Home Service Business Lead Scraper (Canada)

Collect verified contact data — phone numbers, addresses, websites, ratings, and service details — for home service contractors across Canada. The actor scrapes Houzz and Yellow Pages Canada (YP.ca) by default, with optional additional directories (HomeStars, BBB, and other secondary sources) for even broader coverage. It deduplicates records across sources and scores each lead by data completeness. Use it to build targeted outreach lists for plumbers, electricians, HVAC companies, roofers, landscapers, and more — no code required.

Features

• Scrapes Canadian home service listings from Houzz and Yellow Pages Canada by default, with optional additional directories including HomeStars and BBB
• Supports 8 home service trade categories
• Deduplicates records across sources by phone, domain, name + location
• Quality scoring: each lead receives a 0–100 quality score and a high / medium / low band
• Configurable result cap (1–1,000 records) with per-source distribution logic
• Optional email extraction (only from explicitly labeled email fields)
• Optional website extraction
• Apify Proxy support for reliable access
• Debug mode for diagnosing source-level parsing issues
• Canadian address parsing: province codes (ON, BC, QC, ...) and postal codes (e.g. M5V 3A8)

Why use Home Service Business Lead Scraper (Canada)?

This actor is useful for anyone who needs a list of local Canadian home service contractors:

• Sales teams prospecting HVAC, roofing, or plumbing companies for B2B outreach
• Marketing agencies building contact lists for local service verticals
• Local SEO tools seeding contractor data for a new market
• Aggregator platforms bootstrapping a contractor directory without a manual data entry effort
• Researchers studying the density and distribution of trade contractors by metro area

How much will it cost?

This actor uses the Pay-Per-Result pricing model — you pay per lead returned, not for compute time. Your effective price per 1,000 results depends on your Apify plan:

Plan	Result	Actor start (infrequent)
Free (no discount)	$2.00 / 1,000	$0.005
Starter (Bronze)	$1.40 / 1,000	$0.0035
Scale (Silver)	$0.80 / 1,000	$0.002
Business (Gold)	$0.20 / 1,000	$0.0005

Platform usage is free on all plans. Higher-tier Apify subscriptions unlock a lower price per result, so heavier or recurring usage costs proportionally less as you scale up.

How to use

1. Go to the Apify Store page for this actor and click Try for free.
2. In the Input tab, select a Category (e.g., Plumber) and enter a Location (e.g., Toronto, ON).
3. Adjust Maximum results and select which Sources to scrape.
4. Click Start to run the actor.
5. When the run completes, open the Storage tab to download your leads as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

You can also run this actor via the Apify API or schedule it to run on a recurring basis from the Schedules tab.

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
category	string	Yes	plumber	Trade category to search. One of: plumber, electrician, hvac, roofer, landscaper, cleaning_service, handyman, general_contractor
location	string	Yes	Toronto, ON	Canadian city or metro area. Example: Vancouver, BC or Montreal, QC
maxResults	integer	No	30	Maximum unique records to save (1–1,000). Distributed evenly across sources.
sources	array	No	["houzz", "yp"]	Directories to scrape. Select one or more.
includeEmails	boolean	No	false	Extract emails from explicitly labeled email fields on directory pages.
includeWebsite	boolean	No	true	Extract business website URLs.
deduplicate	boolean	No	true	Merge duplicate businesses found across sources.
debugMode	boolean	No	false	Log detailed source and parsing diagnostics to the run log.
proxyConfiguration	object	No	{ "useApifyProxy": true }	Apify Proxy settings. Recommended to keep enabled for reliable scraping.

Example input

{
  "category": "plumber",
  "location": "Toronto, ON",
  "maxResults": 30,
  "includeEmails": false,
  "includeWebsite": true,
  "deduplicate": true,
  "sources": ["houzz", "yp"],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Output

Each saved dataset item follows this schema:

{
  "businessName": "ABC Plumbing Ltd",
  "sector": "home_services",
  "category": "plumber",
  "trade": "plumber",
  "phone": "+14165551212",
  "email": null,
  "website": "https://example.com",
  "profileUrl": "https://www.yellowpages.ca/bus/Ontario/Toronto/abc-plumbing-ltd.html",
  "address": "123 Main St",
  "city": "Toronto",
  "region": "ON",
  "postalCode": "M5V 3A8",
  "country": "CA",
  "rating": 4.7,
  "reviewCount": 128,
  "description": "Local plumbing company serving Toronto and surrounding areas.",
  "services": ["Drain cleaning", "Water heater repair"],
  "serviceArea": ["Toronto", "Mississauga"],
  "licenseNumber": null,
  "yearsInBusiness": null,
  "emergencyService": true,
  "source": "yp",
  "sourceName": "Yellow Pages Canada / YP.ca",
  "sourcesSeen": ["yp", "houzz"],
  "profileUrlsSeen": [
    "https://www.yellowpages.ca/bus/Ontario/Toronto/abc-plumbing-ltd.html",
    "https://www.houzz.com/professionals/abc-plumbing"
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-15T00:00:00.000Z",
  "qualityScore": 87,
  "qualityBand": "high"
}

