ASPCA Toxic & Non-Toxic Plants Scraper

Scrape the ASPCA Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants database into clean records for dogs, cats, and horses.

Use this actor to collect plant common names, scientific names, ASPCA toxicity labels, species-specific safety flags, toxic principles, clinical signs, images, and source URLs from the canonical ASPCA plant safety pages.

What does ASPCA Toxic & Non-Toxic Plants Scraper do?

ASPCA Toxic & Non-Toxic Plants Scraper crawls public ASPCA plant index and detail pages and turns them into structured dataset rows.

It can start from the main plant index, a paginated ASPCA list URL, legacy ASPCA animal-poison-control URLs, current aspca-poison-control URLs, or direct plant names such as Aloe, Lily, and Acorn Squash.

The actor normalizes redirected ASPCA paths, visits plant detail pages politely with HTTP requests, extracts server-rendered page fields, and saves one record per plant.

Who is it for?

• 🐶 Pet-care app teams building dog, cat, or horse safety lookup features.
• 🪴 Plant-care app teams enriching houseplant catalogs with pet safety warnings.
• 🛒 Ecommerce catalog teams labeling nursery, florist, garden, and marketplace products.
• 🏥 Veterinary clinics and poison-control researchers creating reference lists.
• 📊 Data teams who need repeatable ASPCA plant safety exports without manual copy-paste.

Why use this actor?

ASPCA is one of the best-known public references for pet plant toxicity. Manual collection is slow because the database is split across index, paginated list, and plant detail pages.

This actor gives you a repeatable export with normalized booleans for dogs, cats, and horses, plus the original ASPCA wording for auditability.

Data you can extract

Field	Description
commonName	ASPCA plant common name
scientificName	Scientific / Latin name when provided
family	Plant family
toxicityClass	toxic, non-toxic, mixed, or unknown
toxicity	ASPCA toxicity text
nonToxicity	ASPCA non-toxicity text
toxicToDogs	Boolean flag
toxicToCats	Boolean flag
toxicToHorses	Boolean flag
nonToxicToDogs	Boolean flag
nonToxicToCats	Boolean flag
nonToxicToHorses	Boolean flag
toxicPrinciples	Toxic compounds or principles
clinicalSigns	ASPCA clinical signs text
imageUrl	Plant image URL
sourceUrl	Canonical ASPCA page URL

How much does it cost to scrape ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plants?

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing. Each run has a small start charge and then charges per plant record saved.

Current formula-derived pricing:

• Start: $0.005 per run
• Plant record: $0.000074641 on Free, $0.000064905 on Starter/BRONZE, with additional Scale, Business, Platinum, and Diamond discounts

Pricing was calculated from cloud run costs and kept in sync with the live platform pricing.

How to use it

1. Open the actor on Apify.
2. Keep the default ASPCA index URL, or enter plant names.
3. Choose all, toxic, or non-toxic.
4. Select animal types: dogs, cats, horses.
5. Set maxItems.
6. Run the actor.
7. Export results as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or via the Apify API.

Input options

Start URLs

Use this when you want to crawl ASPCA pages directly.

Examples:

• https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/aspca-poison-control/toxic-and-non-toxic-plants
• https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/aspca-poison-control/toxic-and-non-toxic-plants?page=1
• https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/aspca-poison-control/toxic-and-non-toxic-plants/aloe

Plant names

Use plant names for direct lookups.

Examples:

• Aloe
• Sago Palm
• African Violet
• Acorn Squash

Toxicity filter

• all returns toxic, non-toxic, and mixed records.
• toxic returns records toxic to one of the selected animals.
• non-toxic returns records marked non-toxic to one of the selected animals.

Animal types

Choose any combination of dogs, cats, and horses.

Example input

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/aspca-poison-control/toxic-and-non-toxic-plants" }
  ],
  "toxicity": "all",
  "animalTypes": ["dogs", "cats", "horses"],
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example direct lookup input

{
  "plantNames": ["Aloe", "Lily", "Acorn Squash"],
  "toxicity": "all",
  "animalTypes": ["dogs", "cats", "horses"],
  "maxItems": 10
}

Example output

{
  "commonName": "Aloe",
  "scientificName": "Aloe vera",
  "family": "Liliaceae",
  "toxicityClass": "toxic",
  "toxicity": "Toxic to Dogs, Toxic to Cats, Toxic to Horses",
  "nonToxicity": null,
  "toxicToDogs": true,
  "toxicToCats": true,
  "toxicToHorses": true,
  "toxicPrinciples": "Saponins, anthraquinones",
  "clinicalSigns": "Vomiting (not horses), lethargy, diarrhea. The gel is considered edible.",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/aspca-poison-control/toxic-and-non-toxic-plants/aloe"
}

Tips for best results

• Start with a small maxItems value when testing a workflow.
• Use plantNames for targeted enrichment.
• Use the main index URL for full database exports.
• Keep the original ASPCA text fields when building compliance or review workflows.
• Use the boolean fields for fast application filters.

