Craigslist Scraper

What does Craigslist Scraper do?

Craigslist Scraper extracts listing data from Craigslist search results across any US city. Search by keyword in any category — for sale, housing, jobs, services, gigs, community — and get structured data for every listing. Optionally follow each listing URL to get full descriptions, images, posting dates, and item attributes.

Use it for market research, price comparison, lead generation, inventory sourcing, and local market analysis.

Use cases

• Price comparison — Compare prices for used goods, electronics, furniture, or vehicles across different Craigslist cities and regions.
• Inventory sourcing — Find products to resell by scanning for underpriced items in for-sale categories.
• Rental market research — Monitor housing listings to analyze rent prices, availability, and trends in specific neighborhoods.
• Job market analysis — Track job postings by keyword to understand local hiring trends and salary ranges.
• Lead generation — Find service providers, contractors, or freelancers in specific cities and categories.
• Local market intelligence — Analyze listing volumes and prices to understand supply/demand in any metro area.

Why use Craigslist Scraper?

• Any US city — Works with any Craigslist subdomain: newyork, sfbay, losangeles, chicago, seattle, and hundreds more.
• All categories — For sale, housing, jobs, services, gigs, and community.
• Fast and lightweight — Pure HTTP extraction with Cheerio. No browser needed. Gets 300+ listings per search in seconds.
• Optional detail enrichment — Enable includeDetails to follow each listing URL and get full descriptions, images, posting dates, and item attributes.
• Price filtering — Filter by minimum and maximum price to narrow results.
• Multiple search queries — Run several keyword searches in a single run.
• Clean structured data — Every listing includes title, price, location, URL, and more.
• Pay-per-event pricing — You only pay for listings scraped. No monthly subscription.

What data can you extract?

Each listing in the output includes:

Field	Description
listingId	Craigslist listing ID
title	Listing title
price	Price as displayed (e.g., "$200")
priceNumeric	Price as a number (e.g., 200)
location	Neighborhood or area within the city
city	Craigslist city/region (e.g., "newyork", "sfbay")
category	Category searched (e.g., "for_sale")
url	Direct link to the listing
description	Full listing description (when includeDetails is enabled)
postedAt	Posting date/time as ISO string (when includeDetails is enabled)
imageCount	Number of images (when includeDetails is enabled)
imageUrls	Array of image URLs (when includeDetails is enabled)
latitude	Latitude coordinate (when includeDetails is enabled)
longitude	Longitude coordinate (when includeDetails is enabled)
address	Street address (when includeDetails is enabled)
bedrooms	Bedrooms/bathrooms (housing, when includeDetails is enabled)
sqft	Square footage (housing, when includeDetails is enabled)
condition	Item condition (for-sale, when includeDetails is enabled)
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of when data was collected

How much does it cost to scrape Craigslist?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing — you pay only for what you scrape. No monthly subscription. All platform costs (compute, proxy, storage) are included.

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.005
Per listing	$0.002

Example costs:

• 20 listings (basic) → ~$0.045
• 100 listings (basic) → ~$0.205
• 10 listings with details → ~$0.025
• 1,000 listings → ~$2.01

The free tier on Apify gives you $5/month — enough for ~2,400 listings.

How to scrape Craigslist

1. Click Try for free to open the Actor in Apify Console.
2. Enter one or more search keywords (e.g., "laptop", "bicycle").
3. Choose a Craigslist city (e.g., "newyork", "sfbay", "losangeles").
4. Select a category (For Sale, Housing, Jobs, etc.).
5. Optionally enable Include listing details for full descriptions and images.
6. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
7. Download your data as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Dataset tab.

