SpareRoom Scraper - UK Room & Flatshare Listings

Scrape SpareRoom UK room and flatshare listings in bulk. Extract rent, location, room type, availability, advertiser name and type, photo count and listing URL to CSV/JSON. No API key, no login.

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What does the SpareRoom Scraper do?

This Actor turns any SpareRoom search into a structured dataset. You give it by area or by search URL, it walks the result pages one after another, and it writes one clean row per listing into your dataset — ready to export as JSON, CSV or Excel, or to pull straight from the Apify API.

SpareRoom renders its search results server-side with structured data-listing-* attributes on every card. The Actor reads those attributes plus the card body, so no browser or login is needed. Pagination is followed automatically until it runs out of results, hits your page limit or hits your Max items cap, whichever comes first. Every row is de-duplicated across the whole run, so you are never billed twice for the same listing.

There is no API key, no login and no browser involved. That keeps runs fast and cheap, and it means you can schedule the Actor without worrying about credentials expiring.

Who is it for?

• PropTech and rental platforms benchmarking room-level supply and pricing.
• Property investors assessing HMO and room-rental yields by postcode.
• Letting agents tracking competing listings and advertiser types in their patch.
• Housing researchers and journalists quantifying shared-housing affordability.
• Relocation services compiling live room availability for client briefings.

Use cases

• Export every live room listing in a city to analyse rent by area and room type.
• Compare live-in landlord listings against agency listings in the same postcode.
• Track weekly rent movement for double rooms across London boroughs.
• Measure how quickly availability changes across a whole rental market.
• Build an affordability dataset joining rent to area and room type.

Why use this SpareRoom Scraper?

• 🔑 Keyless — no account, no API token, no cookies to paste.
• 📦 19 fields per listing — everything the result page exposes, already typed.
• 📄 Real pagination — it walks page after page instead of returning the first screen.
• 🎯 Precise caps — Max items stops the run exactly where you want it, so the bill is predictable.
• 📊 Export anywhere — JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, plus the Apify API and integrations.
• 💸 Pay per result — you pay for rows you actually receive, with no platform fees to calculate.

What data can you extract?

Every run produces one row per listing, with these fields:

Field	Type	Description
listingId	string	SpareRoom listing ID
title	string	Listing headline
listingUrl	string	Full listing URL
price	number	Advertised rent as a number
priceText	string	Rent exactly as displayed, e.g. £750 pcm
priceperiod	string	Billing period parsed from the price, e.g. pcm or pw
currency	string	Currency of the advertised rent
location	string	Area and postcode district shown on the card
roomType	string	Room type, e.g. Double room or Single room
availability	string	Availability note, e.g. Available now
shortDescription	string	Teaser description from the card
advertiserName	string	Name of the advertiser
advertiserRole	string	Advertiser type, e.g. live out landlord or agent
advertiserVerified	boolean	Whether SpareRoom marks the advertiser as verified
photoCount	number	Number of photos on the listing
imageUrl	string	Main listing photo URL
searchArea	string	Search area this row came from
page	number	Result page the listing appeared on
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of extraction

Output example

{
  "listingId": "18339470",
  "title": "Single Room - Chelsea Area (All Bills Included)",
  "listingUrl": "https://www.spareroom.co.uk/flatshare/flatshare_detail.pl?flatshare_id=18339470",
  "price": 975,
  "priceText": "\u00a3975 pcm - bills inc.",
  "priceperiod": "pcm",
  "currency": "GBP",
  "location": "Chelsea (SW10)",
  "roomType": "Single room",
  "availability": "Available now",
  "shortDescription": "SINGLE ROOM - CHELSEA / KING'S ROAD AREA. A well-presented single room...",
  "advertiserName": "Marc",
  "advertiserRole": "live in landlord",
  "advertiserVerified": false,
  "photoCount": 7,
  "imageUrl": "https://photos2.spareroom.co.uk/images/flatshare/listings/unmodified/10/02/100275106.jpg",
  "searchArea": "london",
  "page": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-11T09:02:44.120Z"
}

How to use

Option A — by area

{
  "searchAreas": [
    "london",
    "manchester"
  ],
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 30,
  "maxItems": 1000
}

1. Open the Actor and fill in the area field.
2. Set Max pages per search and Max items to bound the run.
3. Click Start, then export from the Output tab.

Option B — by search URL

{
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.spareroom.co.uk/flatshare/london"
    }
  ],
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 50,
  "maxItems": 2000
}

Paste one or more SpareRoom URLs into Start URLs and the Actor paginates each of them independently.

