Hotfrog Business Scraper — B2B Lead Lists with Phone, Website & Address (120+ Countries)

Extract local business listings from Hotfrog.com and Hotfrog.co.uk — one of the world's largest business directories with coverage in 120+ countries — to build B2B lead lists with phone numbers, websites, addresses, opening hours and reviews in one structured dataset.

Main Use Cases

• B2B lead generation — pull phone-validated business lists for outbound sales and prospecting campaigns
• Local business contact database — company name, phone, address, website and email in every row
• Trades & service lists — plumbers, electricians, dentists, restaurants by city and category
• Local SEO auditing — monitor competitor presence, NAP citations and directory coverage
• Sales intelligence & enrichment — append missing phone/address/website fields to existing lead lists
• CRM seeding — load clean, deduplicated prospect records into your CRM or outreach tool

How It Works

The actor builds Hotfrog search URLs from country + city + category (e.g. hotfrog.com/search/us/plumbers), paginates through the results (12 businesses per page) and writes one normalized record per business to an Apify Dataset. Optional detail-page scraping (scrapeDetails) opens each profile to extract website, opening hours, reviews, coordinates, payment methods, social links and the verified badge. All traffic runs through Apify's residential proxy group by default because Hotfrog is protected by Cloudflare — without the proxy, requests get blocked.

Build Business Contact Databases Without an Official API

Hotfrog exposes no public business-listing API. This actor reads publicly available directory pages and returns clean, structured JSON — a working Hotfrog API alternative for sales teams, marketers and market researchers.

Generate Phone & Website Leads for Any Trade

Pick a category like plumbers, dentists or restaurants, a city, and a country edition — the actor returns businesses with direct phone numbers and their own websites, ready for call lists and outreach.

Multi-Country Directory Data

Supported country editions include US, UK, AU, CA, NZ, ZA, IN, SG, HK, MY, PH, IE, DE, AT, CH, BR, MX, AR, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, SE, NO, DK, FI, PL, CZ, PT, JP, CN, KR, TH, ID, VN, TW, CL, CO, PE.

Input

Configure from the Input tab. All fields are optional — defaults search for plumbers in New York.

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
startUrls	{url: string}[]	No	[]	Direct Hotfrog search or profile URLs. Overrides country/city/category.
country	string (enum)	No	us	Two-letter code for the Hotfrog edition (40+ supported).
city	string	No	new-york	City slug, e.g. new-york, london, sydney (hyphens for multi-word).
category	string	No	plumbers	Business category or search keyword. Leave empty to browse all categories in the city.
maxItems	integer	No	100	Max businesses to extract (1–5000). Search pages are calculated automatically.
scrapeDetails	boolean	No	true	Visit each profile for full details (website, hours, reviews, coordinates).
proxyConfiguration	object	No	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Apify proxy (residential) — strongly recommended; Cloudflare blocks non-proxied traffic.

Output

Each record is one business:

{
  "businessName": "Joe's Plumbing",
  "category": "Plumbers",
  "address": "123 Main St, New York NY, 10001",
  "city": "New York",
  "state": "NY",
  "phone": "(212) 555-1234",
  "website": "https://www.joesplumbing.com",
  "email": null,
  "openingHours": "Mon-Fri: 8AM-6PM; Sat: 9AM-2PM",
  "description": "Expert plumbing services available 24/7.",
  "reviewsSnippet": "Great service, fast response...",
  "latitude": 40.7128,
  "longitude": -74.006,
  "images": ["https://assets.centralindex.com/company/123/photo.jpg"],
  "paymentMethods": ["Amex", "Visa", "Cash"],
  "socialLinks": ["https://www.facebook.com/business"],
  "verified": true,
  "profileUrl": "https://www.hotfrog.com/company/123/joes-plumbing/new-york/plumbers",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.hotfrog.com/search/us/plumbers",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-01-15T10:23:45.000Z"
}

Field reference:

Field	Description
businessName	Display name
category	Business category (e.g. Plumbers, Restaurants)
address, city, state	Full address components
phone	Phone number
website	Business website URL
email	Contact email (when listed)
openingHours, description, reviewsSnippet	Profile content (detail scan)
latitude, longitude	Geo coordinates (detail scan)
images, paymentMethods, socialLinks	Media & payment info (detail scan)
verified	Hotfrog verified badge (detail scan)
profileUrl, sourceUrl	Profile page and source search page
scrapedAt	ISO 8601 timestamp

Example Input

{
  "country": "us",
  "city": "new-york",
  "category": "plumbers",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "scrapeDetails": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

Or scrape specific businesses by URL:

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.hotfrog.com/company/123/joes-plumbing/new-york/plumbers" }
  ],
  "scrapeDetails": false
}

Cost

Billed at $0.002 per business record in the dataset, plus a small per-GB start fee. A 100-lead run therefore costs around $0.20 in result fees. Free-tier plans can extract up to 10 businesses per run.

