99designs Scraper

Extract designer profiles and contest listings from 99designs.com.

Features

• Designer Profiles: Name, level, ratings, reviews, skills/categories, portfolio designs
• Contest Listings: Title, category, price, design count, status, tags, description
• Free/Paid Usage Gate: Free users get capped preview, paid users get full runs

Strategy

This actor uses a hybrid approach based on reverse-engineering:

1. Designers: GraphQL API at /app/graphql with CSRF token authentication

   • Discovered by inspecting the find-designers page JavaScript
   • Requires fetching a CSRF token from cookies first
   • Returns structured JSON with designer data

2. Contests: HTML endpoint at /contests/browse/listings parsed with CheerioCrawler

   • Standard HTML scraping with pagination support
   • Returns contest listings with all required fields

Why No Browser?

Both data sources work with plain HTTP requests:

• The GraphQL API accepts JSON payloads with proper CSRF token
• The contests endpoint returns server-rendered HTML

No JavaScript rendering or browser automation needed, making this actor fast and cheap to run.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	designers	designers or contests
maxItems	integer	50	Max items to scrape (1-1000)
designerCategory	string	logo-design	Filter designers by category
contestCategory	string	all	Filter contests by category
useApifyProxy	boolean	true	Route through Apify proxy

Output

Designer Profiles

{
  "userId": 387481,
  "displayName": "ludibes",
  "designerLevel": "top-level",
  "reviewCount": 311,
  "reviewRating": 4.97,
  "expertiseCategories": ["logo-design", "web-design", ...],
  "designs": [...],
  "profileUrl": "https://99designs.com/profiles/ludibes",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-01T..."
}

Contest Listings

{
  "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...",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-01T..."
}

Usage

For Design Agencies

Search for top-rated designers by specialty to build a talent pool.

For Creative Directors

Find contest examples and winning designs for inspiration.

For Recruiters

Identify available designers with specific skills and rating thresholds.

For Brand Managers

Review contest pricing and design volume in your industry.

Rate Limiting

The actor includes built-in delays (500ms between API calls) and respects the site's rate limits. Using Apify proxy is recommended for production use.

Related Actors

Verified related actors on Apify that pair well with this one. All links point to real, publicly available actors.

• Indeed Job Scraper
• LinkedIn Jobs Scraper
• Pinterest Search Scraper

SEO Keywords

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