DesignCrowd Scraper

Scrape DesignCrowd contest and designer data — design contests/jobs with prize budgets, deadlines, full briefs and entries, plus designer profiles with ratings, rankings, locations and earnings. No browser: every field is extracted from DesignCrowd's server-rendered HTML on a plain GET, so runs are fast and cheap at a flat $0.004 per record.

Covers 266,811 contests/jobs across 7 categories and ~1.34 M designers browsable by type and by country/city.

Main Use Cases

• Design contest research — track open and awarded contests, prize amounts and deadlines across logo, web, print and packaging design
• Freelance designer leads — build designer databases with location, rating, positive-feedback score, earnings and portfolio for talent sourcing
• Logo design pricing benchmarks — historical prize data for logo design contests and other design project types
• Creative market research — understand design contest volume, category mix and prize budgets over time
• Competitor/agency research — monitor what projects competitors are running and who is winning them

How It Works

DesignCrowd is an ASP.NET Core MVC app with no embedded JSON state, no search backend and no JSON API — the data is server-rendered HTML. The actor uses a CheerioCrawler that parses the listing pages (/jobs/{open|closed}/<category>/<subtype>/<page>/ and /designers/<type>/<country>/<page>/) and detail pages (/jobs/job/<id> and /designer/<id>/<slug>/about) directly. Detail fetches run in parallel (default concurrency 50), rates are capped with a token bucket (default 1200 req/min), and the actor auto-back-offs on soft rate-limit pages.

Build Designer Databases Without an Official API

DesignCrowd has no public API for contest or designer data. This actor reads the same public pages a visitor sees and delivers structured JSON: contest records carry recordType: "contest" with prizeBudget, deadline, brief, payments, entriesDesigns, entriesDesigners and winner data; designer records carry recordType: "designer" with rank, rating, positiveFeedbackScore, earnings, submissions and portfolio. Sitemaps (sitemap-contest-ids-1.xml … sitemap-designer-id-name-1.xml) can be passed via startUrls for full-dataset enumeration.

Collect Design Contest Data — Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
mode	string	No	contests	contests | designers | both
startUrls	array	No	(empty)	Explicit listing/detail/profile/sitemap URLs; overrides the built-in defaults below
contestStatus	string	No	open	open | closed | both (266,811 total when closed)
contestCategories	array	No	12 popular pairs	e.g. corporateidentity/logo, webdesign/web, printdesign/poster, merchandisedesign/tshirt
designerTypes	array	No	10 popular types	e.g. logo, tshirt, web, flyer
includeContestDetail	boolean	No	true	Fetch /jobs/job/<id> for the full brief, exact deadline and prize breakdown
includeDesignerProfile	boolean	No	true	Fetch each profile for city, feedback score, submissions and portfolio
includeEntries	boolean	No	true	Keep the per-submission entries[] array
maxItems	integer	No	200	Hard cap on dataset rows (free users auto-capped at 10)
maxConcurrency	integer	No	50	Parallel requests — the main speed knob
requestsPerMinute	integer	No	1200	Sustained request-rate ceiling (0 = no throttle)
maxRequestsPerCrawl	integer	No	auto	Hard cap on HTTP requests (0 = auto-size to maxItems)
proxy	object	No	off	Standard Apify proxy picker

Output — Designer Portfolios and Contest Briefs

One dataset row per record, discriminated by recordType.

recordType: "contest"

contestId, url, title, category, status, isOpen, prizeBudget, prizeBudgetAmount, prizeCurrency, entriesDesigns, entriesDesigners, deadline, deadlineIso, deadlineRelative, brief, briefSnippet, logoText, styleAttributes[], payments[], guaranteed, featured, bundled, private, winner, entries[], language, postedDate

recordType: "designer"

designerId, name, url, profileUrl, location, country, city, rank, rating (0-5), positiveFeedbackScore, reviews, earnings, earningsAmount, earningsCurrency, submissions, lastOnline, availableForWork, headline, portfolio { categories, items[], totalDesigns }

Note on reviews: DesignCrowd only exposes the aggregate positive-feedback score (a % of satisfied clients), so reviews reports that score verbatim and positiveFeedbackScore carries the raw number — no invented review counts.

Example Input

Open logo contests with full briefs:

{ "mode": "contests", "contestStatus": "open", "contestCategories": ["corporateidentity/logo"], "maxItems": 200 }

Cheap listing-only sweep (1 request per 20 contests):

{ "mode": "contests", "contestStatus": "closed", "includeContestDetail": false, "maxItems": 1000 }

Top designers in two countries:

{ "mode": "designers", "startUrls": ["https://www.designcrowd.com/designers/all/united-states", "https://www.designcrowd.com/designers/logo/india"] }

Example Output — Contest Record

{
  "recordType": "contest",
  "contestId": "4118897",
  "url": "https://www.designcrowd.com/jobs/job/4118897",
  "title": "Independent Mortgage Agent",
  "category": "Logo Design",
  "status": "open",
  "prizeBudget": "C$150",
  "prizeBudgetAmount": 150,
  "prizeCurrency": "CAD",
  "entriesDesigns": 77,
  "entriesDesigners": 40,
  "deadlineIso": "2026-10-02T22:54:26.000Z",
  "deadlineRelative": "6 days left",
  "brief": "A circular logo for a property called Juneberry Hollow.",
  "payments": [{ "place": "1st place", "amount": "US$150" }, { "place": "Total", "amount": "US$150" }],
  "private": false
}

Design Market Research at $0.004 Per Record

$0.004 per dataset record, flat — the same price whether a row is a listing card or a fully-enriched contest brief with detail page. No per-detail fee, unlike the closest competitor. Free Apify accounts get a 10-record preview.