Example input:

{
    "searchQueries": ["laptop", "macbook"],
    "city": "newyork",
    "category": "for_sale",
    "maxResults": 50,
    "includeDetails": true,
    "minPrice": 100,
    "maxPrice": 1000
}

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	array	required	Keywords to search on Craigslist
city	string	"newyork"	Craigslist city subdomain (e.g., newyork, sfbay, losangeles, chicago)
category	string	"for_sale"	Category: for_sale, housing, jobs, services, gigs, community
maxResults	integer	100	Maximum listings to return per keyword
includeDetails	boolean	false	Follow each listing for full description, images, and attributes
minPrice	integer	—	Minimum price filter
maxPrice	integer	—	Maximum price filter
maxRequestRetries	integer	3	Retry attempts for failed requests (1–10)

Output example

{
    "listingId": "7916291766",
    "title": "Dell Inspiron notebook laptop computer",
    "price": "$200",
    "priceNumeric": 200,
    "location": "Brooklyn",
    "city": "newyork",
    "category": "for_sale",
    "url": "https://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/sys/d/brooklyn-dell-inspiron-notebook-laptop/7916291766.html",
    "description": "Very good condition and seldom taken out of the house...",
    "postedAt": "2026-02-19T18:13:00-0500",
    "imageCount": 2,
    "imageUrls": [
        "https://images.craigslist.org/00505_6GdwfDeDqEP_0t20CI_600x450.jpg",
        "https://images.craigslist.org/00r0r_75O90wuRsu3_0t20CI_600x450.jpg"
    ],
    "latitude": 40.6782,
    "longitude": -73.9442,
    "address": "123 Flatbush Ave",
    "bedrooms": "",
    "sqft": "",
    "condition": "excellent",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-03-03T00:11:52.977Z"
}

Tips for best results

• Start without details — Basic mode scrapes 300+ listings in seconds. Enable includeDetails only when you need descriptions and images.
• Use specific keywords — "macbook pro m3" returns better results than just "laptop".
• Try different cities — Compare prices across cities for arbitrage. Popular cities: newyork, sfbay, losangeles, chicago, seattle, boston, denver, austin, miami, portland.
• Filter by price — Use minPrice and maxPrice to narrow results to your target range.
• Schedule regular runs — Use Apify Schedules for daily monitoring of new listings.
• Combine categories — Run separate searches for "for_sale" and "housing" to build a comprehensive local market dataset.
• Multiple keywords per run — Add several keywords to searchQueries for efficient batch scraping.

Integrations

Connect Craigslist Scraper to your existing tools and workflows:

• Google Sheets — Export scraped data directly to Google Sheets.
• Zapier — Trigger actions in 5,000+ apps when new listings are found.
• Make (Integromat) — Build automated workflows with scraped Craigslist data.
• Slack — Get notified when new listings match your criteria.
• Webhooks — Send data to your own API endpoint after each run.
• Apify API — Programmatically start runs and retrieve results.
• Craigslist → Google Sheets rental tracker — Schedule daily housing scrapes and auto-append to a spreadsheet to track rent prices and availability over time.
• Craigslist → Slack new listing alerts — Get notified instantly when new listings match your search criteria — great for competitive markets where listings go fast.

Using the Apify API

Node.js:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

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

const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/craigslist-scraper').call({
    searchQueries: ['laptop'],
    city: 'newyork',
    maxResults: 50,
    includeDetails: true,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_API_TOKEN')

run = client.actor('automation-lab/craigslist-scraper').call(run_input={
    'searchQueries': ['laptop'],
    'city': 'newyork',
    'maxResults': 50,
    'includeDetails': True,
})

items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

Craigslist cities

Popular city subdomains you can use:

City	Subdomain		City	Subdomain
New York	newyork		San Francisco	sfbay
Los Angeles	losangeles		Chicago	chicago
Seattle	seattle		Boston	boston
Denver	denver		Austin	austin
Miami	miami		Portland	portland
Dallas	dallas		Atlanta	atlanta
Phoenix	phoenix		Minneapolis	minneapolis
Philadelphia	philadelphia		Washington DC	washingtondc

For a complete list of cities, visit craigslist.org/about/sites.

cURL:

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~craigslist-scraper/runs" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "searchQueries": ["apartment"],
    "city": "sfbay",
    "category": "housing",
    "maxResults": 50
  }'

Use with AI agents via MCP

Craigslist Scraper is available as a tool for AI assistants that support the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Setup for Claude Code

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com"

Setup for Claude Desktop, Cursor, or VS Code

Add this to your MCP config file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com"
        }
    }
}

Example prompts

Once connected, try asking your AI assistant:

• "Search Craigslist SF for apartments under $2000/month"
• "Find used cars in Los Angeles on Craigslist"
• "Get all freelance gig postings in New York on Craigslist"

Learn more in the Apify MCP documentation.

