# Upwork Job Leads Scraper (`devilscrapes/upwork-job-leads-scraper`) Actor

Scrape Upwork's public job-search results by keyword. Get normalized rows with title, posted-age, price type/range, and experience level — built for freelancers monitoring for fresh leads. No login required. A freelance jobs scraper.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/devilscrapes/upwork-job-leads-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [DevilScrapes](https://apify.com/devilscrapes) (community)
- **Categories:** Jobs
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per event

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

<div align="center">
  <img src=".actor/icon.svg" width="160" alt="Devil Scrapes mark" />

## Upwork Job Leads Scraper

**💰 $4.20 / 1 000 results**  ·  pay only for results  ·  no credit card to try

*We do the dirty work so your dataset stays clean.* 😈

Scrape Upwork's public job-search results by keyword. Get normalized rows with title, posted-age, price type/range, and experience level — built for freelancers monitoring for fresh leads. No login required.

</div>

***

### 🎯 What this scrapes

Upwork is one of the largest freelance marketplaces, posting thousands of new jobs a day across every skill category. This Actor searches Upwork's own public job-search results by keyword and writes one normalized row per posting: title, posted-age (raw text plus a best-effort ISO-8601 parse), price type and range (hourly or fixed), and experience level. Built as a job-leads / freshness monitor — posted-age is first-class and results are freshness-sortable, so freelancers can re-run the same search on a schedule and catch new postings early instead of running a one-shot bulk scrape.

### 🔥 What we handle for you

- 🛡️ **We clear the challenge once per run** — a dedicated browser context absorbs Upwork's access check, then every page in the run reuses it.
- 🌐 **We rotate proxies and sessions** through Apify Proxy on every block — fresh session ID, fresh exit IP.
- 🔁 **We retry with exponential backoff** on transport errors — up to 5 attempts per page.
- 🧱 **We fail loud, not silent** — a hard block surfaces a clear status message instead of a quietly empty dataset.
- 🧊 **We keep the dataset clean** — Pydantic-validated rows, ISO-8601 timestamps, stable IDs, JSON / CSV / Excel export straight from the Apify Console.
- 💰 **Pay-Per-Event pricing** — you only pay for results that hit your dataset. No data, no charge.

### 💡 Use cases

- **Fresh-lead monitoring** — schedule a run per keyword and catch new Upwork postings before the crowd applies.
- **Freelance agency sourcing** — track multiple skill keywords at once and feed matches into a shared lead sheet.
- **Rate benchmarking** — aggregate hourly/fixed price ranges by keyword to gauge going rates.
- **Automation pipelines** — wire fresh job leads into n8n/Make/Zapier or a Slack/email alert.

### ⚙️ How to use it

1. Click **Try for free** at the top of the page.
2. Fill in the input form — most fields have sensible defaults.
3. Click **Start**. Output streams into the run's dataset.
4. Export from **Storage → Dataset** as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

### 📥 Input

| Field | Type | Required | Default | Notes |
|---|---|:--:|---|---|
| `searchQuery` | `string` | **yes** | 'python' | Keyword(s) to search Upwork job postings for, mapped to the `q=` query param. Required. |
| `maxPages` | `integer` | no | 5 | Page cap for pagination. A depth walk cleared 15-51 pages cleanly on real queries with zero anti-bot re-challenges, but `maxPages` stays a conservative, operator-configurable hard cap. |
| `maxItems` | `integer` | no | 50 | Hard cap on dataset rows for this run. Pagination stops as soon as either Max pages or Max items is hit, whichever comes first. |
| `proxyConfiguration` | `object` | no | `{"useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]}` | Defaults to RESIDENTIAL — required for this target. A cloud test measured bare datacenter/automatic exits failing outright while RESIDENTIAL cleared 9/10 attempts. |

#### Example input

```json
{
  "searchQuery": "python",
  "maxPages": 3,
  "maxItems": 10
}
```

### 📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item.

| Field | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `job_id` | `string` | Real tile identifier if one is found on the source DOM, else a stable SHA-256 hash (16 hex chars) of tile content. Same… |
| `source_url` | `['string', 'null']` | Canonical job URL parsed from the tile's own link; null only if no per-job link is found on that tile. |
| `title` | `string` | Job posting title, verbatim from the tile. |
| `posted_age_text` | `string` | Raw posted-age text verbatim, e.g. 'Posted 4 weeks ago'. |
| `posted_at` | `['string', 'null']` | Best-effort ISO-8601 parse of posted\_age\_text; null if the phrasing doesn't match a known relative-date pattern. Raw… |
| `price_type` | `['string', 'null']` | 'hourly' or 'fixed', parsed from the tile's price text. |
| `price_min` | `['number', 'null']` | Parsed minimum price from the tile's price range. |
| `price_max` | `['number', 'null']` | Parsed maximum price from the tile's price range. |
| `experience_level` | `['string', 'null']` | Experience level verbatim, e.g. 'Entry Level', 'Expert'. |
| `search_query` | `string` | Echoes the searchQuery input for this row. |
| `page_number` | `integer` | 1-indexed source page this row was scraped from. |
| `scraped_at` | `string` | ISO-8601 wall-clock time of row construction. |

