Bing Images Scraper

Extract full-resolution image URLs, thumbnails, source pages, titles, and descriptions from Bing Image Search — no API key required, no proxies needed, near-zero cost.

What does it do?

This actor scrapes Bing Images using direct HTTP requests — no browser, no Playwright, no API key. It parses structured data embedded in Bing's HTML and returns clean, structured image records for every result.

Key features:

• 🖼️ Extract full-resolution image URLs directly — no redirect or extra fetch needed
• 🔍 Thumbnail URLs from Bing's CDN
• 🌐 Source page URL showing where the image originally appeared
• 📝 Image title and description text
• 🔑 Bing media ID for deduplication
• 🎨 Filter by image size, type, color, and license
• 🛡️ Safe search control (Off / Moderate / Strict)
• 📄 Paginate up to 1,000 results per query
• 💾 Export results as JSON, CSV, or Excel

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Who is it for?

This actor is built for anyone who needs bulk image data without the friction of an API key or a paid subscription:

• 🤖 AI/ML engineers building computer vision datasets who need thousands of labeled images fast
• 🎨 Designers and art directors collecting visual references, mood boards, or style guides
• 📰 Content creators and journalists sourcing images related to a topic, person, or event
• 🛒 E-commerce teams researching product visuals or monitoring competitor imagery
• 🔬 Academic researchers studying image trends, media representation, or visual culture
• 📊 SEO and brand managers discovering where branded images are appearing across the web
• 🏫 Students and educators gathering visual material for presentations or learning projects

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Why use it?

Bing Image Search is one of the largest public image indexes in the world — and unlike Google Images, it does not aggressively block datacenter traffic. That makes it uniquely suited for programmatic scraping:

• ✅ No API key or account required — the public Bing Images web interface is freely accessible
• ✅ No proxies needed for typical usage volumes (Bing is datacenter-friendly)
• ✅ Ultra-low cost — HTTP-only scraping, 256MB memory, runs in seconds
• ✅ Up to 1,000 results per query with rich metadata in every record
• ✅ Powerful built-in filters — size, type, color, license, and safe search
• ✅ No per-query fees unlike the official Bing Image Search API (Azure Cognitive Services)

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Data you can extract

Field	Type	Description
imageUrl	string	Full-resolution image URL (direct link to the image file)
thumbnailUrl	string	Bing CDN thumbnail URL
sourceUrl	string	URL of the webpage where the image appeared
title	string	Image title or alt text
description	string	Image description (when available)
mediaId	string	Bing's internal media ID (useful for deduplication)
query	string	The search query that produced this result
position	integer	Result position (1-based)

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How much does it cost to scrape Bing images?

This actor uses Pay-Per-Event (PPE) pricing — you only pay for what you actually use. There are no monthly minimums or subscription fees.

Event	Price
🚀 Run started (one-time per run)	$0.005
🖼️ Per image scraped	$0.003

Example cost estimates:

• 💰 100 images → $0.005 + 100 × $0.003 = $0.31
• 💰 500 images → $0.005 + 500 × $0.003 = $1.51
• 💰 1,000 images → $0.005 + 1,000 × $0.003 = $3.01

Compute costs are negligible (HTTP-only, 256MB memory, ~5 seconds per 100 images) and are already included in the estimates above. See the Pricing tab for the full breakdown.

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How to scrape Bing images

Follow these steps to start extracting image data in minutes:

1. Go to the actor page at apify.com/automation-lab/bing-images-scraper
2. Click "Try for free" — no credit card required to start
3. Enter your search query in the query field (e.g. "minimalist office interior")
4. Set maxResults to control how many images to return (default: 100, max: 1,000)
5. Apply filters as needed — size, type, color, license, or safe search level
6. Click "Save & Run" — the actor runs in the cloud, no local setup required
7. Download your results as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Dataset tab
8. Integrate via API or webhook to automate recurring data collection

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Input parameters

Field	Type	Default	Description
query	string	required	Search query (e.g. "golden retriever puppies")
maxResults	integer	100	Maximum number of images to return (1–1000)
safeSearch	string	Moderate	Safe search level: Off, Moderate, or Strict
imageSize	string	all	Filter by size: Small, Medium, Large, Wallpaper
imageType	string	all	Filter by type: photo, clipart, linedrawing, animatedgif, transparent
color	string	all	Filter by dominant color: ColorOnly, Monochrome, Black, Blue, Brown, Gray, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red, Teal, White, Yellow
license	string	all	Filter by license: Any, Public, Share, ShareCommercially, Modify, ModifyCommercially

Example input

{
  "query": "golden retriever puppies",
  "maxResults": 100,
  "safeSearch": "Moderate",
  "imageSize": "Large",
  "imageType": "photo",
  "color": "",
  "license": ""
}

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Output example

Each image result is saved as a dataset item:

{
  "imageUrl": "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1587300003388-59208cc962cb",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.abc123&pid=15.1",
  "sourceUrl": "https://unsplash.com/photos/golden-retriever-puppies",
  "title": "Golden Retriever Puppies Playing",
  "description": "Three golden retriever puppies running in a grassy field",
  "mediaId": "433CD363A1B2C4D5E6F7",
  "query": "golden retriever puppies",
  "position": 1
}