Legality

Scraping publicly available data is generally legal according to the US Court of Appeals ruling (HiQ Labs v. LinkedIn). This actor only accesses publicly available information and does not require authentication. Always review and comply with the target website's Terms of Service before scraping. For personal data, ensure compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and other applicable privacy regulations.

FAQ

How many listings can I scrape per search? Craigslist returns up to ~300-400 listings per search query. Use maxResults to limit the output.

How fast is the scraper? Basic mode (no details) scrapes 300+ listings in 2-3 seconds. With includeDetails enabled, each listing takes about 1-2 seconds to fetch the detail page.

Can I search multiple cities? Currently, each run searches one city. To search multiple cities, run the actor once per city or schedule separate runs.

What categories are available? For Sale, Housing, Jobs, Services, Gigs, and Community. These cover the main Craigslist sections.

Why are description and images empty? Enable the includeDetails option to fetch full descriptions, images, and posting dates from each listing's detail page. Basic mode only returns data from the search results page.

Listings are missing or the scraper returns 0 results. What happened? Craigslist may temporarily block requests from certain IPs. The scraper uses automatic retries, but if you consistently get 0 results, try a different city or verify the keyword returns results on Craigslist directly. Very niche keywords may have no listings in some cities.

Can I scrape multiple cities in one run? Currently, each run searches one city. To search multiple cities, schedule separate runs for each city or use the Apify API to start multiple runs programmatically.

How do I search Craigslist across multiple cities at once?

Each run searches one city. To cover multiple cities, use the Apify API to start parallel runs programmatically:

const cities = ['newyork', 'sfbay', 'losangeles', 'chicago', 'seattle'];
const runs = await Promise.all(cities.map(city =>
    client.actor('automation-lab/craigslist-scraper').call({
        searchQueries: ['macbook pro'],
        city,
        category: 'for_sale',
        maxResults: 100,
    })
));

Alternatively, use Apify's Scheduler to run separate city searches automatically and merge the results in Google Sheets. This is the most common setup for price comparison arbitrage across US markets.

Can I set up alerts for new Craigslist listings?

Yes. Use a combination of scheduled runs and integrations to get real-time-like alerts:

1. Set up a Schedule in Apify Console to run the scraper every 15–60 minutes
2. Connect a Webhook that fires when each run finishes
3. In your webhook handler, compare new listings against previously seen IDs and filter for new ones
4. Push new listings to Slack, email, or any notification service via Zapier or Make

This pattern is popular for competitive markets like SF Bay Area rentals or limited-supply items where listings disappear within hours.

Is Craigslist data useful for real estate market research?

Yes — Craigslist is one of the richest publicly available sources for local rental market data, particularly for smaller metros and informal listings not captured by Zillow or Apartments.com. Use the housing category to extract:

• Rental price trends by neighborhood and bedroom count (bedrooms, sqft, priceNumeric)
• Supply analysis — listing volumes by city and neighborhood
• Geographic clustering — latitude/longitude coordinates for mapping rental density
• Seasonal patterns — track pricing and availability changes month over month with scheduled runs

Enable includeDetails: true to get full descriptions, square footage, bedroom counts, and coordinates for each listing.

How do I find underpriced items on Craigslist for resale?

The most effective approach is to search multiple cities for the same item, filter by price, and compare against known market values:

1. Set searchQueries to specific model names (e.g., "iphone 14 pro", "trek checkpoint")
2. Set minPrice and maxPrice to filter out unrealistic listings
3. Enable includeDetails: true for condition and full descriptions
4. Run across 5–10 cities and sort results by priceNumeric ascending

The condition field (excellent, good, fair) and imageUrls help quickly filter quality listings before reaching out.

Other ecommerce scrapers

• Amazon Scraper -- Scrape Amazon product data, prices, and reviews.
• eBay Scraper -- Scrape eBay listings, prices, and seller data.
• Walmart Scraper -- Scrape Walmart product data, prices, and reviews.
• Etsy Scraper -- Scrape Etsy product listings, seller data, and shop reviews.
• Target Scraper -- Scrape Target product data and prices.
• Shopify Scraper -- Scrape products from any Shopify store.