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchAreas	array	–	UK areas to search, e.
startUrls	array	[]	SpareRoom search URLs to crawl instead of, or in addition to, the areas above.
maxPagesPerSearch	integer	10	How many result pages to walk for each search.
maxItems	integer	500	Stop after this many listings.
maxConcurrency	integer	3	Parallel requests.
proxyConfiguration	object	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Proxy used to fetch pages.

Tips for best results

• Use a city or area slug such as london, manchester or bristol — the Actor builds the search URL for you.
• London returns by far the deepest inventory; smaller towns run out after a handful of pages.
• Rent is normalised into price plus priceperiod, so compare pcm against pcm, never raw text.
• advertiserRole separates live-in landlords, live-out landlords and agents — a strong filter for HMO research.
• Listings refresh constantly; schedule daily runs if you want reliable availability tracking.
• Set Max items to control the bill when crawling a large city.
• Rows with a null price are listings that advertise rent on application.
• Keep Max concurrency low; SpareRoom is a small site and responds better to gentle crawling.
• Join location postcode districts to public rent statistics for affordability analysis.
• Pair with the Rightmove or OnTheMarket scrapers to compare rooms against whole properties.

Integrations

Send results straight into the tools you already use: Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, Airtable or any Webhook. You can also schedule the Actor to run hourly, daily or weekly and have each run append to the same dataset, which is how you build a price or availability history rather than a one-off snapshot.

API usage

Run the Actor and collect results from any language. Replace <YOUR_TOKEN> with your Apify API token.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~spareroom-uk-room-rental-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchAreas": ["london", "manchester"], "maxPagesPerSearch": 30, "maxItems": 1000}'

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('logiover/spareroom-uk-room-rental-scraper').call({"searchAreas": ["london", "manchester"], "maxPagesPerSearch": 30, "maxItems": 1000});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('<YOUR_TOKEN>')
run = client.actor('logiover/spareroom-uk-room-rental-scraper').call(run_input={"searchAreas": ["london", "manchester"], "maxPagesPerSearch": 30, "maxItems": 1000})
for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This Actor is available through the Apify MCP server, so an AI agent can call it as a tool. Point your agent at https://mcp.apify.com and it can run the SpareRoom Scraper on demand — for example: "Pull the first 500 listings from SpareRoom and summarise the price distribution." The agent receives the same structured rows you would get from the UI.

FAQ

Do I need a SpareRoom account or API key?

No. The Actor reads publicly available pages only. There is nothing to authenticate and no credentials to rotate.

How many listings can I get in one run?

As many as the search exposes. Raise Max pages per search and Max items together; the run stops at whichever limit it reaches first.

Why did I get fewer rows than I asked for?

The search ran out of listings. That is normal for narrow queries — broaden the search or add more searches to one run.

Are results de-duplicated?

Yes. Each listing is emitted once per run, even when it appears on several pages, so you are never billed twice for the same record.

Why are some fields empty?

SpareRoom does not publish every attribute for every listing. Empty means the source did not show it, not that extraction failed.

What export formats are supported?

JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML and RSS from the Output tab, plus the Apify API and any integration you connect.

How fast is it?

It is pure HTTP with no browser, so a page of results typically takes a second or two. Raise Max concurrency carefully — the source rate-limits aggressive crawling.

Can I schedule it?

Yes. Use the Apify scheduler to run it on any interval and append each run to the same dataset for time-series analysis.

Does it work behind a proxy?

It uses Apify Proxy automatically. You can switch groups or supply your own proxies in Proxy configuration.

How often does the data change?

SpareRoom updates continuously. Re-run whenever you need current data; the Actor always reads the live pages, never a cache.

Is the output schema stable?

Yes. Field names and types are fixed, so downstream pipelines will not break between runs.

What if the site changes its layout?

Open an issue on the Issues tab and it gets fixed. The Actor is actively maintained.

Is it legal?

This Actor reads only publicly available pages on SpareRoom — the same content any visitor sees without logging in. It does not bypass authentication, does not collect private data and does not attempt to defeat access controls. You are responsible for how you use the output: respect the source's terms of service, applicable copyright, and data-protection law such as GDPR where personal data is involved. Scraping public data is generally lawful in the EU and the US, but the responsibility for the downstream use of that data sits with you.

Related scrapers

• Rightmove Scraper — UK sales and lettings listings
• OnTheMarket Scraper — UK property portal listings
• Gumtree Scraper — UK classifieds including rentals
• WG-Gesucht Scraper — German flatshare listings