99designs Scraper — Extract Designer Profiles & Contest Listings

Get structured 99designs data without an official API: pre-vetted freelance designer profiles (ratings, levels, portfolio) and design contest listings (prizes, entry counts, status) for talent sourcing, market research, and contest monitoring.

Main Use Cases

• Freelance design talent sourcing — build a shortlist of top-rated graphic designers by skill and rating threshold
• Graphic designer ratings & reviews research — screen designers by review count, average rating, and level before hiring
• Design contest monitoring — track logo, branding, packaging, and merch contest listings, prizes, and entry volume
• Design contest pricing research — benchmark prize tiers and contest volume in your industry
• Design portfolio data extraction — collect portfolio designs and expertise categories for agency vetting and creative inspiration
• Brand manager design research — review what design work competitors are commissioning and at what price

How It Works

The actor uses a hybrid, browser-free approach to read 99designs:

1. Designer profiles are fetched from the site's internal GraphQL API (/app/graphql) using CSRF-token authentication — the same endpoint the 99designs designer search page calls. No login, no browser rendering.
2. Contest listings are parsed from server-rendered HTML pages with a Cheerio crawler, with pagination and built-in rate management (500ms delays, optional Apify proxy).

Both paths use plain HTTP requests, so runs are fast and cheap. Choose one mode per run: designers or contests.

Find Top-Rated Designers For Your Talent Pool

The designers mode returns every field from the designer search results: level, review count, average rating, expertise categories, and portfolio items. Filter by category (logo design, web design, illustrations, t-shirt design, business cards, banners, posters, product packaging) to narrow the pool to the exact skill you need.

Monitor Design Contest Listings, Prizes, And Entry Volume

The contests mode returns contest listings with title, category, prize text, number of submitted designs, status, tags, and description. Track open contests for opportunity spotting, or analyze finished contests for prize benchmarking and market trends.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
mode	string	Yes	designers	What to scrape: designers or contests
maxItems	integer	No	50	Max items to scrape (1–1000; free users capped at 10)
designerCategory	string	No	logo-design	Designer filter (designers mode only): logo-design, web-design, illustrations, t-shirt-design, business-card-design, banner-ad-design, poster-design, product-packaging-design, see-all
contestCategory	string	No	all	Contest filter (contests mode only): all, logo, website-app-design, business-advertising, clothing-merchandise-design, art-illustration, packaging-label-design, book-magazine-design
useApifyProxy	boolean	No	true	Route requests through Apify proxy for higher success rate

Output

Designer profile rows (designers mode)

Field	Type	Description
userId	number	Unique designer identifier
displayName	string	Public display name
designerLevel	string	99designs tier (e.g. Top Level)
reviewCount	number	Number of reviews received
reviewRating	number	Average review rating (e.g. 4.97)
expertiseCategories	string[]	Skill tags (e.g. logo-design, web-design)
designs	object[]	Portfolio items with id, title, and image URLs
profileUrl	string	Public profile URL
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of the scrape

Contest listing rows (contests mode)

Field	Type	Description
title	string	Contest title
url	string	Full contest URL
category	string	Category from the URL slug
price	string	Prize/payout text as displayed
designsCount	number	Number of designs submitted
status	string	Contest status label
tags	string[]	Tag labels
description	string	Contest subtitle/description
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of the scrape

Example Input

{
  "mode": "designers",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "designerCategory": "web-design",
  "useApifyProxy": true
}

Example Output

Designer row

{
  "userId": 387481,
  "displayName": "ludibes",
  "designerLevel": "top-level",
  "reviewCount": 311,
  "reviewRating": 4.97,
  "expertiseCategories": ["logo-design", "web-design"],
  "designs": [
    { "id": 12345, "title": "Brand identity for SaaS startup", "imageSources": { "original": "https://...", "largeCrop": "https://...", "smallCrop": "https://..." } }
  ],
  "profileUrl": "https://99designs.com/profiles/ludibes",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-05T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Contest row

{
  "title": "Salt Creek Epoxy",
  "url": "https://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/salt-creek-epoxy-1360221",
  "category": "logo design",
  "price": "$769",
  "designsCount": 213,
  "status": "Finished",
  "tags": ["Logo design", "Construction"],
  "description": "We specialize in ultra-durable epoxy flooring...",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-05T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Integrations & Automation

Every run writes to an Apify dataset that can be:

• Downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML tables
• Pushed to Google Sheets, Airtable, PostgreSQL, Snowflake, or BigQuery via Apify integrations
• Consumed by Zapier or Make through the Apify integration
• Pulled programmatically via the Apify REST API (any language) or the Apify Python/JavaScript SDKs

Because contest and designer data changes continuously, schedule a recurring run (daily or weekly) to keep your talent pool, prize benchmarks, and contest watchlists current. Recurring monitoring also improves the actor's ranking in the Apify Store.

