Craigslist Search Scraper

Scrape Craigslist listings across all 666 Craigslist cities. This Craigslist scraper searches by category, keyword, price range, or map radius, and returns title, price, posting timestamp, latitude and longitude, location name, neighborhood, image URLs, and the post URL.

No Craigslist API key, no login, and no headless browser. Results land in a structured dataset you can export to JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML, or pull straight from the Apify API.

What is Craigslist Search Scraper?

Craigslist Search Scraper is an Apify Actor that extracts classified listings across 666 cities from Craigslist and returns them as clean, structured records. It reads Craigslist's own search API instead of parsing HTML, which means precise coordinates and exact posting timestamps on every row rather than the vague relative dates the web pages show.

What data can this Craigslist scraper extract?

Every run writes one row per posting. The full schema carries 26 fields; the most-used ones are below.

Field	Type	Description
warning	string	Present only on a diagnostic row emitted when a search returned no posts. Absent on every real post record.
message	string	Human readable explanation accompanying a warning row.
query	string	Search keyword used, echoed back on a warning row.
scrapedAt	string	UTC timestamp the warning row was written.
postingId	string	Craigslist's canonical base58 posting identifier. Stable across the life of the post and used to build the post url.
url	string	Direct link to the craigslist post.
title	string	Post title as written by the seller.
price	number	Numeric price. Null on posts with no price, such as free items and many job or community posts.
priceLabel	string	Price as craigslist formats it for display, for example $1,200.
currency	string	Currency the price is quoted in, taken from the craigslist area. USD for US cities, EUR for berlin, and so on.
bedrooms	integer	Bedroom count on housing categories. 0 means a studio. Null outside housing.
areaSqft	integer	Floor area in square feet on housing categories. Null when the poster did not state one.
postedAt	string	UTC timestamp when the post was published, ISO 8601.
latitude	number	Post latitude as supplied by the poster.
longitude	number	Post longitude as supplied by the poster.
locationName	string	Place name craigslist assigns to the post, for example Brooklyn.
neighborhood	string	Neighborhood name when craigslist has one for the post.
citySubdomain	string	Craigslist city the post belongs to, for example newyork.
subareaAbbr	string	Craigslist subarea code within the city, for example mnh for Manhattan.
citySearched	string	The city subdomain from the input that produced this record.
categoryId	integer	Numeric craigslist subcategory identifier for the post.
searchCategory	string	Category abbreviation used for the search, for example sss.

See the Output tab in Apify Console for all 26 fields.

How to scrape Craigslist classified listings

1. Open Craigslist Search Scraper and click Try for free.
2. Add one or more cities — any of Craigslist's 666 city subdomains.
3. Pick a category and optionally a keyword query.
4. Filter with minPrice, maxPrice, postedToday, and hasImage.
5. For radius search, set latitude, longitude, and searchDistance.
6. Click Start and watch rows appear live in the Output tab.
7. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML — or fetch it from the Apify API once the run finishes.

Craigslist Search Scraper input options

Input	Type	What it does	Default
cities	array	Craigslist city subdomains to search, one per line. Use the subdomain from the site url: newyork.craigslist.org is...	yes
category	string	Craigslist category abbreviation. Top-level: sss (for sale), jjj (jobs), hhh (housing), bbb (services), ggg (gigs),...	"sss"
query	string	Optional free-text keyword, for example 'mountain bike'. Leave empty to return everything in the category.
maxItems	integer	Hard cap on records written to the dataset across all cities. Craigslist exposes roughly 2000 results per city and...	100
minPrice	integer	Only return posts at or above this price.
maxPrice	integer	Only return posts at or below this price.
postedToday	boolean	Restrict to posts made today.	false
hasImage	boolean	Restrict to posts that include at least one photo.	false
latitude	string	Optional centre point latitude. Set together with longitude and search radius to search around a specific location...
longitude	string	Optional centre point longitude.
searchDistance	integer	Radius around the latitude and longitude, in miles for US cities.
imageSize	string	Resolution of the returned image urls.	"medium"

Proxy is configured through the standard proxyConfiguration object; the defaults shipped with this Actor are already tuned for the target site.

