Facebook Pages Scraper

Discover and extract structured data from Facebook Pages at scale. This actor discovers relevant Facebook Pages via Facebook's own search (most reliable, requires session cookies) plus DuckDuckGo and Google as supplementary sources, then extracts business details, engagement metrics, contact info, and more — all using residential IPs for reliability.

What You'll Get

Each discovered page is returned as a structured row with fields including:

• Page identity: name, ID, canonical URL, categories
• Engagement: follower count, likes, check-ins, talking-about
• Contact: email, phone, address, website, Messenger link
• Media: profile picture, cover photo
• Business info: price range, business hours, rating, ad library reference

Features

• Search-powered discovery: finds pages via Facebook's own search (when cookies are provided) plus DuckDuckGo and Google as supplementary sources
• Scale to 1K+ results: combine multiple search terms × locations and increase maxItems (each combination adds up to ~40 pages to the pool)
• Residential IPs always: all Facebook page requests use Apify residential proxy — no need to configure proxy settings
• Cookie authentication: when you provide session cookies the scraper bypasses most login-wall blocks
• Smart fallback chain: HTTP → Playwright browser → Playwright with cookies (each step only activates when the previous one fails)
• Dual extraction: regex over JSON-LD, Open Graph, inline scripts, and intro cards for maximum field coverage
• Error rows: unavailable/deleted pages appear as structured error rows instead of being silently dropped

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchTerms	Array of strings	(required)	Plain search terms for page discovery (e.g. ["Coffee Shop", "Bakery"])
locations	Array of strings	[]	Optional locations combined with each search term (e.g. ["London", "Manchester"])
maxItems	Integer	10	Maximum number of page rows to output
cookies	String	""	Facebook session cookies — strongly recommended. See Cookies below

Example Input

{
  "searchTerms": ["Coffee Shop", "Cafe", "Bakery"],
  "locations": ["London", "Manchester", "Birmingham"],
  "maxItems": 300,
  "cookies": "..."
}

That single input produces 9 search combinations (3 terms × 3 cities), each yielding up to ~40 discovered URLs — giving a pool of up to ~360 candidates to fill 300 results from.

Cookies (Authentication)

Strongly recommended for any run.

Without session cookies, Facebook serves a compact login-wall stub for many discovered pages — you'll get some data but contact fields (phone, address, website) are gated. Providing cookies lets the scraper retry login-wall pages with an authenticated browser, dramatically increasing field coverage and yield.

How to export cookies from your browser:

1. Log in to Facebook in Chrome or Firefox
2. Open DevTools → Application → Cookies → facebook.com
3. Export the cookies for .facebook.com using a browser extension like EditThisCookie (export as JSON) or Cookie Quick Manager on Firefox
4. Paste the exported JSON array into the cookies field

Minimum cookies needed: c_user, xs, datr, fr, sb.

Accepted formats:

1. JSON array (recommended — export directly from your browser extension):

   [
     { "name": "c_user", "value": "100074...", "domain": ".facebook.com", "path": "/", "expires": 1815212390, "httpOnly": false, "secure": true },
     { "name": "xs", "value": "8%3A2vaT...", "domain": ".facebook.com", "path": "/", "httpOnly": true, "secure": true },
     { "name": "datr", "value": "7JhPar...", "domain": ".facebook.com", "path": "/", "httpOnly": true, "secure": true }
   ]
   

2. Cookie header string: "c_user=100074...; xs=8%3A...; datr=7JhP..."

Cookies expire (typically 90 days). If you see high skip rates, refresh your cookies.

Scaling to 1K+ Results

The actor is designed to scale — here is the fastest path to large datasets:

1. Use multiple search terms and locations. Each (term, location) pair runs its own discovery pass. Example: 5 terms × 10 cities = 50 combinations × up to ~40 pages each = up to ~2,000 candidates in the pool.

2. Set maxItems to your target. The actor over-discovers ~2× maxItems URLs to absorb login-walls and fetch failures without leaving you short.

3. Provide session cookies. This is essential at scale — cookies enable Facebook's own search as the primary discovery source (far more reliable than external search engines) and let login-wall pages be retried with an authenticated browser.

4. Vary your search terms. Generic terms (e.g. "Restaurant") produce many duplicate pages across locations. More specific terms (e.g. "Italian Restaurant", "Sushi Bar") yield more unique pages.

Example for 1K results:

{
  "searchTerms": ["Restaurant", "Cafe", "Bar", "Pub", "Bistro"],
  "locations": ["London", "Manchester", "Birmingham", "Glasgow", "Leeds", "Bristol", "Edinburgh", "Liverpool", "Sheffield", "Cardiff"],
  "maxItems": 1000,
  "cookies": "..."
}

50 search combinations, each yielding up to ~40 unique URLs — enough to fill 1K+ results (with cookies provided).

