Legacy.com Obituary & Death Notice Scraper

Search Legacy.com's obituary and death-notice database by name, or pull recent notices from a specific newspaper or funeral home. Returns structured records — full name, age, dates, city/state, newspaper affiliate, and funeral home name + website — ready to use for final-expense outreach, probate/estate research, inherited-property prospecting, or genealogy.

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Legacy.com Obituary & Death Notice Scraper Features

• Search by name or keyword and get every matching obituary as a structured record, not a page render
• Pull recent notices from a specific newspaper or funeral home outlet directly
• Leave the input empty to get the most recently posted notices across every outlet on the network
• Optional full-obituary-text fetch — pulls the complete text plus exact birth/death dates when the source publishes them
• Funeral home name and website, and the publishing newspaper's name, are first-class fields — not something you have to scrape a second time
• No account or login required to run

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Who Uses Legacy.com Data?

• Final-expense and life-insurance agencies — recently-deceased records for beneficiary and next-of-kin outreach
• Probate and estate attorneys, and probate-lead vendors — find estates entering administration as soon as a death is published
• Real-estate wholesalers — inherited-property signals, sourced straight from the death notice
• Genealogy and public-records researchers — a structured, searchable death index instead of manually reading newspaper obituary pages

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How Legacy.com Obituary & Death Notice Scraper Works

1. Give it one or more search keywords (a name, surname, or other term), one or more newspaper/funeral-home site slugs, or nothing at all.
2. With keywords: each one is looked up independently and returns its matching obituaries.
3. With site slugs: each outlet's own recent-notices page is pulled directly.
4. With neither: you get Legacy.com's own most-recently-posted feed, across every outlet.
5. Turn on full-text fetch to also pull each obituary's complete text and, when published, exact birth/death dates.
6. Everything lands in your dataset as flat, ready-to-use rows.

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Input

{
  "keywords": ["Smith"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Or browse a specific outlet directly:

{
  "affiliateSites": ["nytimes"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Or leave both empty for the most recently posted notices network-wide:

{
  "maxItems": 50
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
keywords	array of strings	[]	Search terms to look up (a name, surname, or other free text). Each keyword is looked up independently. Leave empty to fetch the most recently posted obituaries across every newspaper instead.
affiliateSites	array of strings	[]	Browse a specific outlet directly by its site slug (the segment after legacy.com/us/obituaries/ in that outlet's own listing page, e.g. nytimes). Combine with keywords or use on its own.
includeFullText	boolean	false	Also open each obituary's own page for its full text and, when the source provides them, exact birth/death dates. Uses one extra request per record — leave off for large runs.
maxItems	integer	20	Maximum number of obituary records to return.

Resuming a large crawl

Every run emits a resumeCursor in its Output. If a large crawl stops before it finishes — because it hit maxItems, your spend cap (maxTotalChargeUsd), or was aborted — start a new run with the same input plus that resumeCursor to continue from where it left off. The crawl resumes from the queued work the previous run didn't reach.

• You are not re-charged for records the earlier run already delivered.
• Resume within your account's run-retention window — on the free tier, roughly your 10 most recent runs. Once the source run is pruned, its resumeCursor is no longer valid.
• resumeCursor is opaque — supply it unmodified.

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Legacy.com Obituary & Death Notice Scraper Output Fields

{
  "obituary_id": 212122545,
  "schema2020_obituary_id": 62286594,
  "full_name": "Jean Helen (Paul) Burnett",
  "first_name": "Jean",
  "middle_name": "Helen",
  "last_name": "(Paul) Burnett",
  "maiden_name": null,
  "nickname": null,
  "name_prefix": null,
  "name_suffix": null,
  "obituary_type": "legacy notice",
  "date_of_birth": null,
  "date_of_death": null,
  "age_at_death": 88,
  "published_date": "2026-08-27T00:00:00",
  "city": "Greenwood",
  "state": "SC",
  "country": "US",
  "newspaper_name": "Index-Journal, The",
  "newspaper_site": "indexjournal",
  "affiliate_type": "Newspaper",
  "funeral_home_name": "Richie Funeral Home Inc",
  "funeral_home_url": "https://www.richiefuneralhome.com/",
  "funeral_home_id": 23163,
  "obituary_text": "Jean Helen (Paul) Burnett...",
  "obituary_url": "https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/indexjournal/name/jean-burnett-obituary?id=62286594",
  "photo_url": "https://cache.legacy.net/legacy/images/.../photo.jpgx",
  "guestbook_entry_count": 3,
  "service_details": null,
  "query_keyword": "smith",
  "scraped_at": "2026-09-20T17:37:45.767Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
obituary_id	integer	Legacy.com's internal obituary id
schema2020_obituary_id	integer	Legacy.com's secondary/legacy obituary id
full_name	string	Decedent's full name as published
first_name	string	First name
middle_name	string	Middle name
last_name	string	Last name
maiden_name	string	Maiden name, when published
nickname	string	Nickname, when published
name_prefix	string	Name prefix (e.g. Rev., Dr.)
name_suffix	string	Name suffix (e.g. Jr., III)
obituary_type	string	Notice type, e.g. "legacy notice" or "death notice"
date_of_birth	string	Date of birth, when the source publishes an exact date (sparse)
date_of_death	string	Date of death, when the source publishes an exact date (sparse)
age_at_death	integer	Age at death
published_date	string	When the notice was posted, ISO 8601
city	string	City associated with the notice
state	string	State/province associated with the notice
country	string	Country the notice was published in
newspaper_name	string	Publishing newspaper or funeral-home outlet's display name
newspaper_site	string	Publishing outlet's Legacy.com site slug
affiliate_type	string	Outlet type, e.g. Newspaper or Funeral Home Publisher
funeral_home_name	string	Funeral home name, when the notice is funeral-home published
funeral_home_url	string	Funeral home's own website, when published
funeral_home_id	integer	Legacy.com's internal funeral home id
obituary_text	string	Obituary text — full text when includeFullText is on, otherwise a preview
obituary_url	string	Link to the full notice
photo_url	string	Decedent photo URL, when published
guestbook_entry_count	integer	Number of guestbook/condolence entries posted
service_details	string	Visitation/service details pulled from the full text, when available (only populated with includeFullText on)
query_keyword	string	The keyword or outlet slug this record was found under, or (recent) for the default feed
scraped_at	string	ISO-8601 timestamp when this record was scraped

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FAQ

How do I search Legacy.com obituaries?

Pass one or more names or search terms in keywords. Each is looked up independently and every matching obituary comes back as a structured row.

Can I get obituaries from a specific newspaper or funeral home?

Yes. Pass its site slug in affiliateSites — find it in that outlet's own listing page URL, legacy.com/us/obituaries/<slug>/browse.

What if I don't pass any keywords?

You get Legacy.com's own most-recently-posted feed, across every newspaper and funeral home on the network — the highest-value slice for anyone tracking recent deaths.

How much does this cost to run?

You're charged per obituary record returned. Turning on includeFullText adds one extra request per record for the full text and exact dates — leave it off if the preview text and listing fields are enough.

Do I need an account or API key?

No. This scraper runs without any Legacy.com account, login, or API key.

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Need More Features?

Need custom fields, filters, or a different target site? File an issue or get in touch.

Why Use Legacy.com Obituary & Death Notice Scraper?

• Structured, not scraped-and-guessed — split name parts, newspaper affiliate, and funeral home name + website all come back as first-class fields
• No account required — run it cold, no Legacy.com login to manage
• Flexible entry points — search by name, browse an outlet, or just take the latest feed