BBB Company Scraper

The Better Business Bureau holds trust signals on hundreds of thousands of North American companies, but the site only lets you read them one profile at a time. This scraper turns that directory into a dataset. Give it an industry and a city and it pulls back every matching company with its trust grade, accreditation status, phone, website, complaint count, and customer rating, ready to drop into a sheet or a CRM. Run it for one ZIP code or a whole state.

What you get

Each company comes back as one row with a steady set of columns, so results stay tidy when you load them into a spreadsheet or database. Two depths of data, depending on how you set the run:

• Listing level (quick, fetchFullProfile: false): companyName, trustGrade, accredited, phoneNumber, addressText, categoryList, logoImage, and profileUrl. Roughly ten companies per results page.
• Full profile (default, fetchFullProfile: true): everything above plus websiteUrl, legalStructure, accreditedDate, operatingYears, foundedDate, incorporatedDate, fileOpenedDate, management, mainCategory, complaintsTotal, reviewsTotal, customerRating, acceptedPayments, and socialLinks.

Full-profile runs take longer because the scraper opens each company's BBB page on its own, but the records carry far more detail.

Quick start

1. Press Try for free and open the input form.
2. Type a Search term — an industry works best, like "Plumbers", "Auto Repair", or "Roofing". You can also match a company by name (set Lookup mode to Name) or by phone number (Phone).
3. Type a Search area — a city with its state ("Denver, CO") or a bare ZIP code both work.
4. Set a Results limit, press Start, then export as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML once the run finishes.

Use cases

• Lead lists — pull a whole industry in a target city and get phone numbers, websites, and contact names you can dial straight away. Sort by grade or accreditation after export.
• Vendor checks — before you hire a local contractor, pull their BBB record and read the complaint count, years operating, and accreditation in one glance.
• Competitor mapping — line up everyone in your category in a market and compare trust grades, customer ratings, and time in business side by side.
• Directory consistency — confirm a company's name, address, and phone match what shows on other listings.
• Due diligence — verify a company's legal structure, owner or manager name, and founding date before a deal.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
searchTerm	string	Yes	Industry, keyword, or company name to look up (e.g. "HVAC Contractors", "Acme Roofing").
searchArea	string	Yes	City with state, or a ZIP code (e.g. "Austin, TX", "60614").
countryCode	string	No	BBB region to query: USA or CAN. Default USA.
lookupMode	string	No	How BBB reads your term: Category, Name, or Phone. Default Category.
fetchFullProfile	boolean	No	Open each company profile for the deeper fields. Default true; turn off for faster listing-only runs.
resultsLimit	integer	No	Most companies to gather per run, up to 1000. Default 50.
timeoutSeconds	integer	No	Seconds to wait per request before timing out. Default 45.

Example input

{
    "searchTerm": "HVAC Contractors",
    "searchArea": "Austin, TX",
    "countryCode": "USA",
    "lookupMode": "Category",
    "fetchFullProfile": true,
    "resultsLimit": 50,
    "timeoutSeconds": 45
}

Output

Every company is one row. With fetchFullProfile on you get the full field set below; with it off, the profile-only fields come back empty. The example shows a complete record.

Example output

{
    "companyName": "Lone Star Comfort Air",
    "trustGrade": "A+",
    "accredited": true,
    "accreditedDate": "5/12/2019",
    "operatingYears": 17,
    "phoneNumber": "(512) 555-0142",
    "websiteUrl": "https://lonestarcomfortair.com",
    "addressText": "2200 E Cesar Chavez St Austin TX 78702",
    "addressParts": {
        "street": "2200 E Cesar Chavez St",
        "cityStateZip": "Austin TX 78702"
    },
    "mainCategory": "Heating and Air Conditioning",
    "categoryList": ["Heating and Air Conditioning", "HVAC Contractors"],
    "legalStructure": "Corporation",
    "management": "Ms. Dana Ruiz, President",
    "foundedDate": "1/1/2007",
    "incorporatedDate": "3/8/2008",
    "fileOpenedDate": "9/14/2010",
    "reviewsTotal": 48,
    "complaintsTotal": 1,
    "customerRating": 4.7,
    "acceptedPayments": ["Credit Card", "Check", "Cash"],
    "socialLinks": ["https://www.facebook.com/lonestarcomfortair"],
    "logoImage": "https://m.bbb.org/prod/ProfileImages/abc123.jpeg",
    "profileUrl": "https://www.bbb.org/us/tx/austin/profile/hvac/lone-star-comfort-air-0825-90012345",
    "collectedAt": "2026-06-29T10:00:00.000000+00:00"
}

