Freesound Scraper

Scrape Freesound.org — a community-driven library of 600,000+ Creative Commons-licensed sound effects and samples. Search by keyword, browse by tag, or browse by uploader, with license/format/duration/rating filters. Reads Freesound's fully public, server-rendered search-results pages. No login, no API key, no proxy required.

What this actor does

• Four modes: search (keyword), byTag (browse a tag), byUser (browse an uploader), similarTo (Freesound's own "sounds like this one" recommendations for a given sound ID)
• License filter — Creative Commons 0, Attribution, Attribution NonCommercial, Sampling+
• File-format filter — WAV, MP3, AIFF, FLAC, OGG, M4A
• Duration range — min/max seconds
• Sort — relevance, duration, date added, downloads (matches Freesound's own sort dropdown)
• Client-side filters — minimum rating, minimum downloads
• Preview audio — MP3 and OGG preview URLs for every sound, plus waveform/spectrum images
• Empty fields are omitted — you only ever see fields that were actually found for a sound

Output per sound

• soundId — Freesound sound ID
• title
• uploader, uploaderId
• description
• tags[]
• duration — seconds (float)
• sampleRate — Hz
• license — one of Freesound's 4 Creative Commons license labels
• numDownloads, numComments
• rating, ratingCount — average star rating (0-5) and number of ratings (omitted when the sound has no ratings yet)
• packName, packUrl — parent sound pack, when the sound belongs to one
• uploadDate — ISO date the sound was added
• previewMp3Url, previewOggUrl — streamable preview audio (Freesound's own CDN)
• waveformImageUrl, spectrumImageUrl — visualization images
• sourceUrl — canonical Freesound sound page URL
• searchQuery, searchTags[], searchUsername — the search parameters used for this run (search/byTag/byUser modes)
• similarToSoundId — the input soundId this record was recommended as similar to (similarTo mode only)
• recordType: "sound", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string (select)	search	search / byTag / byUser / similarTo
searchQuery	string	piano	Keyword search (mode=search)
tags	array	–	Tags to filter/browse by (AND'ed together)
username	string	–	Uploader username (mode=byUser, or extra filter)
soundId	string	–	Freesound sound ID to find similar sounds for (mode=similarTo)
license	string (select)	any	Creative Commons license filter
fileType	string (select)	any	Audio file format filter
minDuration / maxDuration	integer	–	Duration range in seconds
sortBy	string (select)	relevance	Sort order
minRating	integer	0	Minimum star rating 0-5 (client-side)
minDownloads	integer	0	Minimum download count (client-side)
onlyGeotagged	boolean	false	Only geotagged sounds
groupByPack	boolean	true	Collapse multi-sound packs to one representative result
fetchFileDetails	boolean	false	Also open each sound page for file size/bitrate/bit depth/channels (slower)
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap on returned records (1-1000)

Example: search for rain sounds, CC0 only, WAV format

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "rain",
  "license": "creativeCommons0",
  "fileType": "wav",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: browse the "footsteps" tag, longest first

{
  "mode": "byTag",
  "tags": ["footsteps"],
  "sortBy": "durationDesc",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: all sounds by a specific uploader

{
  "mode": "byUser",
  "username": "InspectorJ",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: sounds similar to a specific sound

{
  "mode": "similarTo",
  "soundId": "468996",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: short, highly-downloaded attribution-licensed loops

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "loop",
  "license": "attribution",
  "maxDuration": 10,
  "minDownloads": 500,
  "sortBy": "downloadsDesc"
}

Use cases

• Game/app audio libraries — bulk-collect CC-licensed sound effects by category for a project asset pipeline
• Music production — find CC0/Attribution samples and loops filtered by BPM tags and duration
• Podcast/video production — source royalty-free ambience, foley, and transition sounds
• License auditing — verify which license a batch of previously-downloaded Freesound samples carries
• Dataset building — collect labeled audio samples with tags/metadata for ML training sets

Limitations

• No login-gated fields. Freesound's search-results pages show everything needed for discovery (title, tags, license, duration, downloads, rating, preview audio) without an account. Fields only visible on a logged-in user's own dashboard (comments text, download history) are out of scope.
• minRating/minDownloads are applied client-side. Freesound's search UI has no server-side rating/downloads-threshold filter, so these are applied across the batch of records this run actually fetched, not the entire result set — a low maxItems combined with a strict minRating/minDownloads may return fewer records than expected.
• byTag/byUser browsing defaults to newest-first when no searchQuery is given (matching Freesound's own behavior when you click a tag or username link), since "relevance" sorting is only meaningful with a keyword.
• similarTo mode returns Freesound's own fixed recommendation list for a sound (typically under a dozen results, ordered by Freesound's own similarity ranking — sortBy doesn't apply). license/duration filters are applied client-side against that list; tags are not shown on similar-sounds cards so tags filtering/output isn't available in this mode.

FAQ

What's Freesound? A collaborative database of Creative Commons-licensed sounds, run by the Music Technology Group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. See freesound.org.

Is this affiliated with Freesound? No. This is an independent, third-party actor that reads Freesound's publicly accessible search pages.

Can I download the full-quality original audio file? This actor returns the streamable MP3/OGG preview URLs (same audio Freesound's own player uses), not the original uploaded file. Downloading originals requires a Freesound account and API key, which is outside this actor's no-login scope.

Why do some sounds have no rating/ratingCount? Freesound only shows a rating once a sound has received at least one vote. Sounds with zero ratings simply omit those fields.

What does groupByPack do? When many similar sounds belong to the same upload pack (e.g. 50 individual piano notes), Freesound's default search view collapses them to a single representative result with a link to "see N more from this pack." Turn groupByPack off to see every individual sound in the pack.

Does this actor need a proxy or login? No — Freesound's search pages are served without any anti-bot challenge, so this actor runs entirely on Apify's free plan with no proxy and no credentials by default (it will only escalate to Apify's free AUTO proxy if it ever hits an unexpected rate limit).

How many results does Freesound have in total? 600,000+ sounds and growing; a broad query like "piano" alone matches 19,000+ results.