Craigslist Scraper (Cheap) — Listings, New-Listing Alerts, Any City

A cheaper drop-in alternative with the same input and output fields as the most popular Craigslist scraper on Apify: startUrls, region, category, searchTerm, priceMin, priceMax, condition, hasImage, postedToday, sort, includeDetails, maxResults in; url, postId, title, priceUsd, currency, region, categorySlug, subcategoryLabel, postedAt, location, latitude, longitude, imageUrls, description, attributes, phoneNumbers, emails... out, with the same field order and date formats. Switch by changing the Actor ID; your code keeps working.

	This Actor	Typical Craigslist scraper
1,000 listings (search fields)	$1.00	$1.80
1,000 listings with full posting details	$1.20	$1.80
Any of 700+ Craigslist cities, several per run	✅	50 preset cities, one per run
Only new listings since the last run (alerts)	✅	❌
"Posted after" date filter	✅	only "posted today"

What does it do?

It reads Craigslist's own JSON search API (the one the craigslist.org website uses), not HTML pages, so it is fast and stable: one request returns up to 360 listings, and up to 10,000 listings per search. For each listing you get:

• Title, price, currency (USD, CAD, ...), city, neighborhood, GPS coordinates, posted date, all photo URLs, category and sub-category.
• Posting details (optional, includeDetails): full description, every attribute (year, make/model, condition, VIN, fuel, transmission, paint color, title status, bedrooms, bathrooms, laundry, parking, employment type, compensation...), phone numbers and emails found in the text, contactObfuscated, updatedAt, replyToken, isDeleted.
• Alerts: turn on onlyNew and schedule the Actor; each run returns only postings you have not seen in that search.

Use cases

• Car dealers and flippers: get every new car under $10,000 in five cities each hour.
• Real estate investors: track rentals, rooms and FSBO listings with price, bedrooms, sqft and GPS.
• Lead generation: services, gigs and for-sale posters with phone numbers and emails from the posting text.
• Price research and AI datasets: thousands of listings per city with clean, structured fields.

How to use it

1. Option A — URLs: open Craigslist, search with any filters (radius, by-owner, bedrooms, make/model, ...), and paste the URL of the results page. Posting URLs work too.
2. Option B — fields: pick a City (or several in Cities), a Category, an optional Keyword, and filters (price, condition, has image, posted today).
3. Set Max results and, if you need description and attributes, turn on Include full posting details.
4. For alerts, turn on Only new listings and schedule the Actor (every hour, every day...). The first run returns everything up to Max results; later runs only new postings.

How much does it cost?

Pay per result, no subscription. Proxy costs are included.

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.005 per run
listing (one listing in the output)	$0.001, or $1.00 per 1,000
listing-details (only with Include full posting details)	$0.0002 per listing ($0.20 per 1,000)

Errors (bad URL, unknown city, deleted posting) are never charged. With onlyNew or postedAfter, listings you already have are skipped before they are charged.

Input example

{
    "regions": ["sfbay", "losangeles", "sandiego"],
    "category": "cta",
    "searchTerm": "tacoma",
    "priceMax": 20000,
    "sort": "date",
    "maxResults": 500,
    "includeDetails": true,
    "onlyNew": true
}

Field	Default	Description
startUrls		Craigslist search or posting URLs. When set, City/Category/filters are ignored
region	newyork	One city (50 most popular in the list)
regions		Several cities: any Craigslist subdomain (raleigh, halifax, london...). Overrides region
category	sss	sss for sale, cta cars & trucks, ela electronics, fua furniture, apa apartments, roo rooms, sub sublets, jjj jobs, ggg gigs, bbb services, ccc community, rrr resumes, eee events (any Craigslist category code works)
searchTerm		Keyword; use "a b"|"c d" for OR
priceMin, priceMax		Price range
condition	any	new, like-new, excellent, good, fair, salvage
hasImage, postedToday	false	Only with photos / only last 24 hours
sort	date	date, rel, priceasc, pricedsc
includeDetails	false	Open each posting for description, attributes, contacts (extra $0.0002)
maxResults	200	Total listings across all searches; 0 = no limit
onlyNew	false	Only postings newer than the previous run of the same search
postedAfter		2026-10-01, or 24 hours, 3 days, 2 weeks. Uses Craigslist's listing date, which includes renewals; postedAt in the output is the original posting date

Output example

{
    "url": "https://www.craigslist.org/view/d/union-city-2017-hino-ft-box-liftgate/tu7JEfaUTfzaJwT1xf1sHQ",
    "postId": "7992830895",
    "title": "2017 Hino 268 | 26 ft Box w/ Liftgate",
    "priceUsd": 29995,
    "currency": "USD",
    "region": "sfbay",
    "categorySlug": "cta",
    "categoryLabel": "Cars & Trucks",
    "subcategorySlug": "ctd",
    "subcategoryLabel": "Cars & Trucks - by dealer",
    "postedAt": "2026-10-31T00:04:22-0700",
    "updatedAt": "2026-10-31T00:04:23-0700",
    "location": "hayward / castro valley",
    "latitude": 37.606334,
    "longitude": -122.061773,
    "attributes": { "year": "2017", "make_model": "Hino 268", "make": "Hino", "model": "268", "vin": "5PVNJ8JV1H4S63761", "condition": "excellent", "odometer": "199,987", "transmission": "automatic", "type": "truck" },
    "description": "Contact us for more details.\nABC Auto Brokers\n2456 Whipple Rd #A\nHayward, CA 94544\n(510)579-6766\n...",
    "imageUrls": ["https://images.craigslist.org/00j0j_ajqk6xctlWq_0zE0k2_600x450.jpg"],
    "hasImages": true,
    "contactObfuscated": false,
    "replyToken": "sfo/ctd/7992830895",
    "phoneNumbers": ["(510) 579-6766"],
    "emails": [],
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-31T07:08:58Z",
    "isDeleted": false
}

Dates are in the city's local time with its UTC offset. description, attributes, updatedAt, contactObfuscated, replyToken, phoneNumbers, emails and isDeleted are only present with includeDetails. Failed searches and URLs appear as free rows with errorType and error.

Notes

• Craigslist returns at most 10,000 listings per search. For more, split by sub-area, category or price range.
• Craigslist hides most phone numbers behind a "show contact info" button; phoneNumbers and emails contain only what the poster wrote in the text.
• onlyNew remembers the highest posting ID per search in the key-value store craigslist-scraper-cheap-state. Delete that store to start over.
• Results from "nearby areas" that Craigslist appends to small searches are left out, except for /search/city/... radius URLs.

Is it legal?

This Actor collects only publicly available listing data. Do not use personal data (phone numbers, emails) for spam, and follow Craigslist's terms and the privacy laws that apply to you (GDPR, CCPA).