Freelancer Jobs Scraper - Real-Time Projects, Budgets and Skills

The Freelancer Jobs Scraper collects open projects from Freelancer.com and returns structured rows with the project title, description, URL, bidding activity, fixed or hourly budget, time left, flags, payment verification and required skills. It is a live project finder rather than a historical jobs archive.

Use it to build a proposal pipeline, monitor a niche skill, benchmark budgets or feed a lead-generation CRM. The Actor queries Freelancer public project table, pages through results, applies budget and skill filters, and writes one row per project with no duplicate project IDs.

Main Use Cases for Freelance Project Leads

• Freelance lead generation - find newly posted projects that match your services and contact-ready budget range.
• Proposal pipeline - route fresh projects into a CRM, spreadsheet or Slack alert before the bidding window closes.
• Niche monitoring - track keywords such as Django, Shopify, copywriting or video editing across markets.
• Budget benchmarking - compare fixed and hourly budgets for similar skills and project types.
• Agency prospecting - identify clients hiring for recurring work and prioritize verified payment accounts.
• Skill demand research - measure which skills appear most often in open projects over time.
• AI opportunity scoring - feed an LLM structured project rows with budget, bids and skill tags.

How It Works

Set a search query, a limit and a sort order. The Actor calls the public Freelancer project table in pages of 50, starting at offset zero, and stops when it reaches the requested limit or the source runs out. A short delay between pages reduces the chance of rate limiting.

Each project is normalized into a stable row. The title and description are cleaned of HTML, the project URL is built from the public path, and skills are converted into objects with an ID, name and slug. Budget values remain currency strings because Freelancer projects can be posted in different currencies.

Filters are applied before a row is accepted. Fixed budget minimum and maximum compare against the project minimum and maximum budget. Hourly rate minimum and maximum compare against the average bid rate. Skill filters use a case-insensitive partial match and accept a project when any requested skill is present.

Several fields are accepted by the input form but are not applied by the current build: include_owner, is_fixed, is_hourly, countries and language. The bid-based sort options also fall back to newest first. Use the applied budget and skill filters, then filter the output locally for client country, project type or language if those attributes are not present.

Input

The core input is a keyword, a result limit and a sort order. Budget and skill filters narrow the set before it is saved.

Field	Type	Required	Default	What it does
query	string	No	django	Search keyword used on Freelancer project search.
limit	integer	No	100	Maximum projects saved. The loop stops when this budget is reached.
sort	string	No	date_desc	Sort order: date_desc, date_asc, price_desc or price_asc. Unsupported values fall back to date_desc.
include_owner	boolean	No	false	Accepted by the form, but the current build does not add employer fields.
is_fixed	boolean	No	false	Accepted by the form, but the current build does not filter on project type.
fixed_budget_min	integer	No	None	Keep projects whose maximum fixed budget is at least this value.
fixed_budget_max	integer	No	None	Keep projects whose minimum fixed budget is at most this value.
is_hourly	boolean	No	false	Accepted by the form, but the current build does not filter on project type.
hourly_rate_min	integer	No	None	Keep projects whose average bid rate is at least this value.
hourly_rate_max	integer	No	None	Keep projects whose average bid rate is at most this value.
skills	string[]	No	None	Case-insensitive partial skill filters. A project passes when any requested skill matches.
countries	string[]	No	None	Accepted by the form, but the current build does not filter by client country.
language	string[]	No	None	Accepted by the form, but the current build does not filter by project language.

Keep limit modest while validating a query because every accepted project is billable. Filters are applied client-side after each page, so a narrow filter can require several pages before the limit is filled. A query with no matches can return an empty dataset without an error.

Output

A project row has 15 top-level fields. Budgets and bid averages are source-formatted strings, while bid counts and boolean flags are typed values.

Field group	Fields	What you get
Identity	id, title, url, description	Project ID, cleaned title, public project URL and cleaned description.
Bidding	bidAverage, bidCount	Average bid as a currency string and the number of bids received.
Budget	minBudget, maxBudget, budgetRange	Minimum and maximum project budget plus the display range, all as source strings.
Timing	timeLeft	Human-readable remaining bid time, such as 6 days left.
Flags	featured, urgent, sealed, guaranteed, paymentVerified	Project promotion and client payment flags.
Skills	skills	Array of skill objects with ID, name and slug.

Budget fields are not guaranteed to be numeric. A fixed project might show a plain range, while an hourly project includes a per-hour suffix. Parse the strings only after checking the project context, and keep the original text for auditing. bidAverage can be an hourly rate or a total bid, so do not compare it across project types without normalization.