Field notes:

• qualityScore — 0–100 based on data completeness (phone, address, website, email, rating, description).
• qualityBand — high (≥80), medium (≥50), or low (<50).
• sourcesSeen — all source IDs where this business was found (populated after deduplication).
• profileUrlsSeen — all directory profile URLs found for this business.
• emergencyService — true if the description mentions 24/7 or emergency service; null if unknown.

Supported Sources

Source ID	Display Name	Default	Canadian coverage
houzz	Houzz	Yes	Good — Houzz lists Canadian pros under the same domain.
yp	Yellow Pages Canada / YP.ca	Yes	Native Canadian directory.
homestars	HomeStars	No	Canada's largest home-services directory (Canada-only, no US equivalent). Reliably returns business name, city, rating, review count, and services. Note: this source is a quote-request marketplace, so phone and website are not available from it — enable it to broaden coverage and ratings data, not for contact details.
bbb	BBB	No	Validated for Canada — real local listings complete with phone, full address, and postal code. Not enabled by default because it needs a residential proxy to access reliably.
manta	Manta	No	US-oriented; unverified for Canadian cities.
chamber_of_commerce	Chamber of Commerce	No	US-oriented; unverified for Canadian cities.
porch	Porch	No	US-oriented; unverified for Canadian cities.
merchant_circle	MerchantCircle	No	US-oriented; unverified for Canadian cities.

Houzz, Yellow Pages Canada, HomeStars, and BBB all require a residential proxy for reliable access — see the Proxy tip below. The remaining sources are lighter-weight and opt-in — validate results for your target location before relying on them.

Supported Categories

Input value	Description
plumber	Plumbers
electrician	Electricians
hvac	HVAC companies
roofer	Roofers
landscaper	Landscapers
cleaning_service	Cleaning services
handyman	Handyman services
general_contractor	General contractors

Category aliases are accepted (e.g. "plumbing contractor" normalizes to "plumber").

Tips

• Per-source cap: When multiple sources are selected, the actor applies a per-source limit of ceil(maxResults / numberOfSources) to prevent a single fast source from filling the entire result quota before slower sources contribute.
• Proxy: Residential proxy is recommended (and set by default). Several sources, including Yellow Pages Canada, Houzz, HomeStars, and BBB, block datacenter IPs on the Apify platform.
• Location format: Use City, PROV format (e.g. Toronto, ON, Vancouver, BC). Multi-word cities work fine: Saint John, NB.
• Email extraction: Enable includeEmails only when you specifically need email addresses. Emails are only extracted from labeled email fields on profile pages — not guessed from description text.
• Deduplication: When deduplicate is true, records found across multiple sources are merged and the sourcesSeen array reflects all sources where the business was found.

Limitations

• Canadian locations only.
• Yellow Pages Canada (YP.ca) has not yet been verified against a live production run. Validate a small run before relying on this source in production.
• HomeStars does not expose phone numbers or websites publicly; it contributes name, rating, review, and category data rather than contact details.
• Manta, Chamber of Commerce, Porch, and MerchantCircle are US-oriented directories; Canadian coverage is unverified and likely sparse or empty for many locations.
• Public pages only — no login support.
• No CAPTCHA solving.
• No deep website crawling.
• No email verification.
• No CRM integrations.
• Source selectors may require maintenance when directory layouts change.

Responsible Use

This actor extracts publicly available business information from supported directory pages. Users are responsible for ensuring that their use of the scraped data complies with applicable laws, platform terms of service, privacy regulations (including CASL, PIPEDA, GDPR where applicable), and marketing rules. The actor must not be used to collect private, login-gated, sensitive, or restricted information.

Local Development

npm install
npx playwright install chromium   # required for Houzz, Yellow Pages Canada, HomeStars, and BBB
npm test
npm run build
npm start

Local runs use Apify local storage under storage/. Set APIFY_HEADLESS=1 to run Playwright in headless mode locally.

Support

Found a bug or want to request a new source or category? Open an issue on the actor's GitHub repository or contact the author through Apify.