US Travel Advisories Scraper

Scrape U.S. State Department travel advisory data from Travel.State.Gov and turn it into structured records for risk, compliance, and travel operations workflows.

The actor extracts destination names, advisory levels, issue dates, risk indicators, detail URLs, and optional advisory summaries from public State Department pages.

Use it to monitor country risk changes, enrich travel-risk dashboards, power duty-of-care alerts, or keep a clean archive of official U.S. travel advisory updates.

What does US Travel Advisories Scraper do?

US Travel Advisories Scraper reads the public State Department travel advisories listing and saves one dataset item per destination.

It can run in two modes:

• ⚡ Listing mode for fast country, level, risk tag, date, and URL extraction.
• 🔎 Detail mode for advisory guidance, summary text, and last-updated enrichment.

The default input is ready to run against the official advisory index.

Who is it for?

This scraper is useful for teams that need official travel-risk data in repeatable formats.

• 🧭 Travel-risk platforms tracking destination status.
• 🏢 Corporate security and duty-of-care teams.
• 🧾 Compliance teams checking travel policy exceptions.
• 🛫 Travel agencies and trip-planning tools.
• 🛡️ Insurers and assistance providers.
• 📊 Data teams building country risk dashboards.

Why use this scraper?

The State Department website is designed for human readers. This actor converts the advisory table into clean machine-readable rows.

Benefits include:

• Official source URLs for every record.
• Normalized issue dates for filtering and joins.
• Numeric advisory levels for dashboards.
• Risk indicator arrays for tagging and search.
• Optional detail summaries for downstream alerts.
• Recurring runs for change monitoring.

What data can you extract?

Each output item can include:

Field	Description
country	Destination name from the advisory table.
advisoryLevel	Numeric advisory level from 1 to 4.
advisoryLevelText	Full level label, such as Level 4: Do not travel.
dateIssued	Raw issued date from Travel.State.Gov.
dateIssuedIso	Normalized issued date in YYYY-MM-DD format.
riskIndicators	Risk pills such as crime, terrorism, health, unrest, or natural disaster.
detailUrl	Official detail page URL.
guidance	Detail-page guidance text when available.
summary	Advisory summary or page summary.
lastUpdatedIso	Normalized detail-page last-updated date when available.
scrapedAt	Timestamp for the actor run.

How much does it cost to scrape US travel advisories?

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing.

You pay a small start fee per run and a per-item fee for each advisory record saved. Platform billing uses your Apify subscription tier; the current per-record event is ADVISORY_SCRAPED.

Example run	Records	Approximate FREE-tier actor fee	Approximate BRONZE-tier actor fee
Quick sample	20	$0.0056	$0.0055
Country watchlist	50	$0.0066	$0.0064
Full listing snapshot	120	$0.0087	$0.0083
Daily full listing for 30 days	3,600	$0.1172	$0.1025

These examples use the configured $0.005 run-start fee plus the current per-record tier prices from the actor configuration. They exclude any separate Apify platform compute or proxy costs charged by Apify to your account.

The Apify free plan can usually cover many lightweight listing-mode test runs because the source is public HTML and does not require a browser. For example, 120 advisory records costs under one cent in actor event fees at the FREE tier.

For production monitoring, set maxItems high enough to cover the full advisory table and run the actor on a schedule.

Input options

The input schema supports simple monitoring workflows.

• startUrl — State Department advisory listing URL.
• countryNames — optional exact destination names to keep.
• advisoryLevels — optional numeric level filters from 1 to 4.
• maxItems — maximum number of advisory records to save.
• includeDetails — fetch country detail pages for summaries and guidance.
• changedSince — keep records issued on or after a date.

Example input

{
  "startUrl": "https://travel.state.gov/en/international-travel/travel-advisories.html",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "includeDetails": true
}

Country watchlist input

{
  "countryNames": ["Mexico", "France", "Japan"],
  "maxItems": 25,
  "includeDetails": true
}

Level 4 monitoring input

{
  "advisoryLevels": [4],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "includeDetails": true
}

Output example

{
  "country": "Afghanistan",
  "advisoryLevel": 4,
  "advisoryLevelText": "Level 4: Do not travel",
  "dateIssued": "02/20/2026",
  "dateIssuedIso": "2026-02-20",
  "riskIndicators": ["UNREST (U)", "CRIME (C)", "HEALTH (H)"],
  "detailUrl": "https://travel.state.gov/en/international-travel/travel-advisories/afghanistan.html",
  "guidance": "Do not travel due to civil unrest, crime, terrorism...",
  "summary": "Do not travel to Afghanistan for any reason...",
  "lastUpdatedIso": "2026-04-02",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-27T00:00:00.000Z"
}

How to run the scraper

1. Open the actor on Apify.
2. Keep the default advisory listing URL.
3. Choose whether to include detail summaries.
4. Add country or level filters if needed.
5. Set maxItems.
6. Start the run.
7. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or via API.