Measured throughput: 200 contests with full briefs run in 21 s at 2 GB / concurrency 60 ($0.01), or ~7 s at 4 GB / concurrency 100. The bottleneck is the actor's own CPU, not the site.

Integrations & Automation

• API — run and fetch via the Apify REST API, or call it from AI agents through the Apify MCP server
• Scheduling — weekly runs keep designer and contest databases current
• Webhooks — trigger downstream pipelines when a run finishes
• Export — JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML

Recommended schedule: weekly for open contest tracking; monthly for closed-contest prize history; quarterly for full designer sweeps.

Related Actors

• Designcrowd Scraper — crawlerbros/designcrowd-scraper — the main DesignCrowd competitor; $0.00433/contest list item + $0.005/contest detail
• 99designs Scraper — ahmed_jasarevic/99designs-scraper — same author, sibling platform, $0.00289/record

FAQ

Why use this actor instead of the official DesignCrowd API?

DesignCrowd has no public API for contest or designer data. This actor reads the same publicly served pages the website renders, with no browser needed, and at a flat $0.004/record — cheaper than the closest competitor's $0.00433 + $0.005 detail fee.

What are alternatives to this actor / to DesignCrowd data?

For contest data: crawlerbros/designcrowd-scraper ($0.00433/list item + $0.005/detail). For the sibling crowdsourcing platform: ahmed_jasarevic/99designs-scraper. For designer talent databases, pair DesignCrowd designer records with LinkedIn or Dribbble scrapers for wider coverage.

How much do design contests pay?

Contest records include the full prize breakdown — prizeBudget (e.g. C$150), prizeBudgetAmount/prizeCurrency normalized (e.g. 150/CAD), and payments[] with per-place amounts. Closed-contest history (contestStatus: "closed") gives you actual awarded prize data for benchmarking.

How can I find freelance designers by country?

Set mode: "designers" and pass designer-listing URLs per country (e.g. https://www.designcrowd.com/designers/all/united-states) via startUrls, or use designerTypes with the default built-in geography lists. Profiles carry city, country, rank, rating, positiveFeedbackScore, earnings and portfolio.

Why is brief null but private: true?

The customer marked the contest brief private — it is login-gated on DesignCrowd's side. The actor resolves the correct contest URL and flags the record with private: true plus a briefSnippet explaining the gate, instead of silently dropping or mis-linking it.

What are the known limitations?

Individual contest entries (entries[]) only fill when a gallery page (/<category>/contest/<id>) is passed explicitly via startUrls — the default flow parses entriesDesigns/entriesDesigners/winner instead. styleAttributes and payments render only on awarded/closed contest detail pages. No client review text exists publicly — only the aggregate positive-feedback score.

For AI Agents & LLM Apps

• Purpose: given a mode (contests/designers) or explicit URLs, returns one structured row per DesignCrowd contest or designer, including prize budgets, deadlines, briefs, ratings, earnings and portfolio.
• Minimal working input:

{ "mode": "contests", "contestStatus": "open", "maxItems": 20 }

• Variant inputs: designers — { "mode": "designers", "maxItems": 20 }; both — { "mode": "both", "maxItems": 50 }; explicit URLs — { "startUrls": ["https://www.designcrowd.com/sitemap-contest-ids-1.xml"], "maxItems": 500 }.
• Output fields — contests: contestId, title, category, status, prizeBudgetAmount, prizeCurrency, deadlineIso, brief, payments, entriesDesigns, entriesDesigners, winner, private; designers: designerId, name, location, city, rank, rating, positiveFeedbackScore, earningsAmount, earningsCurrency, submissions, portfolio.
• Behaviors an agent should know: startUrls overrides the built-in defaults. includeContestDetail is on by default — it costs ~1 extra request per contest; turn it off for cheap listing-only sweeps (the listing card already contains exact deadline, budget and entry counts). maxItems caps all dataset rows; free users are capped at 10 regardless. maxRequestsPerCrawl should stay 0 to auto-size to maxItems (detail mode needs ~1 request per record). requestsPerMinute is a plain ceiling — a soft-limit page briefly drops the rate to 25%, not a failure. maxConcurrency needs matching memory (~5 MB per in-flight request); keep the default 50 with a 2 GB run. Gated contests come back as private: true with a brief snippet — do not retry them.
• Billing: pay-per-result — $0.004 per dataset row (plus Apify's per-start and compute charges on paid plans).

Legal & Compliance Disclaimer

This actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by DesignCrowd (designcrowd.com). It accesses only publicly available pages; it does not log in, bypass registration gates, or access private customer briefs. You are responsible for complying with DesignCrowd's Terms of Service and applicable law when using the data. Personal data in designer records (names, locations) must not be used for unsolicited commercial outreach in violation of applicable law (e.g. CAN-SPAM, GDPR, CCPA).

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