# BBB Scraper \[$3.5/1K💰] | Leads | Ratings | Reviews (`ahmed_jasarevic/better-scraper`) Actor

Extract Better Business Bureau (BBB) business ratings, reviews and complaints with contact data. Build lead lists, monitor reputation and research B2B businesses across the US.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/ahmed\_jasarevic/better-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Ahmed Jasarevic](https://apify.com/ahmed_jasarevic) (community)
- **Categories:** Lead generation, Automation, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $3.50 / 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.

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

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
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.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## 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.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## BBB Scraper — Better Business Bureau Ratings, Reviews & Business Leads

Extract **Better Business Bureau (BBB)** ratings, accreditation status, complaints and reviews for **US lead generation, reputation monitoring and B2B prospecting**. Get business phone numbers, addresses, rating scores and complaint data from every public BBB profile.

### Main Use Cases

- Lead generation — find unaccredited or poorly rated businesses in any US niche
- Reputation monitoring — track ratings, complaints and reviews for client businesses over time
- B2B prospecting — identify businesses needing reputation-management or accreditation services
- Competitor analysis — benchmark client ratings against competitors in the same category and market
- Complaint analysis — aggregate complaint patterns across industries or regions
- CRM enrichment — build structured business contact lists for outreach

### How It Works

You give the actor either direct BBB profile/search URLs or search terms + locations (e.g. `"plumber"` + `"Dallas, TX"`). It crawls the public search results, follows each business profile, and returns one structured JSON record per business with its BBB rating, accreditation state, complaint counts, customer reviews and contact details.

### Build Business Lead Lists Without a Business Database API

BBB is the largest US consumer-review and business-accreditation directory, but it has no public API for bulk rating and contact data. This actor turns BBB search into a reusable, structured lead and reputation dataset.

### Input

| Field | Type | Required | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `startUrls` | string\[] | No | — | Direct BBB profile or search URLs |
| `searchTerms` | string\[] | No | — | Business types to search, e.g. `plumber`, `dentist` |
| `searchLocations` | string\[] | No | — | Cities/states/ZIPs to search, e.g. `Dallas, TX` |
| `maxItems` | integer | No | 100 | Max business profiles to scrape |
| `maxPagesPerSearch` | integer | No | 5 | Search result pages per term + location |
| `maxConcurrency` | integer | No | 3 | Parallel pages |
| `maxRequestsPerCrawl` | integer | No | 300 | Hard total request cap |
| `proxyConfiguration` | object | No | Apify proxy | Residential recommended |

### Output

Each dataset item is one business profile:

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `name` | string | Business name |
| `url` | string | BBB profile URL |
| `rating` | string | Letter grade (A+ to F) |
| `ratingNumerical` | number | Numeric score |
| `accredited` | boolean | BBB accredited or not |
| `accreditationDate` | string | Accreditation date |
| `yearsOnBBB` | integer | Years on BBB |
| `yearsInBusiness` | integer | Years in business |
| `complaintCount` | integer | Total complaints |
| `complaintsClosedLast12Months` | integer | Complaints closed in last 12 months |
| `reviewCount` | integer | Customer review count |
| `averageReviewRating` | number | Average review rating |
| `businessPhone` | string | Business phone |
| `address` | string | Street address |
| `website` | string | Business website |
| `categories` | array | BBB categories, e.g. Plumbers |
| `summary` | string | BBB business summary |

### Example Input

```json
{
  "searchTerms": ["plumber"],
  "searchLocations": ["Dallas, TX"],
  "maxItems": 50,
  "maxConcurrency": 3,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}
```

### Example Output

```json
{
  "name": "ABC Plumbing Co.",
  "rating": "A+",
  "ratingNumerical": 5.0,
  "accredited": true,
  "complaintCount": 3,
  "reviewCount": 12,
  "averageReviewRating": 4.8,
  "businessPhone": "(214) 555-0123",
  "address": "123 Main St, Dallas, TX 75201",
  "categories": ["Plumbers", "Water Heaters"]
}
```

### Integrations & Automation

This actor runs on the Apify platform, so you can pull results via the Apify API, export to JSON/CSV/Excel, or trigger it through Apify integrations. For reputation monitoring, schedule a recurring run (e.g. weekly) and diff the outputs to track rating and complaint changes.

