Facebook Search Scraper

Search Facebook by keyword across Events, Marketplace, and the Ad Library (ads + advertisers) — from a single actor, with no login and no cookies. Pass one keyword, pick a searchType, and get back clean, flat, structured JSON. Built for marketers, competitor researchers, deal hunters, event promoters, and AI agents.

What it does

Facebook only lets you keyword-search a few surfaces without logging in. This actor covers all four of them and normalizes them into one consistent output shape:

searchType	What you get	Powered by
ads	Live/inactive Ad Library creatives matching your keyword — ad copy, CTA, landing URL, images, advertiser page, run dates	Public Ad Library
advertisers	Ad Library advertisers (pages) matching your keyword — name, category, likes, verification, linked Instagram	Public Ad Library
events	Public Facebook events matching your keyword — name, date, venue, interested/going counts, cover image	Public events search
marketplace	Marketplace listings matching your keyword near a location — title, price, city, photo, delivery type	Public Marketplace

When to use it

• Competitor ad intelligence — pull every active ad a brand or niche is running (ads), or find all advertisers in a category (advertisers).
• Event sourcing / promotion — find upcoming events by topic and city (events).
• Deal & price research — track Marketplace listings for a product near a location (marketplace).
• AI agents — one keyword in, structured JSON out; ideal as an MCP tool call.

When NOT to use it: this actor searches only the four cookieless surfaces above. Facebook's global post / page / profile / group keyword search is login-gated and is not offered here. Use these sibling actors instead:

• Posts by keyword within pages/groups → facebook-post-search-scraper
• A specific page's data → facebook-page-scraper
• A group's posts/members → facebook-group-posts-scraper, facebook-group-members-scraper
• Comments → facebook-comments-scraper

Output

One flat record per result. Fields are populated per surface (event fields on events, price fields on marketplace, ad fields on ads, etc.) and empty fields are omitted.

{
  "searchType": "ads",
  "resultType": "ad",
  "query": "electric bike",
  "position": 1,
  "id": "1378176106734781",
  "adArchiveId": "1378176106734781",
  "url": "https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=1378176106734781",
  "title": "Summer Sale — 40% Off E-Bikes",
  "imageUrl": "https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/....jpg",
  "pageName": "VoltRide",
  "pageId": "119749581219299",
  "isActive": true,
  "startDate": "2026-05-01T00:00:00.000Z",
  "ctaText": "Shop now",
  "ctaType": "SHOP_NOW",
  "linkUrl": "https://voltride.com/summer",
  "adText": "Ride further for less...",
  "displayFormat": "IMAGE",
  "pageCategories": ["Sporting goods"],
  "scrapeSource": "scrapecreators",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-01T12:00:00.000Z"
}

An event record:

{
  "searchType": "events",
  "resultType": "event",
  "query": "coffee festival",
  "title": "Austin Coffee Festival 2026",
  "url": "https://www.facebook.com/events/24659081027102562/",
  "startTime": "2026-05-22T17:00:00.000Z",
  "dateText": "Fri, May 22",
  "placeName": "Palmer Events Center",
  "interestedCount": 2100,
  "goingCount": 640,
  "imageUrl": "https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/....jpg",
  "scrapeSource": "scrapecreators",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-01T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-event (plus optional pay-per-usage):

• Actor start: $0.00005 per run.
• Result found: $0.005 per result returned (event, listing, ad, or advertiser).

A 50-result run costs about $0.25. You are only charged for results actually returned — zero-result searches cost only the start fee.

Input

Field	Required	Default	Notes
query	✅	—	Keyword to search, e.g. electric bike. Plain text, not a URL.
searchType		ads	ads · advertisers · events · marketplace.
maxResults		50	1–500.
location	for marketplace	Austin, TX	City/place; resolved to coordinates automatically.
country		all	2-letter ISO code to scope ads (e.g. US).
adStatus		ACTIVE	ACTIVE · INACTIVE · ALL (ads only).
adType		ALL	ALL · POLITICAL_AND_ISSUE_ADS (ads only).

Example — Ad Library ads

{ "query": "electric bike", "searchType": "ads", "country": "US", "maxResults": 50 }

Example — Events

{ "query": "coffee festival", "searchType": "events", "maxResults": 30 }

Example — Marketplace

{ "query": "mountain bike", "searchType": "marketplace", "location": "Denver, CO", "maxResults": 40 }

Example — Advertisers

{ "query": "skincare", "searchType": "advertisers", "maxResults": 25 }

Using from the API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/khadinakbar~facebook-search-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "query": "electric bike", "searchType": "ads", "country": "US", "maxResults": 50 }'

Using from an AI agent (MCP)

Exposed via Apify MCP as apify--facebook-search-scraper. Point your MCP client at https://mcp.apify.com and the agent can call it with a keyword and searchType. Results come back as structured JSON ready for reasoning.

How it works

The actor is provider-backed and cookieless — it never asks you for a Facebook login. It routes each searchType to the correct managed data provider (ScrapeCreators primary, SociaVault fallback; Events is ScrapeCreators-only), paginates up to your maxResults, and normalizes every surface into one flat schema. Empty results return gracefully; genuine provider outages fail honestly with a clear status message rather than pretending to succeed.

Notes & limits

• Only the four cookieless surfaces above are supported. Global post/page/profile/group keyword search is login-gated (see sibling actors).
• Marketplace requires a location to anchor listings to a place.
• Ad Library coverage reflects what Meta exposes publicly and varies by region/regulation.

Legal

This actor collects only publicly available data from Facebook's public surfaces. It performs no login and accesses no private or login-gated content. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with Facebook's Terms of Service, applicable laws (including GDPR/CCPA where relevant), and any rights in the data. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.