Student.com Housing Scraper

Extract public Student.com housing listings near a university or matching a property name. Each dataset item contains normalized prices, property type, distance, coordinates, address, rating, contact details, images, floorplans, amenities, neighbourhood tags, and optional public reviews.

The Actor reads Student.com's public page-backing Discovery endpoint—the same direct-source data used by its current US housing search interface. It does not require a Student.com login or a third-party data provider.

What it extracts

Field group	Included data
Identity	Property ID, name, slug, Student.com URL
Location	Address, city, state, country, latitude, longitude, Google Maps URL
University	University name, university slug, distance in miles
Pricing	Minimum and maximum monthly price, formatted price range, USD currency
Housing	Property type, amenities, vibes, neighbourhood tags, floorplans
Media and reputation	Image URLs and captions, aggregate rating, public reviews
Contact	Public property contact email when Student.com supplies one

Nullable fields remain explicit null when Student.com does not provide them. Diagnostics are written to the OUTPUT key-value-store record rather than mixed into the housing dataset.

Good uses

• Compare student housing around a university.
• Build accommodation research datasets or monitoring workflows.
• Filter housing by monthly price and property category.
• Export map coordinates, images, amenities, and public ratings for analysis.
• Feed structured housing records into an AI agent or spreadsheet.

This Actor is not a booking bot, lead-submission tool, general rental crawler, or source of private account data. Availability and prices can change; verify critical details on the linked property page.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Purpose
startUrls	URL array	UT Austin university page	A Student.com university or property URL
universitySlug	string	—	Search housing near one Student.com university slug
propertyName	string	—	Search by a housing property name when no university is set
maxResults	integer	5	Requested result count (1–1000); free-plan runs are hard-limited to 5
minPrice, maxPrice	number	—	Monthly USD price bounds
propertyTypes	string array	all	Apartment, PBSA, Dorm, House, or Shared Room
sortBy	enum	none	Student.com order, price, or rating
sortOrder	enum	asc	Ascending or descending
includeImages	boolean	true	Include image objects
includeReviews	boolean	true	Include public review objects

universitySlug overrides startUrls. propertyName is used only when a university slug is absent. If all three search inputs are omitted, the Actor uses the working UT Austin example so the default run produces real data.

Example input

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.student.com/us/tx/austin/u/the-university-of-texas-at-austin" }
  ],
  "maxResults": 5,
  "minPrice": 500,
  "maxPrice": 2000,
  "propertyTypes": ["Apartment", "PBSA"],
  "sortBy": "price",
  "sortOrder": "asc",
  "includeImages": true,
  "includeReviews": false
}

Output

Results are written to the default dataset. A compact item looks like this:

{
  "id": "96adf334-5a03-48f0-8d7e-e1d6a960abee",
  "name": "Moore-Hill Hall Dormitory (MHD)",
  "slug": "moore-hill-hall-dormitory-mhd-qwmhau",
  "url": "https://www.student.com/us/tx/austin/p/moore-hill-hall-dormitory-mhd-qwmhau",
  "city": "Austin",
  "state": "TX",
  "country": "USA",
  "university": "Austin Community College",
  "universitySlug": "the-university-of-texas-at-austin",
  "address": "204 E 21st St, Austin, TX 78705, USA",
  "propertyType": "Dorm",
  "minPrice": 1560,
  "maxPrice": null,
  "currency": "USD",
  "billingPeriod": "month",
  "rating": 4.4,
  "distanceMiles": 0.1148,
  "latitude": 30.2834436,
  "longitude": -97.7355032,
  "amenities": [],
  "vibes": ["coffee-food", "artsy-cultural", "parks-greenery"],
  "neighbourhoodTags": ["quiet", "urban", "great-shopping-essentials"],
  "images": [],
  "floorplans": [],
  "reviews": [],
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.student.com/us/tx/austin/u/the-university-of-texas-at-austin",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-28T00:00:00.000Z"
}

The OUTPUT record classifies the run as DATA, EMPTY, BLOCKED, REJECTED, or FAILED and reports delivered records, available matches, pages, filters, and warnings. Valid no-match searches produce an empty dataset without fabricated fallback rows.

Pricing and free-plan limit

This Actor uses Apify Pay per event (PPE) pricing for paid-plan runs:

Event	Price	Charged when
Actor start	$0.00005	A run starts
Housing result	$0.002	One schema-valid record is written to the default dataset

Free-plan users can receive at most 5 housing records per run. A request above 5 is capped before the next source page is fetched, and the terminal status says that an upgrade is required for a higher per-run limit. Paid-plan runs can request up to 1,000 records, subject to the configured PPE total-charge limit. The OUTPUT summary reports billingPlan, pricingModel, recordLimit, and delivered resultEvents.

Reliability and limits

The Actor sends browser-consistent headers to Student.com's public Discovery endpoint, paginates in batches of 20, deduplicates on stable property ID, validates every normalized record before writing, and retries HTTP 429 or transient server errors with bounded exponential backoff. A source access rejection is reported as BLOCKED; an unexpected response or runtime defect is reported as FAILED. Valid partial records are retained.

The current direct source primarily covers Student.com's US search experience. A university page can return hundreds of records; free-plan runs return the first 5 matching records, while paid-plan runs honor the requested limit up to 1,000. Use price/type filters and the PPE total-charge limit for bounded research. The Actor does not bypass login, CAPTCHAs, paywalls, or other access controls.

Responsible use

Scrape only public data and comply with Student.com's terms, robots policies, applicable law, and privacy obligations. Contact emails and review author names may be personal data; collect, store, and use them only with a lawful purpose. Do not use this Actor for spam, discrimination, automated booking, or decisions that materially affect people without appropriate review.

Support

For reproducible issues, include the run ID, redacted input, expected outcome, and the relevant OUTPUT warning. Do not include tokens, cookies, or personal booking information.