German Website Impressum Scraper

Turn a list of public German company websites into evidence-backed legal and contact records. The Actor finds each site's statutory Impressum, then extracts the legal company name, address, public email and phone, VAT ID, commercial register details, representatives, and short source excerpts.

It is designed for recurring B2B lead enrichment, CRM cleanup, supplier research, and compliance triage where a homepage alone does not provide the legal entity behind a brand. You provide the websites; the Actor performs bounded same-site discovery and returns one typed result row per unique input URL.

What does this German website scraper do?

For every submitted homepage or direct legal-notice URL, the Actor:

1. validates that the target is a public HTTP or HTTPS URL;
2. downloads the supplied page as lightweight HTML;
3. follows a same-host link labelled Impressum, Imprint, or Anbieterkennzeichnung;
4. tries a bounded set of conventional Impressum paths when no link is available;
5. detects statutory German legal labels;
6. extracts normalized lead fields and source evidence;
7. records every URL checked and a clear found, not_found, or error outcome.

Direct Impressum URLs are supported too. In that case, the Actor avoids an unnecessary homepage crawl.

Who is it for?

• Sales operations teams enriching a domain list before account assignment.
• Revenue operations teams matching brands to their legal entities in a CRM.
• Procurement teams collecting displayed supplier identity and register evidence.
• Market researchers building structured samples of German business websites.
• Compliance analysts triaging public legal-notice coverage before manual review.
• Data engineers feeding recurring website enrichment into a warehouse or spreadsheet.

The Actor does not discover companies from Google or another directory. It processes the public website URLs that you supply.

Why use structured Impressum records?

German legal notices often contain fields that are absent from a homepage or contact page:

• the exact legal entity rather than only a trading brand;
• a registered or service address;
• managing directors or board representatives;
• VAT identification and commercial register numbers;
• a register court;
• editorial responsibility details;
• direct evidence from the source page.

Unlike a generic contact extractor, this Actor keeps the located Impressum URL, checked-page trail, processing status, and bounded evidence excerpts next to the extracted values. That makes downstream review and refresh workflows easier.

What data can I extract?

Field	Meaning
inputUrl	Original normalized website or Impressum URL
inputDomain	Hostname from the input
resolvedDomain	Hostname after redirects
status	found, not_found, or error
imprintUrl	Located public legal-notice URL
companyName	Displayed legal company or organization name
legalForm	Detected form such as GmbH, AG, KG, SE, or e.V.
address	Displayed legal or registered address text
emails	Public email addresses on the legal page
phoneNumbers	Public phone numbers on the legal page
vatId	Displayed German VAT ID
registrationCourt	Register or local court text
registrationNumber	HRB or HRA number
representatives	Managing directors, board members, or representatives
responsiblePerson	Editorially responsible person when displayed
sourceEvidence	Short legal-label excerpts supporting the fields
pagesChecked	Pages visited during bounded discovery
httpStatus	Last relevant HTTP status
errorMessage	Bounded failure diagnostic
scrapedAt	ISO 8601 extraction timestamp

Website markup varies. Any unavailable extracted field is returned as null or an empty array rather than being invented.

How to run the German Website Impressum Scraper

1. Open the Actor in Apify Console.
2. Add one or more company homepages or direct Impressum URLs to Company website URLs.
3. Keep Maximum pages per website at 6 for normal discovery.
4. Set Maximum websites to cap the batch.
5. Click Start.
6. Open the Impressum leads dataset view or export it as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS.

A useful first input is:

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.bosch.de/" },
    { "url": "https://www.zeit.de/" }
  ],
  "maxItems": 2,
  "maxPagesPerWebsite": 6,
  "maxConcurrency": 2
}

Input parameters

startUrls (required)

A list of public HTTP or HTTPS URLs. Values may be homepages or direct Impressum pages. Private-network, localhost, credential-bearing, and unsupported-protocol URLs are rejected. Duplicate normalized URLs are processed once.

maxItems

Maximum unique input URLs processed in the run. Default: 100. Range: 1 to 1000. The limit is applied before requests are scheduled.

maxPagesPerWebsite

Maximum number of supplied/homepage and candidate legal pages checked per website. Default: 6. Range: 1 to 15.

maxConcurrency

Maximum websites processed at once. Default: 5. Range: 1 to 15. Reduce this for small or rate-sensitive sites.

requestTimeoutSecs

Per-page HTTP timeout. Default: 20 seconds. Range: 5 to 60 seconds. Transient network and selected temporary HTTP failures receive bounded retries.

Output example

A current real-site run returns rows shaped like this (representative values shortened):

{
  "inputUrl": "https://www.zeit.de/",
  "inputDomain": "zeit.de",
  "resolvedDomain": "zeit.de",
  "status": "found",
  "imprintUrl": "https://www.zeit.de/impressum/index",
  "companyName": "Zeitverlag Gerd Bucerius GmbH & Co. KG",
  "legalForm": "GmbH & Co. KG",
  "address": "Helmut-Schmidt-Haus, Buceriusstraße, 20095 Hamburg",
  "emails": ["redaktion@zeit.de"],
  "phoneNumbers": ["+49 40 ..."],
  "vatId": "DE189342458",
  "registrationCourt": "Amtsgericht Hamburg",
  "registrationNumber": "HRA 91",
  "representatives": ["Nils von der Kall"],
  "responsiblePerson": null,
  "sourceEvidence": ["Vertreten durch die Geschäftsführung ..."],
  "pagesChecked": [
    "https://www.zeit.de/",
    "https://www.zeit.de/impressum/index"
  ],
  "httpStatus": 200,
  "errorMessage": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-13T05:30:00.000Z"
}

The dataset retains diagnostic outcome rows so batch integrations can reconcile every submitted URL. Only a successfully located legal record triggers the lead billing event.

