BBB Business Scraper: Ratings, Accreditation, Complaints, Contacts

Business profiles from the Better Business Bureau (bbb.org), for the US and Canada, from a search term and a location or from pasted bbb.org URLs: BBB rating, accreditation and its date, years in business, complaint and review counts, phone, website, address, opening hours, licences. It works over plain HTTP (no browser), you pay only for businesses delivered, and a run that delivers nothing because of an error or a block ends as Failed, never as a green empty run.

What you get

• Name, other names the business trades under, BBB profile URL, primary category and all categories, description
• BBB letter rating (A+ to F, NR when not rated) with BBB's reasons for it, accredited yes/no, accredited since, revocation date when there is one
• Business started, started locally, incorporated, BBB file opened, years in business, legal entity type, number of employees when listed
• Complaint counts: total (BBB counts the last 3 years), closed in the last 12 months, closed in the last 3 years
• Customer review average (1-5 stars) and number of reviews
• Phone and further phones, fax, website and other websites, social media links, opening hours per weekday
• Optional (off by default): role and company email addresses, see "Email addresses" below
• Street, city, state or province, ZIP or postal code, country, latitude and longitude, service area, headquarters address for a local branch
• Licences listed on the profile (number, issuing agency, expiry date), payment methods
• Management contacts as company roles ("Owner", "President", "Director of Customer Service"), without names by default
• Optional: the newest customer reviews (date, stars, text, and the replies of the business and the reviewer in order) and complaints (date, type, status, text, the business's and the consumer's responses), up to 500 each per business
• One record per business, as JSON, CSV or Excel, or through the API, plus a run summary (OUTPUT_SUMMARY in the run's key-value store): what was requested, delivered and charged, which inputs failed or were ignored, how many requests bbb.org refused and how they were retried, and why the run stopped.

What it does not return by default: email addresses, names of contact persons, reviewer names (each can be turned on, see "Legal and responsible use"). Never: anything behind a bbb.org login, BBB's own scam tracker and charity reports.

How to use

1. Type what you are looking for into Search terms (plumber, roofing contractors, a business name) and where into Locations (Denver, CO, Toronto, ON, 80202). Every term is searched in every location.
2. Or paste bbb.org URLs into bbb.org URLs: business profiles (any tab of a profile), search result pages, or category pages such as www.bbb.org/us/co/denver/category/plumber.
3. Set Maximum businesses per search and press Start.
4. Download the results from the Output tab, or read them from the API.

Input

Field	Type	Default	What it does
searchTerms	list of text	none	Categories, keywords or business names.
locations	list of text	empty	City, ST, City, Province (Calgary, AB or Calgary, Alberta) or a ZIP / postal code. State and province names are turned into their codes. Canadian locations are recognised by province or postal code. Empty: all of the country. bbb.org matches a place it does not know to some other place (Denver, Colorado would become Denver City, TX; Xyzzy, CO becomes Denver); when the place it chose does not match the city and state you wrote, that search fails with a message and nothing is charged for it. A city without a state or postal code is searched as bbb.org reads it, which may not be the city you meant: Toronto alone is Toronto, OH (with country CAN it is Toronto, ON), and Austin alone is Austin, IN, not Austin, TX. The run then logs a warning, the place used is in resolvedLocation in OUTPUT_SUMMARY and in each record's searchLocation, and nothing fails; add the state or province code (Austin, TX) to be sure.
country	USA or CAN	from the location	Which bbb.org country to search. Choose CAN to search Canadian cities by name alone (Toronto is then Toronto, ON); the province code is still the safer choice.
startUrls	list of text	empty	bbb.org profile, search or category URLs, with or without https://. Other entries are ignored and listed in the summary.
maxItemsPerSearch	number	100	Stop each search after this many businesses. Profile URLs are not limited by it.
includeDetails	yes/no	yes	Read each business's profile page. Off: only the search result fields (name, address, phone, rating, accredited, categories, coordinates rounded to about 1 km); faster, same price per business.
accreditedOnly	yes/no	no	Only BBB Accredited businesses.
radiusMiles	number	empty	Only businesses within this distance of each location.
includeBranches	yes/no	yes	bbb.org lists a company's local branches as separate results; each is its own record (isLocalBranch: true). Off: a branch result is replaced by the company's headquarters profile, so each company is delivered and charged once.
splitLargeSearches	yes/no	yes	Get past bbb.org's 225 results per search, see "Limits".
includeReviews, includeComplaints	yes/no	no	Add review and/or complaint texts. Texts are as the consumer wrote them: bbb.org masks most names, but a reviewer can still name themselves or staff of the business.
maxTextsPerBusiness	number	20	Newest reviews, and newest complaints, per business (1-500).
includeEmails	yes/no	no	Role and company email addresses, see "Email addresses".
includeContactNames	yes/no	no	Contact person names (and, with includeEmails, email addresses that may belong to a person). See "Legal and responsible use".
includeReviewerNames	yes/no	no	Reviewer names on reviews. See "Legal and responsible use".
onlyNew, monitorKey	yes/no, text	no, empty	Monitoring, see below.
proxyConfiguration	proxy	off	Not needed, see the FAQ.

