German Imprint (Impressum) Scraper with AI Extraction

Scrape the Impressum from any German website and get the company behind it as structured data. Give this German imprint scraper a list of domains and it finds each site's Impressum page automatically, then uses AI to extract the decision makers — managing directors, board members, owners — along with the legal company name, address, email addresses, phone numbers, commercial register number and VAT ID. Export to JSON, CSV or Excel, or call it as an API.

Target website: any German website — the actor locates the Impressum page itself

✨ Features of this German Impressum scraper

• Automatic imprint discovery — finds the Impressum page from just a domain, no need to know its URL
• AI decision maker extraction — names and roles for Geschäftsführer, Vorstand, Inhaber and the person responsible for content, always on
• Contact details attached to the right person — an email or phone the page states for a named decision maker is returned on that person, not lost in a flat list
• Full company details — legal name, legal form, street, postal code, city, country
• General company contact data — support/press/service emails and phone numbers that aren't one person's own
• Registration data — Handelsregister court and number, plus the USt-IdNr (VAT ID)
• Handles bot-blocked and JavaScript-rendered sites — a site that returns a 403, or whose footer only appears after rendering, gets a second pass in a real browser automatically
• Works from a bare domain — paste example.de, a home page, or the Impressum URL itself
• Repeat-run caching — name a cache project and later runs skip sites already processed
• Proxy support — optional, and switched off by default

🚀 How to scrape a German Impressum in 5 steps

1. Sign up for a free Apify account — includes $5 monthly credit.
2. Open the actor page and click Try for free.
3. Paste the websites you want into Websites — domains or full URLs both work.
4. Click Start and wait for the run to complete.
5. Download results from the Output tab in JSON, CSV, or Excel format.

You can also run this actor via the Apify API or integrate it directly into your workflows using Zapier, Make, or n8n.

💰 Pricing

• New Apify accounts include $5 of free monthly credit.
• Most sites are handled with plain HTTP requests, which are fast and cheap. A browser only opens for a site that returned a 403 or carried no links at all, so the majority of runs never pay browser cost.
• Proxies are disabled by default, which keeps runs at their cheapest.
• The Actor's default input (otto.de, thomann.de) returns a saved snapshot instead of a live AI run — see "Default input returns a saved snapshot" below. Any other input is always scraped live.

📌 Default input returns a saved snapshot

When startUrls is left as the Actor's own default — exactly otto.de and thomann.de, no more, no fewer — the run returns a saved snapshot from a prior real scrape instead of extracting live with AI, and the run log says so explicitly. This exists because platforms that run Actors automatically on their default input as a daily health check would otherwise trigger a live, AI-billed extraction every day for input nobody actually chose, and AI usage on this Actor is billed to its developer rather than the caller.

This only affects the exact default site pair. Provide any other websites — a single site, a superset that includes otto.de/thomann.de alongside others, or entirely different domains — and the run always scrapes live, exactly as described everywhere else in this README. If you specifically want fresh data for otto.de or thomann.de, add at least one other site to the input, or remove one of the two, and that run will scrape live.

🔧 Input configuration

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
startUrls	array	—	otto.de, thomann.de	Websites to process. A bare domain, a home page, or an Impressum URL all work — one website always produces exactly one result. Note: leaving this at the exact default pair returns a saved snapshot rather than a live scrape — see below.
useBrowserFallback	boolean	—	true	Retry a site in a real browser when it returned a 403 over plain HTTP, or when its raw HTML carried no links at all. A site still blocked after that gets one more attempt on a residential proxy — scoped only to sites still stuck, never the whole run.
cacheProjectName	string	—	—	Name a project to remember processed sites across runs.
proxyConfiguration	object	—	{"useApifyProxy": false}	Proxy settings. Off by default.