Tips for reliable monitoring

• Use listing mode (includeDetails: false) for the fastest daily checks.
• Use detail mode when alerts need human-readable guidance and summary text.
• Filter with countryNames for corporate travel watchlists.
• Filter with advisoryLevels for high-risk security queues.
• Use changedSince to focus a recurring workflow on recently issued advisories.

Integrations

Typical integrations include:

• Send Level 4 advisory rows into Slack or Teams.
• Store full advisory snapshots in a data warehouse.
• Compare scheduled run datasets to identify changed issue dates.
• Enrich traveler booking records with destination risk level.
• Feed compliance dashboards with risk indicators.
• Trigger human review when a country moves to Level 3 or Level 4.

API usage with Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/us-travel-advisories-scraper').call({
  maxItems: 100,
  includeDetails: true,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items[0]);

API usage with Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('MY-APIFY-TOKEN')
run = client.actor('automation-lab/us-travel-advisories-scraper').call(run_input={
    'maxItems': 100,
    'includeDetails': True,
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items[0])

API usage with cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~us-travel-advisories-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"maxItems":100,"includeDetails":true}'

MCP usage

You can connect this actor to AI tools through Apify MCP.

Use this MCP server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/us-travel-advisories-scraper

Add it to Claude Code with the HTTP transport explicitly set:

$claude mcp add apify-travel-advisories --transport http https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/us-travel-advisories-scraper

For Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, or another MCP client, add the same HTTP server URL to the client's MCP server JSON/settings. Use an Apify API token in the client environment if your workflow requires authenticated actor runs.

Or configure an MCP client with JSON:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify-travel-advisories": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/us-travel-advisories-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• "Run the US Travel Advisories Scraper for Level 4 countries and summarize changes."
• "Get advisories for Mexico, Japan, and France and format them for a travel-risk memo."
• "Extract all State Department risk indicators into a table by country."

Change monitoring workflow

For recurring monitoring:

1. Schedule the actor daily or weekly.
2. Keep maxItems high enough for the full table.
3. Store each dataset snapshot.
4. Compare country, advisoryLevel, and dateIssuedIso between runs.
5. Alert when a watched country changes level or receives a new issued date.

Data source

The actor uses public pages from Travel.State.Gov, including the travel advisories table and destination detail pages.

It does not log in, bypass private systems, or access non-public data.

Limitations

• The actor depends on the public State Department page structure.
• Some destination links point to country information pages rather than advisory-only pages.
• Detail summaries are best-effort and may be unavailable for some destinations.
• Advisory interpretation should be reviewed by qualified travel-risk professionals.

Legality

This actor extracts publicly available government information.

You are responsible for using the data in accordance with applicable laws, platform terms, and your organization's compliance requirements.

Do not use scraped data as the sole basis for safety decisions without reviewing the official source pages.

FAQ

Is this an official State Department API?

No. This is an Apify actor that extracts public Travel.State.Gov pages into a structured dataset. Always keep the official detail URL with downstream records.

Can I monitor only high-risk countries?

Yes. Set advisoryLevels to [3, 4] or [4] and run the actor on a schedule.

Troubleshooting

Why did I get fewer rows than expected?

Check maxItems, countryNames, advisoryLevels, and changedSince. Filters are applied before saving items.

Why is summary empty for some destinations?

Some links point to country information pages or pages without the same advisory component. The actor still saves listing fields and URLs.

Should I enable detail mode?

Enable detail mode when you need guidance or summary text. Disable it for fast table snapshots.

Related scrapers

You may also want other Automation Lab actors for travel, government, compliance, or alert monitoring workflows:

• automation-lab/cdc-travel-health-notices-scraper
• automation-lab/nps-park-conditions-alerts-api-scraper
• automation-lab/world-bank-projects-scraper
• automation-lab/samgov-government-contracts-scraper

Support

If the State Department changes the advisory page layout and extraction breaks, open an issue with a run link and a sample expected country.

Changelog

• Initial version extracts advisory listing rows and optional detail summaries.