Example output

{
  "cities": ["newyork", "phoenix"],
  "category": "sss",
  "query": "mountain bike",
  "maxPrice": 500,
  "maxItems": 1000
}

How much does it cost to scrape Craigslist?

This Actor runs on pay per result pricing: $0.001 per posting ($1 per 1,000). A one-time start fee of $0.00005 applies per run.

Results	Approximate cost
1,000	$1.00
10,000	$10.00
100,000	$100.00

You pay for rows you actually receive, so a search that returns nothing costs nothing beyond the start fee. Every Apify account includes free monthly usage credit, so you can trial Craigslist Search Scraper at no cost.

What can you build with Craigslist data?

Source inventory for resale

Filter by category and price ceiling across several cities at once to find underpriced items faster than a human refreshing the page ever could.

Track rental market supply and asking rents

Housing categories carry bedroom counts and square footage, so you can build a live picture of a rental market that no portal publishes.

Monitor used-vehicle pricing

The odometer field on vehicle listings lets you model price against mileage across a whole region.

Research local labour and gig demand

Job and gig categories reveal what employers in a market are actually paying for, in near real time.

Detect arbitrage between nearby cities

The same item often clears at very different prices two cities apart. Running both in one job surfaces the spread.

Craigslist scraping tips and limits

• Craigslist is aggressive about automated traffic. Keep the default proxy configuration and avoid pushing concurrency up hard.
• postedToday is the cheapest way to run this incrementally — you only pay for new postings rather than re-downloading the board.
• Radius search via latitude, longitude, and searchDistance beats city lists when your market straddles several Craigslist regions.
• Postings are removed quickly. Capture the fields you need on first pull rather than planning to re-fetch.

Integrations and automation

Run Craigslist Search Scraper on a schedule to keep a Craigslist dataset fresh, or trigger it from your own stack through the Apify API and the official JavaScript and Python clients. Native integrations push results into Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable, Zapier, Make, GitHub, or any webhook endpoint. The Actor also works as an MCP tool, so an AI agent can call it directly.

Related scrapers

Actor	What it does
Zumper Rental Search Scraper	Structured rental listings with verified addresses.
Apartments.com Listings Scraper	Apartments.com inventory with floorplans and amenities.
eBay Product & Sold Scraper	Sold-price comps to value what you find.
Poshmark Listings & Sold Comps Scraper	Fashion resale comps and sold prices.

Frequently asked questions

How many Craigslist cities are supported?

All 666 Craigslist city subdomains. Put as many as you like in cities and the Actor searches each one.

Can I search by map radius instead of by city?

Yes. Set latitude, longitude, and searchDistance to search a circle, which is the better approach when a metro spans several Craigslist regions.

Do I need a Craigslist API key?

No. Craigslist Search Scraper reads publicly available Craigslist pages and endpoints directly, so there is no key to obtain, no OAuth app to register, and no account to connect.

Can I export Craigslist data to CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets?

Yes. Every run stores results in an Apify dataset that exports to JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML with one click, and the Google Sheets integration writes rows straight into a spreadsheet.

Can I run Craigslist Search Scraper on a schedule?

Yes. Apify schedules run the Actor hourly, daily, weekly, or on any cron expression, and webhooks can notify your systems the moment a run finishes.

Is it legal to scrape Craigslist?

Scraping publicly available data is broadly lawful in the US and EU, but the answer depends on what you collect and how you use it. This Actor is built to gather public classified listing information Craigslist publishes publicly — note that personal listings can contain personal data. Personal data carries extra obligations under GDPR and CCPA. Read Apify's guide on whether web scraping is legal and take your own legal advice for your use case.

Support and feedback

Found a bug, a missing field, or a Craigslist page shape this Actor does not handle yet? Open an issue from the Issues tab on the Actor page. Feature requests and custom-scraper enquiries are welcome there too.