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Tips for best results

• 🎯 Be specific with your query — "golden retriever puppy outdoors" returns more consistent results than "dog"
• 📐 Use imageSize: Large or Wallpaper when building training datasets that need high-resolution source material
• 🎨 Combine color and imageType filters to narrow results — e.g. color: Red + imageType: photo for product photography
• 🔒 Use license: ShareCommercially if you plan to use images in commercial projects — this filters for appropriately licensed results
• 🔁 Run multiple parallel queries for broader coverage — the Apify API lets you start multiple runs simultaneously
• 🧹 Use mediaId for deduplication when running the same query multiple times over time
• ⚠️ Expect up to ~1,000 unique results per query — Bing's index depth varies by topic; niche queries may return fewer unique images
• 📋 The actor returns URLs, not image files — use the imageUrl values with a downloader if you need the actual files

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Integrations

Connect this actor to your existing workflows without writing custom code:

• 🗄️ Google Sheets — export image URLs directly to a spreadsheet for team review or manual curation using the Google Sheets integration
• 🤖 Make (Integromat) / Zapier — trigger a run on a schedule and push new image URLs to Slack, Airtable, Notion, or any other app via webhook
• ☁️ AWS S3 / Google Cloud Storage — download and store images at scale by piping the imageUrl outputs into a storage pipeline
• 🧠 AI image pipelines — feed imageUrl and title fields directly into OpenAI Vision or CLIP embeddings for visual search or classification
• 📧 Brand monitoring alerts — schedule daily runs with a brand keyword query and compare results over time to detect new image appearances
• 🔗 Combine with other scrapers — chain this actor with DuckDuckGo Scraper to cross-reference image results from multiple search engines

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Use with the Apify API

You can trigger runs programmatically and retrieve results using any language.

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/bing-images-scraper').call({
  query: 'minimalist office interior design',
  maxResults: 200,
  imageSize: 'Large',
  imageType: 'photo',
  safeSearch: 'Moderate',
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Scraped ${items.length} images`);
items.forEach(item => console.log(item.imageUrl));

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(token='YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')

run = client.actor('automation-lab/bing-images-scraper').call(run_input={
    'query': 'minimalist office interior design',
    'maxResults': 200,
    'imageSize': 'Large',
    'imageType': 'photo',
    'safeSearch': 'Moderate',
})

dataset = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId'])
items = dataset.list_items().items
print(f"Scraped {len(items)} images")
for item in items:
    print(item['imageUrl'])

cURL

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~bing-images-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "query": "minimalist office interior design",
    "maxResults": 200,
    "imageSize": "Large",
    "imageType": "photo",
    "safeSearch": "Moderate"
  }'

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Use with Apify MCP Server

The Apify MCP Server lets AI assistants like Claude run this actor directly through natural language — no code required.

Setup in Claude Code

Add to your ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@apify/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "APIFY_TOKEN": "YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Setup in Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@apify/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "APIFY_TOKEN": "YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Setup in Cursor

Add the same MCP server block to your Cursor MCP settings. Once connected, you can run actors from the Cursor AI chat panel.

Example prompts

Once connected, you can ask Claude or Cursor:

• 💬 "Scrape 500 large photos of minimalist living rooms from Bing Images and give me a CSV"
• 💬 "Get 200 transparent-background product images of wireless headphones from Bing"
• 💬 "Find wallpaper-resolution images of mountain landscapes using the Bing Images Scraper"
• 💬 "Collect 100 images tagged with commercial-use licenses for the query 'team collaboration'"

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Is it legal to scrape Bing images?

Web scraping public search results is generally considered lawful in most jurisdictions, particularly following the hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn ruling (9th Circuit, 2022) which affirmed that scraping publicly accessible data does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Key points:

• ✅ Bing Images is publicly accessible — no login or account is required to view results
• ✅ This actor collects metadata (URLs, titles, descriptions) — not copyrighted image content itself
• ✅ You are responsible for how you use the image URLs returned — always check the license of any image before using it in a project
• ⚠️ Bing's Terms of Service restrict automated access to their API but do not explicitly prohibit scraping the web interface for non-commercial personal use
• ⚠️ Commercial use of scraped image content (not URLs) may require additional licensing — use the license filter to narrow results to appropriately licensed images

Recommended practice: Use the license: ShareCommercially or license: ModifyCommercially filter when collecting images for commercial projects to stay within safe legal boundaries.

This section is informational, not legal advice. Consult a lawyer for your specific use case.

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Frequently asked questions

Can I download the actual image files?

This actor returns URLs, not image files. To download images, use the imageUrl values from the output with a downloader script or another actor. The imageUrl is a direct link to the full-resolution file.

How many results can I get per query?

Up to 1,000. Most Bing queries return 500–1,000 unique images before results start repeating. Niche queries may return fewer.

Do I need a Bing API key?

No. This actor scrapes the public Bing Images web interface, not the Bing Image Search API. No API key or Azure account is required.

Is this different from the official Bing Image Search API?

Yes. The Azure Cognitive Services Bing Image Search API charges per query and has strict rate limits. This actor scrapes the public web interface and only charges per image returned.

Why am I getting fewer results than expected?

Bing's result depth varies by query. Very specific or niche queries may have fewer than 1,000 indexed images. Try broadening your search terms or removing filters. If you need results from multiple angles, run separate queries and combine the datasets.

The actor ran but some image URLs return 404 — is that normal?

Yes. Bing's index may contain references to images that have since been removed from their source websites. The sourceUrl field shows where the image was originally found. This is expected behavior and not a bug in the actor.

Can I scrape multiple queries in one run?

The current version supports one query per run. For multiple queries, start parallel runs via the Apify API — each run is lightweight and completes in seconds.

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