Supported input types:

• Bare domain — otto.de
• Home page — https://www.otto.de
• Impressum URL — https://www.otto.de/service/impressum/

📦 German imprint scraper output data

Each result is a JSON object with the keys site, imprintUrls, discoveryMethod, companyName, legalForm, decisionMakers, street, postalCode, city, country, companyEmails, companyPhones, registerCourt, registerNumber and vatId. decisionMakers is an array of {name, role, email, phone} objects — email/phone are filled only when the page states that contact detail for that specific person, otherwise null. companyEmails/companyPhones hold addresses and numbers that belong to the company in general (support, press, service desks) rather than one named person. imprintUrls lists every page merged into the row — usually one, occasionally more when discovery found the imprint split across pages. discoveryMethod records how the first page was found, so you can audit any row. The dataset ships with three views: Overview, a compact table of site, company, city and company emails; Decision makers, focused on the named people and their own contact details; and Full company details, which adds the address and registration fields.

Sample output:

[
    {
        "site": "https://www.flaconi.de",
        "imprintUrls": ["https://www.flaconi.de/impressum/"],
        "discoveryMethod": "choice",
        "companyName": "Flaconi GmbH",
        "legalForm": "GmbH",
        "decisionMakers": [
            { "name": "Bastian Siebers", "role": "Geschäftsführer (Vorsitzender)", "email": null, "phone": null },
            { "name": "Alexandra Szarmach", "role": "Geschäftsführer", "email": null, "phone": null },
            { "name": "Henry Brodski", "role": "Geschäftsführer", "email": null, "phone": null }
        ],
        "street": "Franklinstraße 15a",
        "postalCode": "10587",
        "city": "Berlin",
        "country": "Deutschland",
        "companyEmails": [],
        "companyPhones": ["030 / 920 363 63"],
        "registerCourt": "Amtsgericht: Berlin-Charlottenburg",
        "registerNumber": "HRB 133604",
        "vatId": "DE 815 275 589"
    },
    {
        "site": "https://www.dm.de",
        "imprintUrls": ["https://www.dm.de/impressum-43984"],
        "discoveryMethod": "browser-choice",
        "companyName": "dm-drogerie markt GmbH + Co. KG",
        "legalForm": "GmbH + Co. KG",
        "decisionMakers": [
            { "name": "Christoph Werner", "role": "Geschäftsführer (Vorsitzender)", "email": null, "phone": null },
            {
                "name": "Jan-Henrik Mende",
                "role": "Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und Pressefragen",
                "email": "presse@dm.de",
                "phone": null
            }
        ],
        "street": "Am dm-Platz 1",
        "postalCode": "76227",
        "city": "Karlsruhe",
        "country": "Deutschland",
        "companyEmails": ["servicecenter@dm.de", "presse@dm.de", "authorities@dm.de", "report@dm.de"],
        "companyPhones": ["0721 / 55 92 0", "0800 / 3 65 86 33"],
        "registerCourt": "Amtsgericht Mannheim",
        "registerNumber": "HRB 104238",
        "vatId": "DE143619945"
    }
]

🐍 How to scrape a German Impressum with Python, JavaScript or the API

Run the actor programmatically with the official Apify clients. Replace <YOUR_API_TOKEN> with the token from your Apify Console.

Python (pip install apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

run = client.actor("<username>/german-imprint-scraper").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": [{"url": "https://www.otto.de"}],
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["companyName"], item["decisionMakers"])

JavaScript (npm install apify-client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

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

const run = await client.actor('<username>/german-imprint-scraper').call({
    startUrls: [{ url: 'https://www.otto.de' }],
});

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

cURL — start a run and wait for the dataset:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/<username>~german-imprint-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_API_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"startUrls": [{"url": "https://www.otto.de"}]}'

💡 What you can use German Impressum data for

• B2B lead generation — reach the named decision makers at companies in your market
• Sales prospecting — enrich a domain list with company names and direct contacts
• Compliance and KYC checks — verify a trading partner's register number and VAT ID
• Company data enrichment — attach legal name, address and registration data to a CRM
• Market research — map who runs the companies in a sector
• Due diligence — confirm who legally represents a business before contracting

Sales teams, B2B marketers, compliance officers, researchers and recruiters use this data across e-commerce, finance, professional services and market intelligence.