Pricing

Pricing is pay-per-event. A start event is charged per run and each project saved to the dataset is charged as a result.

Event	FREE	BRONZE	SILVER	GOLD+
Actor start, per run	$0.0005	$0.0005	$0.0005	$0.0005
Project result	$0.003	$0.0029	$0.0028	$0.0027

That is $3.00 per 1,000 projects on FREE, falling to $2.70 per 1,000 on GOLD and higher tiers. A 500-project run costs about $1.50 before the start fee. There is no separate free-preview cap in the current build; every project written to the dataset is billable.

Example Input

{
  "query": "django",
  "limit": 50,
  "sort": "date_desc",
  "fixed_budget_min": 500,
  "fixed_budget_max": 5000,
  "skills": [
    "django",
    "python"
  ]
}

This looks for recent Django projects with a fixed budget between 500 and 5,000 and at least one matching skill. The returned budget strings still need local parsing because the source currency is not normalized.

Example Output

{
  "id": 40785152,
  "title": "Develop a multi-vendor wholesale directory",
  "url": "https://www.freelancer.com/projects/web-development/develop-multi-vendor-wholesale-directory",
  "description": "Build a responsive multi-vendor wholesale directory with buyer and supplier accounts...",
  "bidAverage": "$330",
  "bidCount": 238,
  "minBudget": "$176",
  "maxBudget": "$527",
  "budgetRange": "$176 - $527",
  "timeLeft": "6 days left",
  "featured": false,
  "urgent": false,
  "sealed": false,
  "guaranteed": false,
  "paymentVerified": true,
  "skills": [
    {
      "id": 113,
      "name": "Django",
      "slug": "django"
    },
    {
      "id": 500,
      "name": "Node.js",
      "slug": "nodejs"
    }
  ]
}

This is a trimmed real sample. The description is shortened here for readability; the actual field contains the full cleaned project text. Skills are a nested array and the budget values are strings, not numbers.

Integrations and Automation

Call the Actor from the Apify API, Apify MCP, a scheduled task, Zapier, Make or n8n. Export JSON, CSV or Excel, or push rows to Google Sheets, Airtable, a CRM, a database, Slack or a webhook.

For a proposal pipeline, deduplicate on project id, score projects by budget range, bid count and time left, then route high-fit rows to the right service line. Keep paymentVerified visible but do not treat it as a guarantee of payment.

For market research, aggregate by skill name and week, then compare fixed and hourly budget ranges. Because the Actor returns only open projects, a snapshot measures current demand rather than completed hiring volume.

Related Actors

• Toptal Scraper - freelance job listings, skills and talent data from Toptal.
• PeoplePerHour Scraper - freelance projects and proposals from PeoplePerHour.
• Guru Scraper - freelance job leads and project data from Guru.

FAQ

Does include_owner add employer details?

Not in the current build. The field is accepted for compatibility, but the output schema does not include employer name, country or rating.

Why are is_fixed and is_hourly ignored?

The current build does not apply those type filters. Use the budget fields and inspect the budget string suffix to distinguish fixed and hourly projects locally.

Are countries and language filters applied?

No. They are present in the form but not used by the current snapshot. Filter locally if you have that information from another source.

Why do budgets look like text?

Freelancer projects can use different currencies and hourly suffixes. The Actor preserves the source strings instead of forcing a misleading numeric conversion.

Does it return closed or historical projects?

It targets open projects from the live project table. Results reflect the moment of the run; a project can close or change budget after collection.

Is there a free preview limit?

The current build has no separate free-preview cap. Every accepted project written to the dataset is billed, so set limit deliberately.

For AI Agents and LLM Apps

The Actor provides live freelance project rows with stable IDs, budget strings, bid metrics, flags and nested skills. It is suitable for opportunity scoring and lead routing through the Apify API or Apify MCP.

• One row represents one open Freelancer project. Use id as the stable key.
• Budget values are strings with currency and period context. Parse them with the original text preserved.
• bidAverage is not comparable across fixed and hourly projects without normalization.
• Several form fields are accepted but inactive; do not infer that a country or project-type filter was applied.
• The Actor returns a live snapshot, not a historical archive of closed projects.

Legal and Compliance

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Freelancer.com. It reads publicly visible project listings for legitimate lead generation, market research and recruitment. Freelancer terms and applicable law still apply.

Project descriptions can contain personal or business information. Use the data for lawful outreach, respect platform messaging rules and do not republish full descriptions in a way that infringes copyright or privacy. Budgets and client flags are observations, not guarantees of payment.

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