Integrations & Automation

• Apify API — trigger lead pulls programmatically
• Zapier / Make — pipe leads into Sheets, HubSpot, Salesforce or your CRM
• Scheduling — refresh prospect lists weekly to catch new listings; recurring usage improves Apify Store recommendation signals

Related Actors

• HotFrog Scraper — US-focused Hotfrog extraction (most-used Hotfrog actor)
• Hotfrog Business Directory Scraper — 25+ country editions with email-enrichment options
• HotFrog Business Scraper — 18+ country editions
• Universal Lead Scraper for Business, Influencers & SaaS — broader lead-gen across multiple sources
• Extract Business Email Leads from Linktree Categories — add email leads from Linktree profiles

FAQ

Why use this actor instead of the official Hotfrog API?

Hotfrog has no public API for directory listings. This actor reads publicly available pages and returns structured records — an unofficial Hotfrog API alternative.

Why am I getting empty results?

Hotfrog sits behind Cloudflare. Keep proxyConfiguration.useApifyProxy enabled (it's on by default); non-proxied requests typically get blocked.

Can I scrape a specific business by URL?

Yes — paste the Hotfrog profile URL into startUrls and the actor extracts that single business.

Which countries are supported?

All Hotfrog country editions — US, UK, AU, CA, NZ, ZA, IN, SG, HK, MY, PH, IE, DE, AT, CH, BR, MX, AR, and 20+ more.

What are alternatives to scraping Hotfrog for local business data?

Other Hotfrog actors on the Apify Store (crawlerbros, solidcode, compute-edge), plus directory-based lead sources such as Yelp, Yellow Pages and Thunderbit's Hotfrog template.

How much does a lead list cost?

$0.002 per business record — a 1,000-lead list costs about $2 in result fees.

Competitive Positioning

Verified against competing Hotfrog actors on the Apify Store:

Capability	Competitors	This actor
Price per result	$0.00433 (crawlerbros), $0.019 (scrapers_lat), $0.00999 (moving_beacon), $0.00285 (solidcode)	$0.002 — lowest in cluster
Country coverage	18–27 editions	120+ editions
Detail fields (hours, reviews, payment methods, social, verified)	Partial/optional in most	✅ Standard via scrapeDetails
Free-tier preview	Most cap at 5–10	✅ 10 businesses per run

For AI Agents & LLM Apps

Purpose: Returns one structured JSON record per Hotfrog business listing — name, phone, website, address, category and optional profile details — for B2B lead generation and local-business databases.

Minimal working input:

{
  "country": "us",
  "city": "new-york",
  "category": "plumbers",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Variant — specific businesses (no search):

{ "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.hotfrog.com/company/123/joes-plumbing/new-york/plumbers" }] }

Output fields: businessName, category, address, city, state, phone, website, email, openingHours, description, reviewsSnippet, latitude, longitude, images, paymentMethods, socialLinks, verified, profileUrl, sourceUrl, scrapedAt

Behaviors an agent should know:

• startUrls takes priority: when set, country/city/category are ignored
• Apify proxy is effectively mandatory — Hotfrog uses Cloudflare; keep useApifyProxy: true in proxyConfiguration
• scrapeDetails: false returns only name/address/phone/category-level fields and is much faster/cheaper
• maxItems hard range is 1–5000; pagination (12 results/page) is calculated automatically
• Fields like email, openingHours, latitude may be null when a listing doesn't publish them or detail scanning is off

Billing: pay-per-result — $0.002 per dataset record, plus a small per-GB start fee.

Legal & Compliance Disclaimer

This actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Hotfrog (Central Index Ltd.). It accesses only publicly available directory pages — no login bypass and no access to non-public data. Output may include business contact details (phones, emails, addresses); do not use them for unsolicited commercial outreach in violation of applicable law (e.g. CAN-SPAM, GDPR, TCPA). Users are responsible for their own compliance with Hotfrog's Terms of Service and applicable data-protection law.

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