Runs use 512 MB by default; more is not needed.

This input was run as P5ovecDNt6wqpk0bD on 2026-10-24 (300 businesses, all 300 with their profile read, 86 s):

{ "searchTerms": ["dentist"], "locations": ["Chicago, IL"], "maxItemsPerSearch": 300 }

Example result

Taken from run 37DnMjRou3YYjZfhA on 2026-10-24 (the prefilled input: "plumber" in "Denver, CO", 5 businesses, no proxy), unedited:

{
  "id": "1296_90254831_892624",
  "name": "Repipe Specialists of Colorado",
  "alternateNames": [
    "Repipe Specialists Inc."
  ],
  "profileUrl": "https://www.bbb.org/us/co/denver/profile/plumber/repipe-specialists-of-colorado-1296-90254831/addressId/892624",
  "bbbRating": "A+",
  "ratingReasons": [],
  "accredited": true,
  "accreditedSince": "2018-10-31",
  "accreditationRevoked": null,
  "primaryCategory": "General Contractor",
  "categories": [
    "General Contractor",
    "Plumber",
    "Building Contractors",
    "Pipe Line Contractors",
    "Piping Contractors",
    "Repiping Specialist"
  ],
  "description": "General and Plumbing Contractors",
  "phone": "(720) 605-7799",
  "additionalPhones": [
    "(800) 737-4746",
    "(303) 854-6410"
  ],
  "fax": null,
  "email": null,
  "additionalEmails": [],
  "emailsWithheld": 2,
  "website": "https://colorado.repipe.com/",
  "otherWebsites": [],
  "socialMedia": {
    "facebook": "https://www.facebook.com/TheRepipeSpecialists",
    "instagram": "https://www.instagram.com/repipespecialists/",
    "youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/@repipespecialists",
    "reddit": "https://www.reddit.com/user/RepipeSpecialists/?solution"
  },
  "street": "191 University Blvd Ste 145",
  "city": "Denver",
  "state": "CO",
  "postalCode": "80206-4613",
  "country": "US",
  "latitude": 39.71999,
  "longitude": -104.959869,
  "serviceArea": "Repipe Specialists serves Denver, CO and surrounding areas.",
  "openingHours": null,
  "businessStarted": "1991-11-12",
  "businessStartedLocally": "2018-01-01",
  "yearsInBusiness": 34,
  "incorporated": "2021-12-06",
  "bbbFileOpened": "2018-03-09",
  "entityType": "Limited Liability Company (LLC)",
  "numberOfEmployees": null,
  "licenses": [
    {
      "number": "MP.00600677",
      "agency": "Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA)",
      "expires": "2027-02-28"
    }
  ],
  "paymentMethods": [],
  "complaintsTotal": 37,
  "complaintsClosedLast12Months": 12,
  "complaintsClosedLast3Years": 37,
  "reviewsAverage": 4.03,
  "reviewsCount": 79,
  "contacts": [
    {
      "role": "Director of Customer Service",
      "isPrincipal": false
    },
    {
      "role": "CEO",
      "isPrincipal": false
    },
    {
      "role": "Regional Manager",
      "isPrincipal": false
    },
    {
      "role": "Service Manager",
      "isPrincipal": false
    }
  ],
  "headquarters": {
    "name": "Repipe Specialists",
    "street": null,
    "city": "North Hollywood",
    "state": "CA",
    "postalCode": "91602"
  },
  "isLocalBranch": true,
  "outOfBusiness": false,
  "logoUrl": "https://m.bbb.org/prod/ProfileImages/2025/58e46cfe-6139-43a5-ad0b-f7e8a722fdc1.png",
  "localBbb": "BBB Great West + Pacific",
  "bbbId": "1296",
  "businessId": "90254831",
  "searchTerm": "plumber",
  "searchLocation": "Denver, CO",
  "detailsFetched": true,
  "reviews": null,
  "complaints": null,
  "textsFetched": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-24T12:05:45.244Z"
}

