/dane-colombia-statistics-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,acquistion-automation/dane-colombia-statistics-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/F2aDTAJHlsclRdOpw/builds/tsqU95GQNwBCvLQLS/openapi.json