Integrations

Use this actor with:

• Pet safety search tools that need a plant toxicity backend.
• Ecommerce enrichment pipelines for garden and nursery SKUs.
• Airtable, Google Sheets, or BigQuery plant safety databases.
• Veterinary content review workflows.
• Apify webhooks for recurring plant database refreshes.

API usage

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/aspca-toxic-non-toxic-plants-scraper').call({
  plantNames: ['Aloe', 'Lily'],
  maxItems: 10
});
console.log(run.defaultDatasetId);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('MY_APIFY_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('automation-lab/aspca-toxic-non-toxic-plants-scraper').call(run_input={
    'plantNames': ['Aloe', 'Lily'],
    'maxItems': 10,
})
print(run['defaultDatasetId'])

cURL

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~aspca-toxic-non-toxic-plants-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"plantNames":["Aloe","Lily"],"maxItems":10}'

MCP integration

Connect this actor to AI tools through Apify MCP:

• Claude Desktop MCP URL: https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/aspca-toxic-non-toxic-plants-scraper
• Claude Code MCP URL: https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/aspca-toxic-non-toxic-plants-scraper

Add it in Claude Code:

$claude mcp add apify-aspca-plants https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/aspca-toxic-non-toxic-plants-scraper

Claude Desktop JSON config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify-aspca-plants": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/aspca-toxic-non-toxic-plants-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• "Check whether these houseplants are toxic to cats using the ASPCA plant scraper."
• "Create a CSV of ASPCA plants that are toxic to dogs and include clinical signs."
• "Enrich this nursery catalog with ASPCA pet safety labels."

Common workflows

Pet-safe plant catalog

Run the actor with the main ASPCA index and maxItems high enough for the full list. Export CSV and join by common or scientific name.

Cat toxicity lookup

Set animalTypes to cats and toxicity to toxic to build a cat-specific safety table.

Non-toxic houseplant list

Set toxicity to non-toxic and choose dogs and cats for household pet filtering.

Related scrapers

You may also need related Automation Lab actors for ecommerce, product, or website data enrichment:

• https://apify.com/automation-lab/website-contact-finder
• https://apify.com/automation-lab/google-maps-scraper
• https://apify.com/automation-lab/zillow-scraper

Data freshness

ASPCA can update plant pages at any time. For production use, schedule recurring runs and compare sourceUrl plus plant names across exports.

Limitations

• The actor extracts public ASPCA page content only.
• It does not provide veterinary advice.
• Plant common names can be ambiguous; use scientific names when joining with external catalogs.
• ASPCA may omit toxic principles or clinical signs for non-toxic plants.

Legality

This actor accesses publicly available ASPCA pages. Use the data responsibly, respect ASPCA as the source, and follow applicable laws and platform terms. Do not use this actor as a substitute for veterinary advice.

Troubleshooting

Why did my direct plant name return no item?

The actor converts names into ASPCA-style slugs. If a name is not found, try the exact ASPCA detail URL or search the ASPCA site for the canonical name.

Why is clinicalSigns empty?

Non-toxic records often do not include clinical signs. The actor keeps the field as null when ASPCA does not publish it.

Why is a plant marked mixed?

Some ASPCA pages can be toxic to one species and non-toxic to another, such as toxic to cats but non-toxic to dogs or horses.

FAQ

Can it scrape the full ASPCA plant database?

Yes. Use the main index URL and set maxItems high enough for the number of records you need.

Can I filter by pets?

Yes. Use animalTypes for dogs, cats, and horses.

Does it use a browser?

No. The actor uses HTTP and Cheerio because ASPCA publishes the needed data in server-rendered HTML.

Can I export to Google Sheets?

Yes. Use Apify dataset exports or Apify integrations to send the dataset to Google Sheets.

Is this official ASPCA software?

No. This is an independent scraper for public ASPCA pages.