Field	Meaning
id	bbbId_businessId, plus _addressId for a local branch, taken from the profile URL. The same business found by several searches, or also pasted as a profile URL, has the same id and is delivered once per run. A business with branches appears once for the headquarters profile and once per branch (isLocalBranch: true, with its headquarters), unless includeBranches is off.
bbbRating, ratingReasons	BBB's letter grade and the reasons BBB gives for it.
accredited, accreditedSince	Accreditation now, and since when. A formerly accredited business has accredited: false and no date.
complaintsTotal	Complaints BBB shows for the business; BBB counts the last 3 years.
reviewsAverage, reviewsCount	Average star rating of customer reviews (null when there are none) and their number.
email, additionalEmails, emailsWithheld	Only with includeEmails: role or company addresses. emailsWithheld counts the addresses in the profile's data that were not returned (all of them when includeEmails is off).
contacts	Management contacts as { role, isPrincipal }; name only with includeContactNames.
detailsFetched	true when the profile page was read. false when profile reading was off, or bbb.org refused the profile page after all retries (not seen in testing): the record then has the search fields only, and is charged like any business.
reviews, complaints, textsFetched	Only with the text options; otherwise null. A review has date, rating, text, businessResponse, businessResponseDate and responses (every reply in order, from business, consumer or bbb); a complaint has date, type, status, text and responses.
searchTerm, searchLocation	The search that found the business (location as bbb.org understood it).

Fields bbb.org does not show for a business are null (or an empty list), never missing.

Pricing

Pay per event. You pay for what is delivered, not for time or memory.

Event	Free	Bronze	Silver	Gold and above
Actor start (once per run at the default 512 MB)	$0.003	$0.003	$0.003	$0.003
Business delivered (search fields and, by default, the profile details)	$0.0036	$0.003	$0.0027	$0.0024
Review and complaint texts, per business that has at least one	$0.0012	$0.001	$0.0009	$0.0008

Worked examples on Bronze:

• 100 plumbers in Denver with profile details: $0.003 + 100 x $0.003 = $0.303.

• 1,000 businesses from a split search: $0.003 + 1,000 x $0.003 = $3.003.

• 100 with details and review texts, of which 60 have reviews: $0.303 + 60 x $0.001 = $0.363.

• A daily monitoring run that finds 2 new businesses: $0.003 + 2 x $0.003 = $0.009; a run with nothing new costs the start event, $0.003.

• A business is delivered and charged once per run, however many searches or URLs return it. The texts fee is charged only for businesses with at least one review or complaint added. A profile URL that has no business page on bbb.org is reported and not charged.

• The maximum total charge you set for a run is respected: the actor stops before it would go over, keeps what was delivered, and says so (run l1bQAndBjYsFBylu9: limit $0.012, 3 businesses delivered, $0.012 charged).

Reliability and failure behaviour

What happened	Run status	Status message
Businesses delivered	Succeeded	Scraped 300 businesses from 1 query (P5ovecDNt6wqpk0bD)
bbb.org has nothing for the search	Succeeded	0 results: bbb.org has no businesses for this query (InHg51Ec3Wpm3Q6Se)
bbb.org does not know the location	Failed (that search)	… bbb.org does not recognise the location "Nowhereville, ZZ"; use "City, ST" … (E1JFvi37dzdbaHQL0)
bbb.org matched the location to another place	Failed (that search), nothing charged for it	… bbb.org matched the location "Xyzzyqq, CO" to "Denver, CO", not the place asked for, so this search was not run; … (m0ctOtg660hQ6XMq6)
A pasted profile URL has no business page	Succeeded (the others are delivered)	… — 1 of the given URLs has no business page on bbb.org (removed, or not that kind of page; nothing charged for it) (hItBGJNiR9anmrIHO)
Some profiles refused after all retries	Succeeded	… — details could not be fetched for N businesses (detailsFetched: false)
Nothing delivered because of errors or blocking	Failed	No businesses delivered: … No businesses were charged (the start fee applies).
Input the actor cannot use	Failed, within seconds	Nothing to do: the input has no "searchTerms" and no "startUrls". … (fO5Ov28eJVMXV6r2R, 1 s)
Maximum charge reached	Succeeded	… — stopped at the maximum charge set for this run (l1bQAndBjYsFBylu9)
Run timeout close	Succeeded	… — stopped just before the run timeout; raise the timeout to get the rest (dqpvo7AFEbadFAeyf: 20 s timeout, 53 delivered)