### Related Actors

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

- [Trustpilot Reviews Scraper](https://apify.com/automation-lab/trustpilot)
- [GoodFirms Scraper](https://apify.com/piotrv1001/goodfirms-scraper)
- [Google Maps Reviews Scraper](https://apify.com/compass/Google-Maps-Reviews-Scraper)
- [LinkedIn Profile Scraper](https://apify.com/harvestapi/linkedin-profile-scraper)

### FAQ

#### Why use this actor instead of the official BBB data?

BBB has no public API for bulk business rating, complaint and review data. This actor extracts the same publicly visible information as structured JSON across thousands of business profiles automatically.

#### What alternatives exist for business review data?

If you also need consumer review data you can pair this with a Trustpilot or Google Maps Reviews scraper for a broader ratings dataset across multiple review platforms.

#### What kind of companies are in the data?

Any business listed on bbb.org — from plumbers and dentists to insurance agencies and contractors — with their ratings, accreditation status, complaint counts and contact info.

#### Can I filter by business type and location?

Yes. Use `searchTerms` (e.g. `plumber`) together with `searchLocations` (e.g. `Dallas, TX`) to scope the search to a specific niche and market.

### SEO Keywords

bbb scraper, better business bureau data, bbb ratings, bbb business reviews, bbb accreditation, business reputation monitoring, bbb lead generation, us business leads, business complaints data, bbb api alternative, business review data, b2b prospecting data, reputation management leads, bbb complaint analysis, business contact data

### For AI Agents & LLM Apps

**Purpose:** Return structured Better Business Bureau (BBB) business records — rating, accreditation, complaints, reviews and contact data — from search terms or direct profile URLs.

**Minimal working input:**

```json
{
  "searchTerms": ["plumber"],
  "searchLocations": ["Dallas, TX"],
  "maxItems": 20
}
```

**Output fields:** `name`, `url`, `rating`, `ratingNumerical`, `accredited`, `accreditationDate`, `yearsOnBBB`, `yearsInBusiness`, `complaintCount`, `complaintsClosedLast12Months`, `reviewCount`, `averageReviewRating`, `businessPhone`, `address`, `website`, `categories`, `summary`.

**Behaviors an agent should know:**

- You can use either `startUrls` (direct BBB profile/search URLs) or `searchTerms` + `searchLocations` (term + market search). Supplying `startUrls` and search terms together is unusual — prefer one approach.
- If `maxItems` is small (e.g. 20) and `maxConcurrency` is left at default, runs are fast but cover less ground.
- `proxyConfiguration` with RESIDENTIAL is recommended for the actor to avoid blocking on larger crawls.

**Billing:** Pay-per-result — $3.5 per 1K business profiles ($0.0035 each).

### Legal & Compliance Disclaimer

This actor is an independent tool and is **not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) or bbb.org**. It only accesses publicly available BBB business profile and search pages — no login bypass and no CAPTCHA solving. You are responsible for compliance with BBB's Terms of Service and applicable data-protection law. The output can include business contact details (phone, address); do not use them for unsolicited commercial outreach in violation of applicable law.

# Actor input Schema

## `startUrls` (type: `array`):

BBB.org search or profile URLs. Search URLs preserve their filters. Profile URLs are converted to category-based searches.

## `searchTerms` (type: `array`):

Keywords to search (e.g. 'plumber', 'roofing', 'dentist'). Combined with searchLocations.

## `searchLocations` (type: `array`):

Locations to search in (e.g. 'Dallas, TX', 'New York'). Empty = nationwide.

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

Maximum results to extract (hard cap 1000).

## `maxPagesPerSearch` (type: `integer`):

Pages to paginate per search term (15 results/page, hard cap 20).

## `maxConcurrency` (type: `integer`):

Parallel HTTP requests to the BBB API (hard cap 10).

## `maxRequestsPerCrawl` (type: `integer`):

Hard safety cap on total API calls (hard cap 3000).

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

BBB may rate-limit. Residential proxies recommended for large runs.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.bbb.org/search?find_text=plumber&find_country=USA"
    }
  ],
  "searchTerms": [],
  "searchLocations": [
    ""
  ],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 5,
  "maxConcurrency": 3,
  "maxRequestsPerCrawl": 300,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ]
  }
}
```

# 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 = {
    "startUrls": [
        {
            "url": "https://www.bbb.org/search?find_text=plumber&find_country=USA"
        }
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("ahmed_jasarevic/better-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 = { "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.bbb.org/search?find_text=plumber&find_country=USA" }] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("ahmed_jasarevic/better-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 '{
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.bbb.org/search?find_text=plumber&find_country=USA"
    }
  ]
}' |
apify call ahmed_jasarevic/better-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,ahmed_jasarevic/better-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/2B5132uj7plgbV3hA/builds/bLPOs33p5ty9HORUO/openapi.json