#### Example output

```json
{
  "job_id": "a1b2c3d4e5f60718",
  "source_url": null,
  "title": "Python AI Engineer",
  "posted_age_text": "Posted 2 weeks ago",
  "posted_at": "2026-08-31T00:00:00Z",
  "price_type": "fixed",
  "price_min": null,
  "price_max": null,
  "experience_level": "Expert",
  "search_query": "python",
  "page_number": 1,
  "scraped_at": "2026-09-14T12:00:00Z"
}
```

### 💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

| Event | USD | What it is |
|---|---:|---|
| `actor-start` | $0.2 | One-off warm-up charge per run |
| `result` | $0.004 | Per dataset item |

Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ **$4.20**. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

### 🚧 Limitations

v1 covers Upwork's public job-search results only — job detail pages (full description, client history, proposal counts), filters beyond keyword (category, budget, verified-client, experience level), and authenticated views (saved searches, invite-only jobs) are out of scope. A depth walk on real queries cleared 15-51 pages with zero anti-bot re-challenges before hitting each query's own result-set end — but that's one day's evidence, not a permanent guarantee, so `maxPages` stays a hard, conservative, operator-configurable cap rather than an unlimited crawl. `source_url`/`job_id` come from the tile's own listing when present; on the rare tile without one, `job_id` falls back to a stable content hash so leads still dedupe across scheduled re-runs.

### ❓ FAQ

**Do I need an Upwork account or API key?**

No. This Actor scrapes Upwork's own publicly listed job-search results — no login, no API key.

**How far back does pagination go?**

A depth walk on real queries cleared 15-51 pages cleanly with zero anti-bot re-challenges, ending on the query's own result-set exhaustion rather than a block — but that's one day's evidence, not a guarantee. Max pages defaults conservatively and the Actor reports honestly (via the run's status message) how many pages it actually fetched, whether it stopped early or hit your cap.

**Why is source\_url sometimes null?**

Most tiles carry a real per-job link, which becomes `source_url` and `job_id`. On the rare tile without one, `job_id` falls back to a stable content hash so leads still dedupe across runs.

**What if a search matches nothing?**

The run succeeds with zero rows and a status message naming the query — a genuine empty search is never reported as a failure.

### 💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an
issue on the Actor's **Issues** tab on Apify Console — we ship
fixes weekly and we read every report.

***

<div align="center">

Built by **[Devil Scrapes](https://apify.com/DevilScrapes)** 😈 — a small fleet of
opinionated public-data Actors. Honest pricing, real engineering, zero fine print.

</div>

# Changelog

This Actor's version history is a separate document: https://apify.com/devilscrapes/upwork-job-leads-scraper/changelog.md

# Actor input Schema

## `searchQuery` (type: `string`):

Keyword(s) to search Upwork job postings for, mapped to the `q=` query param. Required.

## `maxPages` (type: `integer`):

Page cap for pagination. A 2026-09-17 depth walk cleared 15-51 pages cleanly with zero anti-bot re-challenges before hitting each query's own result-set end, but max\_pages stays a conservative, operator-configurable hard cap.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Hard cap on dataset rows for this run. Pagination stops as soon as either Max pages or Max items is hit, whichever comes first.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Apify Proxy configuration. Defaults to RESIDENTIAL — a 2026-09-17 cloud recon measured bare Apify IPs and RESIDENTIAL-without-geoip at 0/N against Upwork's Cloudflare challenge, while RESIDENTIAL scored 9/10; RESIDENTIAL is required here, not optional.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "searchQuery": "python",
  "maxPages": 3,
  "maxItems": 50,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ]
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `datasetItems` (type: `string`):

All dataset items as JSON.

## `datasetItemsCsv` (type: `string`):

Same data exported to CSV.

## `datasetView` (type: `string`):

Open the run dataset in the Console.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "searchQuery": "python",
    "maxPages": 3,
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": [
            "RESIDENTIAL"
        ]
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("devilscrapes/upwork-job-leads-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "searchQuery": "python",
    "maxPages": 3,
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": True,
        "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("devilscrapes/upwork-job-leads-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "searchQuery": "python",
  "maxPages": 3,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ]
  }
}' |
apify call devilscrapes/upwork-job-leads-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,devilscrapes/upwork-job-leads-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/fb8brELKUVbq8nqck/builds/CTnTF8Bd5Jz8xGJP9/openapi.json