🛸 UFO/UAP Sighting Scraper (NUFORC)

The only NUFORC scraper on Apify — 160,000+ UFO/UAP sighting reports with full witness narratives, structured metadata, and credibility tiers

🌟 Why Choose This Scraper?

The UFO/UAP Sighting Scraper delivers production-ready access to the world's largest public database of UFO sightings, with these advanced features:

Complete NUFORC Database Access: Search and scrape reports from the National UFO Reporting Center — 160,000+ sighting reports dating back to 1974. Filter by UFO shape, US state, country, date range, credibility tier, and special categories like pilot reports.

Full Witness Narratives: Each sighting includes the complete witness account, not just a summary. Toggle detail fetching to get the full narrative, duration, number of observers, color, estimated size/speed, viewing angle, and more.

Credibility Tiers: NUFORC assigns credibility tiers to reports — Tier 1 (dramatic/credible), Tier 2 (unusual), Tier 3 (unexplained), Tier 4 (likely explainable). Filter for only the most credible sightings or analyze the full spectrum.

Pilot & Aviation Reports: Access a dedicated collection of sightings by pilots, military personnel, and aviation professionals — the most credible UFO reports in the database.

25 UFO Shapes: Filter by any of the 25 recognized shapes — Triangle, Disk, Sphere, Orb, Fireball, Cigar, Chevron, Diamond, and more. Each shape has thousands of matching reports.

Enterprise-Grade Reliability: Built-in request pacing (respects NUFORC's volunteer-run servers), batch dataset push, AJAX pagination for large result sets, and Apify state persistence for resumable runs.

🚀 Features

Core Capabilities

• Flexible Filtering: Shape, US state, country, date range (YYYYMM), credibility tier, and special categories
• Two-Phase Scraping: Fast listing-only mode or detailed mode with full narrative text
• AJAX Pagination: Automatically fetches all results beyond the initial 100-row HTML table
• Special Categories: Highlight cases (most notable) and pilot reports (aviation professionals)
• Global Coverage: US, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and 50+ countries
• Date Range Search: Specify start/end months to focus on specific time periods

Data Quality

• 28 Structured Fields: Every output record has all 28 fields — no missing keys, ever
• Full Narratives: Complete witness accounts, not truncated summaries
• Observer Details: Number of observers, observer type (pilot, military, etc.)
• Object Description: Shape, color, estimated size, estimated speed
• Observation Geometry: Viewing angle, direction from viewer, closest distance, viewed from (land/sea/air)
• Characteristics List: Structured array of object behaviors (lights, hovering, silent, etc.)
• Explanation Field: NUFORC's assessment when available (Starlink, Satellite, Drone?, Aircraft?)
• Schema Version: Every record includes schema_version: "1.0" for API stability

📖 Usage Examples

Example 1: Recent Triangle Sightings

Get the latest triangle-shaped UFO reports with full details.

{
    "shape": "Triangle",
    "includeDetails": true,
    "maxResults": 50
}

Example 2: California Sightings

All sightings reported in California.

{
    "usState": "CA",
    "includeDetails": true,
    "maxResults": 100
}

Example 3: Tier 1 — Most Credible Reports

Only the most dramatic, credible reports as rated by NUFORC.

{
    "tier": "1",
    "includeDetails": true,
    "maxResults": 100
}

Example 4: Pilot Reports

Sightings by pilots and aviation professionals.

{
    "category": "pilot_reports",
    "includeDetails": true,
    "maxResults": 50
}

Example 5: Date Range Search

Sightings from January to March 2024.

{
    "dateFrom": "202401",
    "dateTo": "202403",
    "includeDetails": true,
    "maxResults": 200
}

Example 6: Fast Listing-Only Mode

Quickly grab summary data without fetching detail pages (much faster).

{
    "shape": "Fireball",
    "includeDetails": false,
    "maxResults": 500
}

Example 7: UK Sightings — Disk-Shaped

Disk-shaped UFO reports from the United Kingdom.

{
    "shape": "Disk",
    "country": "United Kingdom",
    "includeDetails": true,
    "maxResults": 50
}

🔍 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
shape	string	❌	"all"	UFO shape filter: Light, Circle, Triangle, Fireball, Disk, Sphere, Orb, Oval, Formation, Changing, Cigar, Rectangle, Cylinder, Flash, Diamond, Chevron, Egg, Teardrop, Cone, Cross, Star, Cube, Other, Unknown, or all
country	string	❌	""	Country name as it appears on NUFORC (e.g. "United Kingdom", "Australia", "India")
usState	string	❌	""	US state code (e.g. "CA", "NY", "TX")
dateFrom	string	❌	""	Start month in YYYYMM format (e.g. "202401" for January 2024)
dateTo	string	❌	""	End month in YYYYMM format (e.g. "202412" for December 2024)
tier	string	❌	"all"	Credibility tier: 1 (dramatic), 2 (unusual), 3 (unexplained), 4 (explainable), or all
category	string	❌	"all"	Special category: highlights (most notable), pilot_reports (aviation pros), or all
includeDetails	boolean	❌	true	Fetch full detail pages for narratives and metadata. Set false for faster listing-only mode
maxResults	integer	❌	100	Maximum sightings to return (1–10,000). Free tier: 25 per run
requestIntervalSecs	number	❌	1.0	Seconds between requests (0.5–10.0). Be kind — NUFORC is volunteer-run
proxyConfig	object	❌	-	Proxy configuration. Apify Proxy or custom proxy URLs

