Automotive Keyword Scraper

Search 31 car marketplaces by make, model or free-text keyword and get every result as a schema.org Car record — VIN, mileage with its unit, price with its currency, fuel, transmission, drivetrain, engine, body type, colour, condition, trim, seller type and coordinates. No URL building: give a make, a model and a place, and each site is searched in its own catalogue, currency and unit.

What does the Automotive Keyword Scraper do?

• Searches by make and model, not by URL. Both are matched against each site's own catalogue, so you needn't know how it spells a trim.
• Runs 31 sites in one job. One dataset, with a source column naming each record's marketplace.
• Converts filters into each market's terms. A $30,000 ceiling goes to Goo-net in yen and CarDekho in rupees; a 100,000-mile limit goes to Europe in kilometres, rounded up so it never tightens.
• Filters at the source. Year, price, mileage, transmission, fuel, condition, title status and seller type are applied by the marketplace itself.
• Returns everything the listing exposes. Nothing de-duplicated or relevance-filtered.

Which sites does it search?

United States — Craigslist, CarMax, CarGurus, AutoTrader, cars.com, TrueCar, Carvana, Bring a Trailer, Hemmings. United Kingdom — AutoTrader UK, Motors UK, Cinch. Europe — AutoScout24, Leboncoin, La Centrale, Coches.net, Subito, Marktplaats, Otomoto, Standvirtual, Blocket, Finn.no, Mobile.bg. Asia-Pacific — Carsales, CarsGuide, Encar, Goo-net, SgCarMart, CarDekho. Americas — AutoTrader Canada, MercadoLibre.

Craigslist is searched one region at a time: all 707 areas are selectable, and the 544 that returned vehicles in a full sweep are listed first.

Why search car marketplaces by keyword?

• Sweep a model across countries at once. One search hits US, UK, European and Asian sites in a single run.
• Track what a model sells for. The same search on a schedule, diffed day over day.
• Source inventory. Filter to dealer or private, clean or salvage title, with seller location where published.
• Build a pricing dataset. VIN, year, odometer and price across thousands of listings, already in one shape.

Quick start

1. Enter a Make and Model — Toyota and Camry — or a Keyword like ford f-150 diesel.
2. Pick your Sites to search. Default: CarMax, CarGurus, cars.com.
3. Add a Location in the site's own form: 94086, SW1A 1AA, M5V 3L9, warszawa, 서울.
4. Add filters — year, price, mileage, transmission, fuel, condition.
5. Click Start and export to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML.

Input parameters

Field	Type	Description
make / model	string	Vehicle make and model, matched against each site's own catalogue. Example: Toyota / Camry.
keywords	array	Free-text search, e.g. toyota camry or ford f-150 diesel. Use instead of, or with, make and model.
sources	array	Which of the 31 marketplaces to search. Default: carmax, cargurus, cars-com.
zipCodes	array	Where to search, in the site's own format: 94086, SW1A 1AA, M5V 3L9, mazowieckie. A US ZIP is never sent to a UK site.
distanceMiles	integer	Radius in miles from each location. Empty searches as wide as the site allows.
craigslistRegions	array	Required when Craigslist is selected — one or more of its 707 regions, e.g. sfbay.
yearFrom / yearTo	integer	Model year range, e.g. 2015 to 2020.
priceMin / priceMax / priceCurrency	integer / string	Price range in USD, EUR, GBP, SEK, NOK, PLN, CAD, AUD, JPY, KRW, SGD, INR, CHF, BRL or MXN. Default USD, converted per site.
mileageMax / mileageUnit	integer / string	Odometer ceiling in mi or km. Default mi, converted per site and rounded up.
transmission / fuelType	string	automatic, manual / gas, hybrid, diesel, electric.
condition / titleStatus / sellerType	string	new, used, certified / clean, salvage, rebuilt / dealer, owner. Not every site publishes title status, and most are dealer-only.
detail	string	full opens each vehicle's own page for VIN, engine and seller address. fast stays on the results page. Default full.
maxResultsPerUrl / maxResults	integer	Cap per keyword-and-site pair (default 100), and for the whole run (optional).

What data do you get?