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
companyName	string	Company name as it appears on BBB
trustGrade	string	Letter grade from A+ down to F, or NR when not rated
accredited	boolean	True when the company is a BBB Accredited Business
accreditedDate	string	Date accreditation was granted (accredited companies only)
operatingYears	integer	How long the company has been in business
phoneNumber	string	Main phone number
websiteUrl	string	Company website link
addressText	string	Full address as a single string
addressParts	object	Split address with street and cityStateZip
mainCategory	string	Primary business category
categoryList	array	Every category the company is filed under
legalStructure	string	Legal form — Corporation, LLC, Sole Proprietorship, and similar
management	string	Owner or manager name and title
foundedDate	string	Date the company started trading
incorporatedDate	string	Date of incorporation, where applicable
fileOpenedDate	string	Date BBB first opened a file on the company
reviewsTotal	integer	Count of customer reviews on BBB
complaintsTotal	integer	Count of complaints filed through BBB
customerRating	float	Average customer review score from 1 to 5
acceptedPayments	array	Payment types the company takes
socialLinks	array	Social profile URLs listed on the BBB page
logoImage	string	Company logo image link from BBB
profileUrl	string	Direct link to the full BBB profile
collectedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of when the row was captured

Tips for best results

• Skip the profiles for speed. Set fetchFullProfile to false when you only need the listing basics — it skips the per-company page visits and runs much faster.
• Plan for ten per page. BBB returns about ten companies per results page, so a 50-company full-profile run opens roughly 55 pages in total.
• Cap big markets. A broad category in a large metro can return thousands of hits, so set resultsLimit to keep the run in check.
• Raise the timeout on slow runs. Push timeoutSeconds toward 60 if you start seeing timeout errors.
• Expect thin records for some companies. A company that never sought accreditation or had a complaint may carry little more than a name and address — that is sparse source data, not a scrape failure.

How can I use Better Business Bureau company data?

How can I use the BBB Company Scraper to build a local lead list? Set lookupMode to Category, enter an industry like "Roofing" as the searchTerm, and put your target city in searchArea. The run returns each company with phoneNumber, websiteUrl, management, and trustGrade, so you can filter to accredited or high-grade companies and start outreach from a clean BBB export.

How can I check a company on the Better Business Bureau before hiring? Switch lookupMode to Name, type the company name, and add its city as the searchArea. With fetchFullProfile on, you get its trust grade, complaintsTotal, operatingYears, accreditation status, and customerRating in one row — a fast read on whether a contractor or vendor is worth the call.

How can I pull BBB ratings and complaints for a whole industry? Search by Category with fetchFullProfile turned on and raise resultsLimit to cover the market. Each company comes back with trustGrade, reviewsTotal, complaintsTotal, and customerRating, giving you a ranked view of who holds the strongest reputation in your sector.

How can I export Better Business Bureau company data to a spreadsheet? Run the scraper, then use the export menu to download JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML. Every company keeps the same fields, so the file loads cleanly into Sheets, Excel, or a CRM with no reshaping.

Is it legal to scrape data?

Our actors are ethical and do not extract any private user data, such as email addresses or private contact information. They only extract what the user has chosen to share publicly. We therefore believe that our actors, when used for ethical purposes by Apify users, are safe.

However, you should be aware that your results could contain personal data. Personal data is protected by the GDPR in the European Union and by other regulations around the world. You should not scrape personal data unless you have a legitimate reason to do so. If you're unsure whether your reason is legitimate, consult your lawyers.

You can also read Apify's blog post on the legality of web scraping.

Support

Questions, feature requests, or a field you'd like added? Reach out at data.apify@proton.me and we'll get back to you.