Related Actors

• Dribbble Designer Scraper — designer profiles by skill on Dribbble (⭐ 5.00, high-traffic)
• Behance + Dribbble Scraper — portfolios, location, follower stats, availability on both platforms
• Behance Search Scraper — search projects/users/assets on Behance
• Upwork Scraper — freelance client & job intel (most-used freelance scraper)
• Upwork Freelancers Scraper — freelancer rates, earnings, job success scores

Together these cover the designer-talent and freelance-marketplace data cluster: 99designs, Dribbble, Behance, and Upwork.

FAQ

Is scraping 99designs legal?

This actor only reads publicly available pages and endpoints — the same data a visitor sees on 99designs.com without logging in. It does not bypass logins, solve CAPTCHAs, or access private or NDA-protected contests. Users are responsible for complying with 99designs' Terms of Service and applicable data-protection law (e.g. GDPR for personal data of EU designers).

Do I need a 99designs API key or official API access?

No. There is no public 99designs API for this data — the official API is B2B/partner-only. This actor works without any API key by reading the site's public data directly.

How do I find the top-rated graphic designers on 99designs?

Set mode: "designers", pick a designerCategory (e.g. logo-design), and use maxItems to size your pool. The output includes reviewRating, reviewCount, and designerLevel so you can sort and filter for top-rated designers.

How much do design contests cost on 99designs?

The price field in contest rows contains the actual prize text (e.g. "$769"). Running the contests mode lets you benchmark prize tiers across categories and track how contest pricing changes over time.

How does 99designs compare to Dribbble and Behance for sourcing designers?

99designs contests give you pre-vetted designers who compete on your brief; Dribbble and Behance are portfolio-first. Use this actor for 99designs data and pair it with the Dribbble/Behance actors above to compare candidates across platforms.

Can I monitor design contest trends and pricing over time?

Yes. Schedule the actor in contests mode (Apify supports daily/weekly schedules) and you get a time series of contest listings, prizes, and entry counts for trend analysis.

What data can I extract from a 99designs designer profile?

Level, review count, average rating, expertise categories, portfolio items (with image URLs), and the public profile URL — plus the scrape timestamp.

How much do 99designs freelance designers earn?

The actor does not extract earnings or private payouts. It returns public profile and contest data only. Public contest prize tiers are available through the price field.

Is scraping 99designs blocked or rate-limited?

The actor includes built-in rate management (500ms delays between API calls) and optionally routes through the Apify proxy for higher success rates.

For AI Agents & LLM Apps

Purpose: Returns either design-contest listings or graphic-designer profiles from 99designs as structured JSON — pick one mode per run.

Minimal input:

{ "mode": "contests", "maxItems": 50 }

Variant inputs (two genuinely distinct modes):

{ "mode": "designers", "maxItems": 50, "designerCategory": "web-design" }

{ "mode": "contests", "maxItems": 50, "contestCategory": "logo" }

Output fields:

• designers mode: userId, displayName, designerLevel, reviewCount, reviewRating, expertiseCategories, designs[] (id, title, imageSources.{original,largeCrop,smallCrop}), profileUrl, scrapedAt
• contests mode: title, url, category, price, designsCount, status, tags[], description, scrapedAt

Behaviors an agent should know:

• mode is required; designers and contests cannot be combined in one run — each run returns rows of one shape only.
• designerCategory is only honored in designers mode; contestCategory only in contests mode; the irrelevant field is ignored.
• Free users are capped at 10 items regardless of maxItems; paying users get the full maxItems (up to 1000).
• Billing is pay-per-event: $0.00005 per actor start + $0.004 per result row. A default 50-item run ≈ $0.20.

Legal & Compliance Disclaimer

This actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by 99designs or Vistaprint. It accesses only publicly available pages and endpoints on 99designs.com — no login bypass, no CAPTCHA solving, no access to private or NDA-protected contests. Users are responsible for complying with 99designs' Terms of Service and applicable data-protection laws (e.g. GDPR/CCPA where personal data of designers is collected).

SEO Keywords

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