Ja.is Scraper

Scrape Ja.is, Iceland's national business and phone directory. Search by name, keyword, business category, or town, or fetch specific Ja.is listing pages directly. Returns names, addresses, phone numbers, websites, social media links, GPS coordinates, opening hours, and Icelandic national IDs (kennitala) for both businesses (yellow pages) and people (white pages). No login, no cookies, no paid API key required.

What this actor does

• Four modes: search (free text), byCategory (browse a trade/industry), byCity (browse a town), byUrl (fetch specific listing pages)
• Both directories: business/yellow-pages listings and person/white-pages listings, in one dataset
• Full Icelandic character support — þ, ð, æ, ö, á, é, í, ó, ú, ý round-trip correctly in both search queries and output, with accent-insensitive keyword matching
• Detail enrichment — optionally visits each listing's page to add phone number, website, social media links, GPS coordinates, opening hours, and kennitala (national ID / VAT number)
• Filters — city, business category, people/businesses-only, must-have-phone, must-have-website, free-text keyword
• Empty fields are omitted — every record only contains fields Ja.is actually returned

Output per listing

Common to every record:

• recordType — "business" or "person"
• sourceUrl — the canonical Ja.is page for this listing
• name
• occupation — trade / job title / primary business activity
• address, postalCode, city
• phone, phonePretty (when "Fetch full details" is on)
• scrapedAt

Business-only fields:

• clusterKey, hashid — Ja.is's internal listing identifiers
• categories[] — business type tags (e.g. bakarí, veitingastaður)
• isBranch, isPrimary — whether this is a branch location of a larger registered company
• website — the business's own homepage
• facebook, instagram, linkedin, twitter, youtube, tiktok — social media profile links, when published on the listing (via "Fetch full details")
• kennitala — Icelandic national ID / VAT number
• logoUrl, logoUrlLarge
• latitude, longitude
• openingHours — structured weekly schedule, when published
• isOpenNow — whether the business is open at the moment the listing was scraped, when Ja.is publishes hours for it
• openingStatus — human-readable status text, e.g. Lokað, Sólarhringsopnun

Person-only fields:

• hashid

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byCategory / byCity / byUrl
searchQuery	string	bakarí	Free-text query (mode=search; also combinable with city on byCity)
category	string (enum)	bakarí	Business category to browse (mode=byCategory)
city	string (enum)	–	Restrict to one Icelandic town; usable with any mode
urls	array	–	Direct Ja.is listing URLs (mode=byUrl)
searchScope	string (enum)	all	all / people / businesses
fetchDetails	bool	true	Visit each listing's page for phone/website/coordinates/hours
hasPhone	bool	false	Only keep listings with a phone number
hasWebsite	bool	false	Only keep businesses with a website
containsKeyword	string	–	Extra client-side text filter (accent-insensitive)
maxItems	int	30	Hard cap on emitted records (1–500)

Example: search by keyword

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "bakarí",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: browse a category in one town

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "category": "hárgreiðslustofa",
  "city": "Akureyri",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: fetch specific listings

{
  "mode": "byUrl",
  "urls": ["https://ja.is/myllan-bakari/", "https://ja.is/e/eZZdk/"]
}

Use cases

• Lead generation — build a list of businesses in a category/town with phone numbers and websites
• Market research — map the density and distribution of a trade across Icelandic towns
• Data enrichment — resolve a known company or person name to their address, phone, and kennitala
• Directory migration — bulk-export a category of listings for import into a CRM

FAQ

Does this require an Apify proxy or login? No. Ja.is's public search and listing pages are freely accessible; the actor uses no cookies, no API key, and no proxy by default.

What's a "kennitala"? Iceland's national identification number, used for both individuals and companies (equivalent to a US EIN/SSN or a VAT number). The actor extracts it for businesses when published on their listing page.

Why do some listings have fewer fields than others? Ja.is only publishes what each business or person has chosen to list — not every listing has a website, opening hours, or GPS coordinates. The actor never fabricates missing data; a field is simply omitted when the source doesn't provide it.

How does city/category filtering work? Ja.is's search matches every query word against a listing's name, address, town, and category fields. The actor also re-checks the result client-side so the output strictly matches your filter, even if the underlying search is fuzzy.

Does it handle Icelandic letters like þ, ð, æ, ö? Yes — both in your search input and in the returned data. Filtering (e.g. containsKeyword) is accent-insensitive, so Kopavogur and Kópavogur match the same listings.

What towns and categories are available? The city and category dropdowns cover Iceland's major municipalities and the most common trades/industries. searchQuery accepts any free text if you need a town or category outside the curated lists.

Is fetchDetails worth the extra time? It's what fills in phone, website, latitude/longitude, kennitala, and openingHours — for a phone/business directory these are usually the fields you actually want. Turn it off only if you need a fast, lightweight name/address list.

How fresh is the data? Ja.is is Iceland's official phone-book and business-registry front end, updated continuously as businesses and individuals update their own listings.

Limitations

• Results per query are capped by Ja.is itself. A single search/category/city query typically returns up to ~12 business listings and ~18 person listings — this mirrors what Ja.is's own website shows as "quick results" and is not a pagination bug in the actor. To collect more listings for a broad category, narrow by city or run multiple category/keyword combinations rather than raising maxItems on one broad query.
• hasPhone / hasWebsite filters require fetchDetails: true. Phone and website are only discovered by visiting each listing's page; with fetchDetails off, these filters will drop every result.