One record per vehicle, 22 fields, in schema.org Car shape:

Field	Meaning
source, name, url, description	Marketplace, listing title, direct link, seller's text
brand, model, vehicleModelDate	Make, model, model year (first registration in Europe)
vehicleIdentificationNumber	VIN, where the site publishes one
mileageFromOdometer	Value plus unitCode — SMI miles or KMT kilometres
offers	Price plus its ISO 4217 priceCurrency
fuelType, vehicleTransmission, driveWheelConfiguration, vehicleEngine	Powertrain as stated
bodyType, color, itemCondition, vehicleConfiguration	Body style, colour, condition, trim
image, datePosted, sellerType	First gallery image, publication date, dealer or private
itemLocation	schema.org Place with postal address and coordinates

{
    "source": "CarGurus",
    "@type": "Car",
    "name": "2015 Toyota Camry LE 4dr Sedan",
    "url": "https://www.cargurus.com/details/453768925",
    "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Toyota" },
    "model": "Camry",
    "vehicleModelDate": "2015",
    "vehicleIdentificationNumber": "4T1BF1FK0FU931195",
    "mileageFromOdometer": { "@type": "QuantitativeValue", "value": 145400, "unitCode": "SMI" },
    "offers": { "@type": "Offer", "price": 9995, "priceCurrency": "USD" },
    "bodyType": "Sedan",
    "sellerType": "dealer",
    "itemLocation": { "@type": "Place", "geo": { "latitude": 37.3492, "longitude": -121.9 } }
}

How do you run it from your own code?

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/e-commerce~automotive-keyword-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"make":"Toyota","model":"Camry","sources":["carmax","cargurus"],"zipCodes":["94086"],"yearFrom":2015}'

Swap runs for run-sync-get-dataset-items to start the run and get the rows back in the same call.

Schedule a run daily, send new rows to a webhook, or push them into Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack or S3 with the platform's integrations.

How much will it cost?

Pay per event, charged once for each vehicle returned to the dataset:

Plan	Per vehicle	Per 1,000 vehicles
Free	$0.0020	$2.00
Bronze	$0.0017	$1.70
Silver	$0.0014	$1.40
Gold	$0.0011	$1.10
Platinum	$0.0008	$0.80
Diamond	$0.0005	$0.50

No compute charge on top: a run that returns nothing costs only the start event.

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
Craigslist returned nothing	It searches one region at a time. Pick at least one Craigslist region — a location alone is not enough.
AutoTrader UK or Motors UK was skipped	Both refuse to search without a UK postcode. Add one, e.g. SW1A 1AA.
One site is empty, others returned data	Check the run log — every skipped site says why by name.
Total lower than expected across many sites	maxResults caps the whole run and the earlier sites take it first. Set it above sites x maxResultsPerUrl, or leave it empty.
VIN, engine or seller address missing	Set Detail level to full. fast reads only the results page.
vehicleIdentificationNumber is still null	Not every site publishes a VIN. AutoScout24 and AutoTrader UK do not; CarMax, CarGurus, cars.com and Carvana do.
Price or mileage off by orders of magnitude	Check priceCurrency and unitCode — output values are the site's own, never converted.

Is it legal to scrape car listings?

Scraping publicly available listing data is legal in most jurisdictions, and this Actor reads only pages any visitor can open. It collects no personal data beyond what a seller published in a public advert. How you use the data, including under GDPR and CCPA, is your responsibility.

FAQ

Already built a search on the site? Use the Automotive Search URL Scraper, which keeps the page's own filters. To scrape cars you already found, use the Automotive Vehicle Scraper.

Does it work with agents and MCP? Yes — it runs over the standard Apify API, so any MCP client or agent framework with Apify support can call it.

Can I export to CSV or Excel? The dataset exports to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML and HTML, or streams over the API.

Changelog

• 1.1 — 31 marketplaces, 707 Craigslist regions, per-market currency and mileage conversion.
• 1.0 — Keyword search, schema.org Car output, pay-per-event pricing.

Feedback

Found a marketplace worth covering, or a field empty where the page shows it? Open an issue on the Issues tab with the input you used.