Output

Page Identity

Field	Type	Description
facebookUrl	String	Facebook page URL
pageUrl	String	Normalized page URL
pageName	String	Page name or slug
pageId	String or null	Facebook page identifier
facebookId	String or null	Facebook ID (usually matches pageId)
title	String or null	Full page title with context

Classification

Field	Type	Description
categories	Array or null	Page categories
category	String or null	Primary category
info	Array or null	Short info lines from the page
intro	String or null	Page introduction or description

Contact & Business

Field	Type	Description
phone	String or null	Public phone number
email	String or null	Public contact email
messenger	String or null	Messenger link
address	String or null	Address or coordinates
addressUrl	String or null	Google Maps link for the address
website	String or null	Primary linked website
websites	Array or null	All detected website links
priceRange	String or null	Price range (e.g. "££")

Engagement

Field	Type	Description
followers	Number or null	Follower count
likes	Number or null	Like count
followings	Number or null	Following count
checkins	Number or null	Check-in count ("were here")
talkingAboutCount	Number or null	Talking-about count

Media

Field	Type	Description
profilePictureUrl	String or null	Profile picture URL
coverPhotoUrl	String or null	Cover photo URL

Business Details

Field	Type	Description
business_hours	String or null	Business hours info
ratingOverall	Number or null	Overall rating score
ratingCount	Number or null	Review/rating count
ratingText	String or null	Human-readable rating text
pageAdLibrary	Object or null	Ad library metadata or link

Sample Output

{
  "facebookUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/ozonecoffeeuk",
  "pageUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/ozonecoffeeuk",
  "pageName": "ozonecoffeeuk",
  "pageId": "191234567",
  "facebookId": "191234567",
  "title": "Ozone Coffee Roasters | Facebook",
  "categories": ["Coffee Shop"],
  "category": "Coffee Shop",
  "info": null,
  "intro": "Specialty coffee roaster and cafe in London.",
  "phone": null,
  "email": null,
  "messenger": "https://m.me/191234567",
  "priceRange": null,
  "address": null,
  "addressUrl": null,
  "website": null,
  "websites": null,
  "followers": 9100,
  "followings": 12,
  "checkins": null,
  "talkingAboutCount": null,
  "profilePictureUrl": "https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/...",
  "coverPhotoUrl": "https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/...",
  "ratingOverall": null,
  "ratingCount": null,
  "ratingText": null,
  "business_hours": null,
  "pageAdLibrary": "https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=all&country=ALL&view_all_page_id=191234567&search_type=page"
}

Error Rows

When a page is unavailable or deleted:

{
  "url": "https://www.facebook.com/pages/OldPage/163665216985663",
  "error": "not_available",
  "errorDescription": "This content isn't available..."
}

Use Cases

• Local business discovery: find businesses in specific cities or regions
• Competitive intelligence: build datasets of competitor pages in your industry
• Lead generation: collect pages with contact info for outreach
• Market research: survey the Facebook page landscape for a category
• Monitoring: run repeatedly to track new pages for a search term

FAQ

Do I need a Facebook account to use this?

No, but it's strongly recommended. Without cookies the scraper falls back to DuckDuckGo/Google discovery and extracts public HTML only. Providing session cookies from a logged-in Facebook account enables the most reliable discovery method (Facebook's own search), unlocks retry capability for login-wall pages, and gives access to contact fields that aren't in the public HTML.

Why are some fields null?

A null field means Facebook did not expose that information in the page's public HTML, the page owner did not fill it in, or the field layout for that page type doesn't include it. Fields like phone, address, and website are only populated when the page owner has listed them on their Facebook page. Adding cookies increases the chance of extracting these for login-gated pages.

Why did I get fewer results than maxItems?

The most common reasons:

• Login walls: Facebook gates some pages behind a login session. Without cookies, these are skipped. Provide session cookies to retry login-wall pages with an authenticated browser.
• No cookies provided: without session cookies, discovery relies solely on DuckDuckGo/Google, which are less reliable than Facebook's own search — add cookies for the best results.
• Narrow search terms: each (term, location) pair yields a limited pool. Add more search terms or locations.

Can I get 1,000+ results?

Yes — see Scaling to 1K+ Results above. The short version: combine multiple search terms × multiple locations and set maxItems to your target. The actor handles all pagination and over-discovers URLs automatically.

How often do I need to refresh my cookies?

Facebook session cookies typically last 90 days. If you notice a sudden drop in results or many login-wall skips in the logs, export fresh cookies from your browser.

Does this work for Facebook Groups or personal profiles?

No. The scraper targets public Facebook Pages (business pages, community pages, public figures). Facebook Groups and personal profiles have different URL structures and content restrictions.

Is residential proxy required?

Residential proxy is used automatically for all Facebook page fetches and is already included — you do not need to configure or pay for it separately. The proxy cost is covered by your Apify usage credits.