• bbb.org's profile pages sit behind Cloudflare, which can refuse requests (on 2026-10-20, 5% to 40% of direct requests from Apify were refused; on 2026-10-24, none of 321 in run P5ovecDNt6wqpk0bD). A refused request is retried at once with a new browser fingerprint, and after two refusals through Apify Proxy (datacenter, then US residential), up to 8 attempts. The search and review/complaint data come from bbb.org's own JSON endpoints, which were not refused in testing.
• In every test run so far, every delivered business had its profile read; refusals were all recovered by a retry or by the datacenter proxy. The residential step has not been needed yet; it is tested offline only.
• Results are saved page by page. A run that is aborted, times out or is resurrected keeps what was delivered and never delivers or charges the same business twice. A graceful abort (the default in the Console) finishes the page in progress and writes the run summary (run ASVCF4N8mM4lI9tHq: summary, dataset and charged events all 107); a forced abort ends the run at once without a summary.

Limits

• bbb.org shows at most 225 businesses (15 pages) per search, and its total for a city can be in the thousands ("plumber" in Denver: 1,943, many of them based elsewhere but serving Denver). With Split large searches on and a maximum above 225, the actor also reads the search in other orders (A-Z, Z-A, distance, rating) and narrowed by rating group (A to F), accreditation, state and category, each up to 225; each business is delivered and charged once. Run 9gzkXH8Y47cFSz3Ng: "plumber" in "Denver, CO" with a maximum of 2,000 delivered 1,206 of 1,943 businesses (62%), all with profile details, from 623 search pages. That is not every business: for more, also search ZIP codes or nearby cities with a radius. The run summary gives bbb.org's total per search (totalResults) and whether the search was read completely (complete).
• bbb.org's result pages sometimes repeat a business and skip another. A search of 225 or fewer that is read to its end and found fewer distinct businesses than bbb.org's total is read once more in A-Z order for the ones skipped (run AzUVFqLgDVKej6t7O: "plumber" within 5 miles of Denver, 118 of 118; an earlier build delivered 117). Repeats are not delivered or charged twice.
• Local branches: bbb.org lists a company's branches as separate results. In test searches 3-5% of records were branches of a company that was also delivered (9 of 186 dentists in Houston, 12 of 340 roofers in Dallas). Turn off Include local branch listings for one record per company (run CfIhj7SdiRixReQ4A: 225 roofing results in Dallas became 215 companies).
• Speed with profile details: 300 businesses in 86 s (P5ovecDNt6wqpk0bD); a split search spends extra time on search pages that mostly repeat businesses already delivered (those are not charged). Search fields only (includeDetails off) is faster: one request returns 15 businesses.
• A local branch's reviews and complaints are those of its headquarters, as on bbb.org.
• Coordinates from search results only (includeDetails off) are rounded by bbb.org to 2 decimals (about 1 km).
• US and Canada.

Monitoring: only new businesses

1. Turn on Only new businesses and save the input as a task.
2. Schedule the task (for example daily or weekly).
3. The first run delivers what it finds (up to the maximum). Every later run delivers and charges only businesses it has not delivered before for the same search; a run with nothing new ends as Succeeded with 0 new businesses… and charges only the start event. Tested on "locksmith" in "Boise, ID" (49 businesses): runs I86i5XZPjOVghjW1o and ehEPBdqU1TG6MQEp9 with a maximum of 10 delivered 10, then the next 10; 6KFhMyZffajaQZrtl with a maximum of 100 delivered the remaining 29; BuijIodooNA3JI20I then delivered 0 new.

