Facebook Groups Search Scraper (No Login)

Find Facebook groups by keyword without a Facebook account, cookies or a browser. Type "dog lovers", "real estate miami" or "crypto trading" and get a clean list of groups with their exact member count, privacy, activity, creation date, description, tags, location and rules.

Your Facebook account is never involved, so it can never be restricted or banned because of a scrape.

What you get for every group

Field	Example
name	Dog Lovers
url	https://www.facebook.com/groups/2312541602348749/
groupId	2312541602348749
vanity	medical.laboratory.professionals (when the group has one)
privacy	Public / Private
visibility	Visible
membersCount	496252 (exact, not "496K")
membersText	496.3K members
postsLastDay / postsLastMonth	451 / 10000
createdAt	2019-03-08T06:59:26.000Z
historyText	Group created on March 8, 2019
description	The group's full About text
tags	["Healthcare", "Technology"]
locations	["Charlotte, North Carolina"]
rules	[{ "title": "Be Kind and Courteous", "description": "..." }]
hasMembershipQuestions	true
profilePicture, coverPhoto	image URLs
searchQuery, source, matchedIn	which keyword and source found the group, and whether the keyword matched its name or its details

Private groups are included: Facebook shows their About information (name, members, description, rules, activity) to anyone, only their posts are hidden.

How it works

Facebook only lets logged-in accounts use its group search, so this actor finds groups the way a person without an account would:

1. Web search. Brave Search and DuckDuckGo are asked for Facebook group pages about your keyword, with a few rewordings of it ("yoga", "yoga group", "yoga community", ...) to reach past the first pages.
2. Facebook's public post search. Posts written inside groups point to their group, which surfaces active groups that search engines have not indexed yet.
3. Group About page. Every group found is opened logged out and its About page is read for the details above.
4. Keyword check. Search engines also return loosely related groups (a local news group that once posted about "medical"), so by default a group is kept only when every word of your keyword appears in its name, description, tags or location. Turn off Only groups matching the keyword to keep them all.

Input

{
    "searchQueries": ["dog lovers", "real estate miami"],
    "maxGroups": 50,
    "requireKeywordMatch": true,
    "privacy": "any",
    "minMembers": 1000
}

• Keywords: one per line; each is searched separately.
• Max groups per keyword: popular keywords usually give 100-200 groups, niche ones fewer.
• Privacy and Minimum members filter the results.
• Facebook URLs (optional): group URLs are read directly; old-style search URLs such as https://www.facebook.com/search/groups/?q=medical are turned into keywords, so inputs from the previous version of this actor still work.
• Proxy: paying runs use the actor's residential proxy and ignore this setting. Free runs use the proxy you set here, or Apify Proxy if you leave it empty.

Output example

{
    "groupId": "1089998767692515",
    "name": "Medical Laboratory Scientists - MLS/MLT(ASCP), AMT, AAB",
    "url": "https://www.facebook.com/groups/medical.laboratory.professionals/",
    "vanity": "medical.laboratory.professionals",
    "privacy": "Private",
    "privacyDescription": "Only members can see who's in the group and what they post.",
    "visibility": "Visible",
    "membersCount": 54616,
    "membersText": "54.6K members",
    "newMembersText": "No new members in the last week",
    "postsLastDay": 32,
    "postsLastMonth": 637,
    "createdAt": "2015-03-11T18:20:07.000Z",
    "historyText": "Group created on March 11, 2015. Name last changed on January 29, 2018.",
    "description": "Medical Laboratory Scientist - MLS(ASCP) is a group for clinical laboratory professionals and students...",
    "tags": ["Healthcare", "Technology"],
    "locations": ["Charlotte, North Carolina"],
    "rules": [{ "title": "Be Kind and Courteous", "description": "We're all in this together to create a welcoming environment..." }],
    "hasMembershipQuestions": true,
    "searchQuery": "medical",
    "source": "brave",
    "matchedIn": "name",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-29T15:40:00.000Z"
}

Coming from the cookie version of this actor

Earlier versions needed your Facebook cookies and a browser. This version needs neither:

• Old inputs still run. A startUrls entry like https://www.facebook.com/search/groups/?q=medical becomes the keyword "medical"; cookies, minDelay and maxDelay are ignored.
• Rows still carry the old field names (groupName, groupDescription, isPublic, numberOfMembers, postActivity, link, photo) next to the new ones, so existing integrations keep working.
• maxGroups now counts per keyword.

Good to know

• Results come from what search engines have indexed and what members post publicly, so the list is not identical to what a logged-in Facebook search shows. Secret (hidden) groups never appear anywhere.
• Each group is returned once per run, even if several keywords find it.
• Numbers such as postsLastMonth are Facebook's own; Facebook caps that one at 10000.
• The run's status message explains a short result: off-topic groups skipped, filters, or search engines refusing requests.

FAQ

Do I need to log in or give cookies? No. Nothing about your Facebook account is used.

Can I get the posts of these groups? Use Facebook Public Group Posts & Comments with the group URLs from this actor. It needs no login either.

Can I get the member list? No. Facebook shows member lists only to logged-in members.

Why did a keyword return fewer groups than I asked for? Either there are not many groups about it, or most of what search engines returned did not match the keyword. The status message shows how many were skipped and why.