BBB Scraper — Better Business Bureau Ratings, Accreditation & Contacts

BBB Scraper extracts business data from the Better Business Bureau (bbb.org) by keyword + location or by direct profile URL. For every business it returns the BBB letter rating, accreditation status, date accredited, years in business, phone, website, full address, geo-coordinates, business hours, owner/management contacts, and categories — clean, flat JSON ready for lead lists, CRM import, or AI agents.

It is MCP-ready (built for Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI agents), runs on residential proxies to clear BBB's Cloudflare protection, and bills per business returned so cost is predictable.

Try it: set searchKeyword to plumber, location to Los Angeles, CA, and run. You get up to 100 enriched businesses in minutes.

What does BBB Scraper do?

The Better Business Bureau maintains one of the largest public directories of US and Canadian businesses, with trust signals you cannot get from Google Maps alone — accreditation, A+ to F letter ratings, complaint history, and how long a business has been operating. This actor turns that directory into structured data.

Two ways to use it:

1. Search mode — give a keyword (e.g. hvac contractor) and a location (e.g. Austin, TX). The actor walks the BBB search results, and (by default) opens each business's profile to pull the full detail set.
2. Profile-URL mode — paste one or more bbb.org/.../profile/... URLs into startUrls to deep-scrape specific businesses you already know.

Running on Apify gives you API access, scheduling, integrations (Google Sheets, Make, Zapier), automatic residential proxy rotation, and run monitoring.

Why use BBB Scraper?

• Lead generation — build lists of accredited, highly-rated local service businesses (contractors, plumbers, HVAC, roofers) with phone and website for outreach.
• Competitor & reputation research — track ratings, accreditation, and complaints for a market.
• Vendor due diligence — verify a supplier's BBB standing before signing.
• Data enrichment — append BBB rating + accreditation to an existing company list via profile URLs.
• AI agents — a clean tool call: keyword + location in, structured business JSON out.

How to use BBB Scraper

1. Open the actor and select the Input tab.
2. Enter a Search keyword (e.g. general contractor) and a Location as City, ST (e.g. Los Angeles, CA). Or paste BBB profile URLs into BBB profile URLs.
3. Set Max results (default 100) and, optionally, Minimum BBB rating or BBB-accredited only.
4. Click Start. Download results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML, or pull them via the API.

Input

Field	Type	Description
searchKeyword	string	Business type or name to search (e.g. plumber).
location	string	City, ST (US) or City, Province (CA). Optional.
country	enum	US or CA. Default US.
startUrls	array	Direct bbb.org/.../profile/... URLs to deep-scrape.
maxResults	integer	Max businesses to return. Default 100.
enrichDetails	boolean	Open each profile for full detail. Default true.
minRating	enum	Filter by minimum BBB letter rating. Default Any.
accreditedOnly	boolean	Return only BBB-accredited businesses. Default false.

Output

Each dataset item is one business:

{
  "businessName": "L A Tamix Plumbing",
  "bbbId": "1216-907682",
  "url": "https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/los-angeles/profile/plumber/l-a-tamix-plumbing-1216-907682",
  "bbbRating": "A+",
  "isAccredited": true,
  "accreditationStatus": "BBB Accredited Business",
  "dateAccredited": "4/5/2024",
  "yearsInBusiness": 8,
  "categories": ["Plumber"],
  "phone": "(323) 632-9358",
  "website": "latamixplumbing.com",
  "city": "Los Angeles",
  "state": "CA",
  "postalCode": "90006-2983",
  "contacts": [{ "name": "Rufino Juarez Antunez", "title": "Owner" }],
  "hours": { "monday": "7:00 AM - 5:00 PM" },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-26T00:00:00.000Z"
}

You can download the dataset in JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML.

Data fields

Field	Description
businessName	Business name
bbbRating	BBB letter rating (A+ … F)
isAccredited / accreditationStatus	BBB accreditation
dateAccredited	Date accreditation granted
yearsInBusiness	Years operating
phone, website, email	Contact details
street, city, state, postalCode, country	Address
latitude, longitude	Geo-coordinates
categories	BBB business categories
contacts	Owner / management (name + title)
hours	Business hours
complaintsCount, ratingCount, averageStarRating	Review signals (when published)

How much does it cost to scrape BBB?

Pricing is pay-per-event:

• Profile enriched (default mode, and any profile URL): $0.006 per business with full detail.
• Business found (search with enrichment off): $0.004 per business (lighter listing fields).
• Actor start: $0.00005 per run.

A 100-business enriched run costs about $0.60. Both pay-per-event and usage-based (compute + proxy) billing are available — pick whichever fits your volume. A single BBB keyword+location search caps at 225 results; raise maxResults and add more locations to collect more.

Tips & advanced options

• Bigger pulls: BBB limits one search to ~225 results. To exceed that, run several locations (e.g. one run per metro) and merge datasets.
• Cheaper/faster: set enrichDetails to false to skip detail pages when listing fields are enough.
• Cleaner leads: combine accreditedOnly: true with minRating: "A".
• Residential proxy is on by default and required — BBB blocks datacenter IPs via Cloudflare.

FAQ, disclaimer & support

Is scraping BBB legal? This actor collects only publicly available business-directory information. You are responsible for complying with bbb.org's Terms of Service and applicable laws (including data-protection rules) and for using the data lawfully. Do not use it to harass businesses or for unsolicited bulk contact where prohibited.

Why are some fields null? BBB does not publish every field for every business (e.g. email, complaint counts). Missing values are returned as null.

A run returned 0 results and failed. That usually means BBB temporarily blocked the proxy pool. Retry, use a smaller batch, or wait 10–15 minutes.

Found a bug or need a field added? Open an issue on the Issues tab. Custom BBB data solutions are available on request.