The memory is a key-value store named bbb-business-scraper-monitor in your own account (one record per search and monitor name, at most 10,000 ids each). Delete the store or change Monitor name to start over. A search with more businesses than the maximum is delivered over several runs: each run delivers the next ones it has not delivered yet. bbb.org lists by relevance, not by date, so "new" means "not delivered by this monitor before", which includes businesses newly listed on bbb.org.

Email addresses

bbb.org does not display email addresses on its profile pages: visitors get an "Email this Business" form. Many profiles still carry an address in the page's data, in disguised form. With Include email addresses (includeEmails) on, the actor decodes it and returns it when it is a role or company address. It is off by default.

• Returned: addresses whose name part is made only of role words (info@, office@, customerservice@) and words of the business's own name, category or city (movemastersdenver@, mikesplumbing@), with at least one word that is not a person's name.
• Withheld and counted in emailsWithheld: anything else, including a first name alone or with an initial (mike@ for "Mike's Plumbing", jsmith@, lcooper@), the names in a practice named after a person (jsmithdds@ for "John Smith DDS"), and words that come only from another name the business trades under. This is a heuristic: a family-named business can still have an address that names a person (longdds@ for "Long Family & Cosmetic Dentistry" was returned in run 49Y3Bx6hdjy3uxUbg).
• With Include names of contact persons also on, all addresses are returned.
• Run 49Y3Bx6hdjy3uxUbg (200 dentists in Houston, includeEmails on): 57 records with an address, 77 addresses withheld.

Turn it on only if you have a lawful basis to process these addresses (GDPR, CCPA, CASL in Canada). Do not use them for unsolicited commercial email: US CAN-SPAM treats addresses collected automatically from websites strictly, and bbb.org's terms may restrict their use. You are responsible for how you use them.

FAQ

Do I need a proxy? No. The actor sends requests directly and moves a refused request to Apify Proxy by itself. Set a proxy only if you want every request to go through it.

Why are there no email addresses? Email addresses are off by default; see "Email addresses".

Why fewer results than bbb.org says? bbb.org shows 225 per search; see "Limits".

Can I run it from code? Yes: the API, the Apify clients for JavaScript and Python, Make, Zapier, n8n. The Output tab shows the URLs.

What happens when bbb.org changes? Runs fail loudly instead of returning empty data. Report the run id under Issues.

Legal and responsible use

This actor collects business information that bbb.org shows publicly without a login. By default it does not return personal data of individuals: management contacts come as company roles without names, no email addresses are returned, and reviews come without reviewer names. bbb.org masks most consumer names in complaint and review texts; the actor also masks names after Mr/Mrs/Ms and in the form "the customer, Name," (run l9E1r0x2tK2bRZI3n masked one that bbb.org had left), but a name in other wording can remain in free text.

Three options can return personal data: Include email addresses (includeEmails, see "Email addresses"), Include names of contact persons (includeContactNames: names of owners and managers, and with includeEmails the addresses that may belong to a person) and Include reviewer names (includeReviewerNames). Turn them on only if you have a lawful basis to process that data, for example GDPR Art. 6(1)(f) legitimate interest after a balancing test, or a purpose permitted under the CCPA and other US state laws, and only if you will honour the rights of the people concerned (information, objection, deletion). You are the controller of the data you collect.

You are responsible for how you use the output: respect bbb.org's terms of use, BBB trademarks, copyright and database rights, anti-spam and telemarketing rules (CAN-SPAM, TCPA, CASL in Canada), and data-protection law. Do not present BBB ratings as your own endorsement, and do not use the output for unsolicited marketing to individuals. If unsure, ask a lawyer before you build on it.

This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Better Business Bureau or the International Association of Better Business Bureaus.

Changelog

• 2026-10-24 (0.1.21): a city name without a state, province or postal code (Toronto, Austin) no longer fails with "log is not defined"; it is searched as bbb.org reads it, with a warning. The review texts option now says that free text can name the reviewer or staff.
• 2026-10-24: first version. Email addresses opt-in; locations checked against the place bbb.org chose; state and province names understood; country and includeBranches options; review reply threads; consumer names left in texts masked where recognisable.

Related actors

• Europages Company Scraper: B2B company listings for Europe (manufacturers, wholesalers, service providers).
• Yandex Maps Scraper: business listings with phones, websites, hours and ratings from Yandex Maps.
• Company Hiring Tracker: which companies are hiring and what changed since the last run, from public job boards.

Support

Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab with the run id and what you expected.