DEPRECATED -- DO NOT USE (2026-04-29)

This actor has been deprecated and will not return real data.

HomeAdvisor (now part of Angi) restructured their search URL layout in 2026. The URL pattern this actor was built around (https://www.homeadvisor.com/c.SERVICE.CITY.STATE.html) no longer exists -- those URLs return "Page Not Found" and HomeAdvisor redirects to their homepage. The actor cannot recover any pro listings under the current site structure.

Do not run this actor. It will not return useful data.

If you ran this actor before 2026-04-29

A combination of a configuration bug and HomeAdvisor's URL restructuring meant runs could complete and incur charges (primarily the Apify actor-start fee) without returning real data, including demo-mode runs that produced sample records rather than live scraping. I'm sorry. That was not the intended behavior.

Apify's billing is platform-managed and I cannot directly issue refunds to user accounts as the actor author. If you believe you were unfairly charged for a run on this actor, the path is to contact Apify Support directly (support@apify.com or via the chat in the Apify console) with your run ID and a brief note. Apify's billing team handles user-side credits and can review individual cases. I have no objection to any review they conduct.

What was wrong:

• The configured Apify charge events for real scraping had a typo (professional-scraped vs professional_scraped), so per-result charges silently failed but the actor-start fee still fired on every run.
• Demo mode wrote sample records to the default dataset, which incurred the per-item fee.
• HomeAdvisor's URL restructure (sometime in 2026) means search runs now return zero results regardless of input. I had not caught this until investigating a user report on 2026-04-29.

What was changed in v3.1.0 (final build, 2026-04-29):

• Demo mode removed entirely.
• Charge event names corrected.
• Actor refuses to start without RESIDENTIAL proxy (so it cannot charge users for guaranteed-zero runs).
• This README rewritten to disclose the issue.
• Actor flagged DEPRECATED in the Apify marketplace.

No further development is planned for this actor. After investigating, the issue is bigger than a URL change.

Why this actor cannot simply be rebuilt (the business-model shift)

A reverse-engineering probe of the current HomeAdvisor.com confirmed the public-facing flow has fundamentally changed:

• HomeAdvisor's search no longer shows a list of pros. When a user searches for a service + ZIP, they are redirected to https://request.homeadvisor.com/service-request/category/{categoryId}?postalCode={ZIP} -- a lead-intake form, not a results page. The user fills out a project brief, and HomeAdvisor sells the lead to pros it has on file.
• The legacy https://www.homeadvisor.com/c.SERVICE.CITY.STATE.html URL pattern (the one that used to list pros for a service in a city) returns 404 across the board, not because of a CDN issue, but because those pages are gone. They were retired when the business model moved to lead-funneling.
• Profile pages (/rated.BUSINESS.ID.html) likely still exist for businesses that have URLs already indexed by Google, but there is no public discovery surface (no list-of-pros page) anywhere on homeadvisor.com today.
• Angi.com (which acquired HomeAdvisor) sits behind a full Cloudflare challenge wall on the homepage, harder to scrape than HomeAdvisor was even at its toughest.

In short: the data this actor was designed to extract -- lists of contractors with reviews, browsable by service + city -- is no longer publicly exposed by HomeAdvisor. This is not a temporary outage or a stale selector; the product surface itself has been removed.

What that means if you came here looking for HomeAdvisor data in 2026:

• If you have a list of HomeAdvisor profile URLs already (from old bookmarks, sitemaps, Google results), you can fetch those individually -- a future actor may offer that as URL-by-URL profile scraping.
• If you want broad home-services pro discovery in 2026, Google Maps, Yelp, BBB, or Houzz still expose public listings and are the better targets.
• If you specifically need leads from HomeAdvisor's funnel, that requires a partnership with HomeAdvisor itself, not scraping.

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Original description (no longer accurate)

The actor was built to scrape HomeAdvisor for home service professionals (plumbers, HVAC techs, roofers, electricians, painters, landscapers, etc.). It searched by service category + location, or scraped a single profile URL. For each professional it captured business name, phone, website, profile URL, service categories, city/state, star rating, total review count, hire count, years in business, Screened & Approved status, Elite Service badge, and up to 100 customer reviews per professional.

This is what the output looked like on a successful scrape (kept here so prior users can interpret historical datasets):

{
  "businessName": "Acme Plumbing Services",
  "homeAdvisorUrl": "https://www.homeadvisor.com/rated.AcmePlumbing.12345.html",
  "serviceTypes": ["Drain Cleaning", "Water Heater Installation", "Leak Repair"],
  "rating": 4.8,
  "reviewCount": 247,
  "hiredCount": 612,
  "yearsInBusiness": 12,
  "address": { "city": "Houston", "state": "TX", "zipCode": null },
  "phone": "(713) 555-0123",
  "website": "https://acmeplumbing.example.com",
  "screenedApproved": true,
  "eliteService": false,
  "reviews": [
    {
      "text": "Showed up on time, fixed the leak, fair price.",
      "rating": 5,
      "author": "Sarah M.",
      "date": "March 2026"
    }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-29T23:15:00.000Z"
}

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Why HomeAdvisor scraping is now hard

For anyone evaluating whether to build their own version:

1. The legacy URL pattern is gone. The /c.SERVICE.CITY.STATE.html and /companylist/CITY/STATE/SERVICE.htm patterns both return 404 / Page Not Found in 2026. Search results live behind their app shell now.

2. Cloudflare Bot Management is aggressive. HomeAdvisor uses __cf_bm cookies, Client Hints fingerprinting (Sec-CH-UA-* headers), and a JS challenge layer. A cold request from any IP, residential or not, gets challenged. You need to land on the homepage first, let __cf_bm set, then navigate.

3. The Angi rebrand split surfaces. Some HomeAdvisor URLs now redirect to angi.com. The same business may appear under different IDs on each property. Any scraper has to decide whether to follow the redirect or stay on the homeadvisor.com surface.

4. Active layout drift. Even within a working scraper, the selectors degrade week-over-week. A maintained scraper has to be re-validated regularly.

A working 2026 build would need: a Playwright/Camoufox browser with persistent context, homepage-first navigation, the current Angi search endpoint (likely a JSON XHR), and a cookie/session pool that cycles to avoid burnout. That's a meaningful rewrite, not a selector tweak.

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Versions

• v3.1.0 (2026-04-29): Final build. Demo mode removed, charge event names corrected, RESIDENTIAL proxy enforced. Actor flagged DEPRECATED -- HomeAdvisor URL pattern no longer valid.
• v3.0.x (2026-04-24): Last build that supported demo mode. Had the billing bug.
• v2.x: Initial pay-per-event pricing model.
• v1.x: Original release.

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Built by John Rippy / Local Howl

If you need a working 2026 HomeAdvisor / Angi scraper, watch Actor Arsenal for a future replacement. For other Local Howl actors, check the same site.

For billing concerns on prior runs of this actor, contact Apify Support directly at support@apify.com -- the actor author cannot issue user-side refunds, only Apify's billing team can.