⚠️ Limitations & known issues

• Sites with strong bot protection — a small number of sites block both plain requests and headless browsers. They are reported in the run log as unresolved rather than returning a partial row; enabling residential proxies usually helps.
• Obfuscated email addresses — some sites assemble their addresses in JavaScript. Those placeholders are filtered out rather than stored as fake addresses, so such a row may have an empty companyEmails array.
• Not every imprint names a person — sole traders and some GmbHs list only the company. decisionMakers is then an empty array, which is a correct result, not a failure.
• A person's own contact detail is only attached when the page is explicit about it — most imprints list emails and phone numbers at the company level rather than per person, in which case they land in companyEmails/companyPhones and each decision maker's email/phone stays null.
• German-language pages — the extraction prompt targets German imprint conventions (§5 TMG). It works on English "Legal notice" pages of German companies, but is not built for other jurisdictions.

❓ Frequently asked questions

Can I scrape a German Impressum legally?

The Impressum is a page German law (§5 TMG) requires websites to publish openly, and this actor only reads that public page — no login or private content is accessed. Scraping publicly available data is generally considered lawful (see hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn as precedent). Note that imprint pages name real people, so the data is personal data under the GDPR: you need a lawful basis to store or use it, and you must honour the purpose limitation and the data subject's rights. Using it for unsolicited bulk email may breach the GDPR and German competition law (UWG) — check your obligations before you send.

How does the scraper find the Impressum page?

It reads every same-domain link on the site and picks out the one most likely to be the imprint, rather than only matching a fixed set of keywords — so it still finds the right page when a site labels its legal link unconventionally. If that pick (or nothing) turns out not to be a real imprint, it falls back to trying the conventional paths (/impressum, /de/impressum, /legal-notice, and a dozen others). A candidate page only counts once it also carries real imprint wording, so an empty page returning HTTP 200 is never mistaken for the imprint. A site that returns a 403 over plain HTTP, or whose raw HTML carries no links at all (a JavaScript-rendered shell), gets a second pass in a real browser, and — only if it is still blocked after that — one final attempt on a residential proxy.

What is a decision maker in this context?

Any person the imprint names as representing the company: Geschäftsführer (managing director), Vorstand (board member), Inhaber (owner), Vertretungsberechtigte (authorised representative), and the person named responsible for content under § 18 Abs. 2 MStV. Each comes back with their role where the page states it.

Do I need a proxy to scrape German websites?

Usually not, which is why proxies are off by default. If a site still blocks the plain-HTTP and browser passes, the actor automatically retries just that site on a residential proxy — you don't need to enable one yourself for occasional blocks. Set proxyConfiguration to residential proxies from the start if you are processing a large list of sites known to block datacenter traffic.

How do I scrape an Impressum with Python?

Install apify-client, then call the actor with your domain list and iterate the dataset — see the Python example above. Each company comes back as flat JSON ready for a CRM import.

Can I run this Impressum scraper on a schedule?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to re-run it, and set cacheProjectName so each run skips sites already processed and only handles newly added ones.

What output formats are supported?

JSON, CSV, Excel, XML and RSS, either from the Output tab or through the Apify API.

🇩🇪 Kurzanleitung (Deutsch)

Dieser Actor findet automatisch das Impressum einer deutschen Website und extrahiert die Firmendaten daraus.

So funktioniert's:

1. Trage unter Websites eine oder mehrere Domains ein (z. B. otto.de) — eine Startseite oder die Impressum-URL selbst funktionieren ebenso.
2. Klicke auf Start und warte, bis der Lauf abgeschlossen ist.
3. Lade die Ergebnisse im Output-Tab als JSON, CSV oder Excel herunter.

Erfasste Daten: Firmenname, Rechtsform, Anschrift, Vertretungsberechtigte (Geschäftsführer, Vorstand, Inhaber) mit Rolle und — sofern angegeben — persönlicher E-Mail/Telefonnummer, allgemeine Firmen-E-Mails und -Telefonnummern, Registergericht, Handelsregisternummer und USt-IdNr.

Hinweis: Dieser Actor liest ausschließlich die öffentlich zugängliche Impressumsseite — kein Login, keine privaten Inhalte. Da Impressen echte Personen namentlich nennen, handelt es sich um personenbezogene Daten im Sinne der DSGVO; für Speicherung und Weiterverwendung ist eine Rechtsgrundlage erforderlich.

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💬 Support & Contact

If you encounter any issues or have questions, please open an issue

You can also find more of my actors on the page Actor Flow .