How much does it cost to extract German website Impressum leads?

The Actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• start event: $0.005 once per run.
• lead event: applies once for each successfully located and extracted Impressum record.
• Diagnostic outcome rows do not trigger the lead event.

Current per-lead prices decrease by Apify plan:

Plan	Price per found lead
FREE	$0.005336
BRONZE	$0.00464
SILVER	$0.0036192
GOLD	$0.002784
PLATINUM	$0.001856
DIAMOND	$0.0012992

At BRONZE pricing, a run with 10 found Impressum leads costs about $0.0514; 100 found leads cost about $0.469; and 1,000 found leads cost about $4.645. Batches with fewer extracted records trigger fewer lead events. Apify compute usage is billed under the user's platform plan.

Bulk lead-enrichment workflow

For a recurring CRM process:

1. export domains missing legal-entity fields from the CRM;
2. map them into startUrls;
3. schedule the Actor daily, weekly, or monthly;
4. join rows back on inputDomain;
5. accept found fields into a staging table;
6. route not_found and error statuses to a retry or review queue;
7. compare sourceEvidence and scrapedAt on later runs.

The Actor returns current public page content. It does not maintain history or claim that a field changed; store snapshots in your own dataset or warehouse when change detection is needed.

Export to spreadsheets and data pipelines

The default dataset works with Apify's standard exports. Common patterns include:

• CSV or Excel export for sales operations;
• Google Sheets via an Apify integration;
• Make or Zapier workflows triggered after a run;
• webhook delivery to an enrichment service;
• JSON API ingestion into a data warehouse;
• scheduled Tasks for recurring domain batches.

Use status as the workflow branch and keep imprintUrl plus sourceEvidence for review.

Run with the Apify API

Replace YOUR_TOKEN with an Apify API token.

cURL

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~german-imprint-leads/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "startUrls": [{"url": "https://www.bosch.de/"}],
    "maxItems": 1
  }'

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/german-imprint-leads').call({
  startUrls: [{ url: 'https://www.bosch.de/' }],
  maxItems: 1,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('automation-lab/german-imprint-leads').call(run_input={
    'startUrls': [{'url': 'https://www.bosch.de/'}],
    'maxItems': 1,
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

Use with MCP and AI assistants

Claude Code

Add the Actor as an Apify MCP tool in Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http apify \
  "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/german-imprint-leads"

Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code

Use this equivalent MCP JSON configuration in Claude Desktop, Cursor, or VS Code:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/german-imprint-leads"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• “Extract the public Impressum records for these five German supplier websites.”
• “Return company name, VAT ID, register number, representatives, and source URL as JSON.”
• “Separate found records from websites that need manual review.”

Accuracy, limits, and failure behavior

• Extraction uses public server-rendered HTML; it does not run a browser.
• JavaScript-only or challenge-protected legal pages may return not_found or error.
• Labels and page structures differ, so fields may be null even when other fields are found.
• The Actor checks same-host pages only and does not crawl an entire site.
• It does not validate email deliverability, VAT registration, or register status.
• It does not infer hidden contacts or enrich people from third-party sources.
• A found result means a page with German legal signals was located, not that every field was available or legally sufficient.
• Redirects are followed and recorded through resolvedDomain and imprintUrl.
• Temporary request failures receive bounded retries; permanent HTTP failures do not loop.

For best results, provide canonical company homepages or direct Impressum URLs and keep the crawl limit at its default.

Responsible and legal use

Only process pages you are permitted to access. Respect website terms, robots guidance, applicable rate limits, database rights, privacy rules, and the purpose for which public contact data was displayed. German Impressum pages can contain personal names and contact details. A public page does not automatically authorize unsolicited marketing, profiling, or unrestricted redistribution.

Use an appropriate lawful basis, minimize retained fields, secure exports, honor deletion or objection rights where applicable, and obtain legal advice for your jurisdiction and use case. This Actor is a technical extraction tool, not legal or compliance advice.

FAQ and troubleshooting

Why did I get not_found?

The Actor could fetch pages but did not find enough legal-page signals within the configured page limit. Try supplying the site's direct Impressum URL or increasing maxPagesPerWebsite up to 15.

Why did I get error?

Inspect errorMessage, httpStatus, and pagesChecked. The site may be unavailable, challenge-protected, non-HTML, or too slow. Increase the request timeout when the public page responds slowly.

Why is a field null?

The page may not display it in recognizable text. Check imprintUrl and sourceEvidence before deciding whether manual extraction or another authoritative source is appropriate.

Does the Actor search Google for businesses?

No. It deliberately processes user-supplied URLs. This keeps the workflow predictable and avoids charging for unrelated search results.

How does event billing work?

The one-time start event applies to the run. The lead event applies only when an Impressum record is successfully located and extracted; diagnostic rows do not trigger it.

Related automation-lab Actors

• Website Contact Details Extractor for broader email, phone, and social-link extraction outside legal notices.
• Website Company Address Extractor for identifying office, mailing, and company address candidates across public pages.

Use this Actor when Germany-specific statutory identity and evidence are the core job; use the related Actors when broader website contact or address coverage is more important.

Support

When reporting a problem, include a reproducible public URL, the input settings, run ID, status, pagesChecked, and the bounded errorMessage. Do not post API tokens, private customer lists, or confidential exports.