📊 Output Format

Each sighting is pushed as a separate dataset item with the following structure:

{
    "schema_version": "1.0",
    "sighting_id": "185039",
    "sighting_url": "https://nuforc.org/sighting/?id=185039",
    "occurred_date": "2024-01-15 21:30",
    "reported_date": "2024-01-16",
    "posted_date": "2024-03-15",
    "duration": "5 minutes",
    "number_of_observers": 3,
    "observer_type": "",
    "city": "Phoenix",
    "state": "AZ",
    "country": "USA",
    "location_details": "Suburban neighborhood, clear skies",
    "shape": "Triangle",
    "color": "Orange/Red",
    "estimated_size": "Football field",
    "estimated_speed": "Slow, hovering",
    "viewed_from": "Land",
    "direction_from_viewer": "NW",
    "angle_of_elevation": "45 degrees",
    "closest_distance": "500 feet",
    "characteristics": ["Lights", "Silent", "Hovering"],
    "summary": "Large triangular object with orange lights hovering silently over neighborhood",
    "narrative": "My wife and I were walking the dog around 9:30 PM when we noticed three orange lights forming a triangle in the northwest sky. The object was completely silent and appeared to be hovering at about 500 feet altitude. After approximately 5 minutes, it moved slowly to the north and disappeared behind the mountains. Our neighbor also witnessed the event from his backyard.",
    "has_media": "N",
    "explanation": "",
    "tier": "1",
    "scraped_at": "2025-02-15T12:00:00+00:00"
}

Output Fields

• sighting_id / sighting_url: Unique NUFORC sighting ID and direct link to the report
• occurred_date / reported_date / posted_date: When it happened, when it was reported, when NUFORC posted it
• duration: How long the sighting lasted (free text)
• number_of_observers / observer_type: Who saw it and their background (pilot, military, etc.)
• city / state / country / location_details: Geographic information
• shape / color / estimated_size / estimated_speed: Object physical description
• viewed_from / direction_from_viewer / angle_of_elevation / closest_distance: Observation geometry
• characteristics: Array of object behaviors (e.g. ["Lights", "Silent", "Hovering"])
• summary: One-line summary from the listing page
• narrative: Full witness account from the detail page (only when includeDetails is true)
• has_media / explanation: Whether images exist and NUFORC's explanation (if any)
• tier: NUFORC credibility rating — 1 (most credible) through 4 (likely explainable)

💰 Pricing

This Actor uses a pay-per-result pricing model at $0.0005 per sighting (that's $0.50 per 1,000 sightings).

Free tier users get 25 results per run at no cost.

🎯 Use Cases

• UFO Research: Analyze sighting patterns by shape, location, date, and credibility across decades of reports
• Data Journalism: Build interactive maps and timelines of UFO sightings for news articles and investigations
• Academic Analysis: Study witness reporting patterns, geographic clusters, and temporal trends in UAP reports
• Government Transparency: Cross-reference NUFORC sightings with AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) reports
• Geospatial Intelligence: Map sighting hotspots, identify geographic clusters, and correlate with military bases or flight paths
• NLP & Text Analysis: Apply natural language processing to 160,000+ witness narratives for sentiment, credibility, and pattern analysis
• AI Agents: Feed structured UFO sighting data into LLM pipelines via MCP integration for research assistants and chatbots

🤖 MCP Integration

Use this actor as a tool in your AI agent pipeline. Add to your MCP client config:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": ["-y", "@apify/actors-mcp-server"],
            "env": {
                "APIFY_TOKEN": "your-apify-token"
            }
        }
    }
}

Then ask your AI: "Find the most credible triangle UFO sightings in Arizona from 2024"

📝 Notes

• Data Source: All data comes from NUFORC (National UFO Reporting Center), a volunteer-run nonprofit
• Request Pacing: Default 1-second interval between requests. Please be respectful — NUFORC is volunteer-operated
• Two Scraping Modes: includeDetails: false is ~10x faster but returns only summary data from listing pages
• Date Defaults: With no date range specified, the actor scrapes the last 3 months of reports
• AJAX Pagination: Listing pages show 100 rows initially. The actor automatically fetches additional pages via AJAX
• Deduplication: Results are automatically deduplicated by sighting ID within a single run
• State Persistence: The actor supports Apify state persistence for resumable long-running scrapes
• No API Key Needed: NUFORC is a public website — no registration or API key required

Made with ❤️ for UFO researchers, data journalists, and curious minds

The truth is in the data. Scrape it.