# Capterra Reviews Scraper (`lisbuenas/capterra-reviews-scraper`) Actor

Scrape all reviews from any Capterra software listing page. Extracts ratings, pros/cons, reviewer details and dates.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/lisbuenas/capterra-reviews-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Felipe Lisboa](https://apify.com/lisbuenas) (community)
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 0.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.50 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Capterra Reviews Scraper

Scrape every review from any [Capterra](https://www.capterra.com) software listing: overall and sub-ratings, pros and cons, reviewer job title, industry and company size, review dates, and verification details. Each review becomes one item in the Apify dataset.

### Features

- **Flexible input**: product URLs, `ID/slug` pairs, or plain product names resolved through Capterra search.
- **Full review text**: the text is read from the page's embedded data, so it isn't cut off by "Continue reading".
- **Fields that aren't shown on the page**: company size, reviewer validation status and method, and review source codes.
- **Automatic pagination** by following Capterra's next-page link.
- **Resilient**: waits out Cloudflare challenges, rotates proxy sessions, retries failed pages, de-duplicates reviews, and falls back to parsing the rendered HTML if the embedded data changes.
- **Limits** on reviews or pages per product.

### Input

| Field | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `products` | array of strings | **required** | `https://www.capterra.com/p/164283/Zendesk/`, `164283/Zendesk`, or `zendesk` |
| `maxReviewsPerProduct` | integer | `0` (no limit) | Stop after N reviews per product |
| `maxPagesPerProduct` | integer | `0` (no limit) | Stop after N pages (25 reviews each) per product |
| `maxConcurrency` | integer | `3` | Parallel browser pages |
| `maxRequestRetries` | integer | `8` | Retries per page, each with a fresh proxy session |
| `proxyConfiguration` | object | `{ "useApifyProxy": true }` | Apify Proxy settings. Residential proxies give the best results against Cloudflare. |

Example:

```json
{
  "products": [
    "https://www.capterra.com/p/164283/Zendesk/",
    "asana"
  ],
  "maxReviewsPerProduct": 500,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}
```

### Output

One dataset item per review:

```json
{
  "reviewId": "Capterra___7070758",
  "reviewUrl": "https://www.capterra.com/p/164283/Zendesk/#Capterra___7070758",
  "productId": "164283",
  "productSlug": "Zendesk",
  "productName": "Zendesk Suite",
  "productUrl": "https://www.capterra.com/p/164283/Zendesk/",
  "title": "Getting started with Zendesk from scratch",
  "date": "December 29, 2025",
  "dateIso": "2025-12-29",
  "summary": "As a self-taught Zendesk Admin, having an engaged community ...",
  "pros": "Excellent customer support platform, making it easy to centralize service channels ...",
  "cons": "Many simple but useful features are left out in order to focus on new products ...",
  "reasonsForChoosing": "Support history, native channels, integrations",
  "reasonsForSwitching": null,
  "adviceToOthers": null,
  "alternativesConsidered": ["Jira", "Movidesk"],
  "switchedFrom": null,
  "vendorResponse": null,
  "rating": {
    "overall": 4,
    "easeOfUse": 4,
    "customerService": 5,
    "features": 4,
    "valueForMoney": 3,
    "likelihoodToRecommend": 8
  },
  "reviewer": {
    "name": "Leonardo S.",
    "jobTitle": "Support Analyst",
    "industry": "Information Technology and Services",
    "companySize": "201-500 employees",
    "timeUsedProduct": "2+ years",
    "profilePicUrl": null,
    "linkedInVerified": false,
    "anonymous": false
  },
  "isVerified": true,
  "verificationMethods": ["ProofOfLink"],
  "incentivized": "VendorReferredIncentivized",
  "reviewSource": {
    "code": "VRI",
    "description": "Vendor Referred - Incentive Offered: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor ..."
  },
  "sourceSite": "Capterra",
  "page": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-15T12:00:00.000Z",
  "dataSource": "payload"
}
```

Missing values are always `null`. `rating.likelihoodToRecommend` uses a 0–10 scale; the other ratings use 1–5.

`dataSource` is `payload` when the data came from the page's embedded JSON (all fields available). It is `dom` when the scraper fell back to the rendered HTML, where `reviewId`, `companySize` and `isVerified` are `null`.

Pages that still fail after all retries are saved as items with `"#error": true`, the URL and the error message.

### Limitations

- Capterra serves at most **100 review pages (2,500 reviews)** per product through its public pages. Later pages redirect to page 1, and the scraper stops there.
- Capterra is protected by Cloudflare. Runs without a proxy, or with datacenter proxies, may be blocked. Use Apify residential proxies for reliable results.

### Run locally

```bash
npm install
npx playwright install chromium
mkdir -p storage/key_value_stores/default
echo '{"products":["164283/Zendesk"],"maxPagesPerProduct":2}' > storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json
npm start
```

Results are written to `storage/datasets/default/`.

### Tech

Node.js 20, [Crawlee](https://crawlee.dev) `PlaywrightCrawler`, and the [Apify SDK](https://docs.apify.com/sdk/js). Capterra returns a Cloudflare 403 challenge to plain HTTP clients, so `CheerioCrawler` doesn't work and a real browser is required.

# Actor input Schema

## `products` (type: `array`):

Products to scrape. Each entry can be a Capterra URL (e.g. https://www.capterra.com/p/164283/Zendesk/ or .../reviews/), an ID/slug pair (e.g. 164283/Zendesk), or a plain product name (e.g. zendesk), which is resolved with Capterra search.

## `maxReviewsPerProduct` (type: `integer`):

Stop after this many reviews for each product. 0 means no limit. Capterra only exposes the first 100 review pages (2,500 reviews) per product.

## `maxPagesPerProduct` (type: `integer`):

Stop after this many review pages (25 reviews each) for each product. 0 means no limit.

## `maxConcurrency` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of browser pages open at the same time.

## `maxRequestRetries` (type: `integer`):

How many times a failed or blocked page is retried, each time with a fresh proxy session.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Capterra sits behind Cloudflare. Apify Proxy is strongly recommended; residential proxies give the best success rate.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "products": [
    "https://www.capterra.com/p/164283/Zendesk/"
  ],
  "maxReviewsPerProduct": 0,
  "maxPagesPerProduct": 0,
  "maxConcurrency": 3,
  "maxRequestRetries": 8,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "products": [
        "https://www.capterra.com/p/164283/Zendesk/"
    ],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("lisbuenas/capterra-reviews-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "products": ["https://www.capterra.com/p/164283/Zendesk/"],
    "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": True },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("lisbuenas/capterra-reviews-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "products": [
    "https://www.capterra.com/p/164283/Zendesk/"
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}' |
apify call lisbuenas/capterra-reviews-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,lisbuenas/capterra-reviews-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/vvag884JdrAyrdkKY/builds/fLZXb8k0ae21bmOM3/openapi.json