UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper — Official FSA Data

UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper returns official food hygiene ratings from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for restaurants, cafes, takeaways, pubs, shops and other food businesses in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland: rating, inspection date, address, postcode, coordinates, local authority and the FSA rating page. It is built for analysts, delivery and hospitality teams, property researchers and lead-generation workflows, and it costs USD 2.501 per 1,000 businesses on the FREE tier (USD 2 per 1,000 on GOLD).

What food hygiene rating data does the scraper return?

Each food business is one dataset row:

Field	What it contains
fhrsId	FSA establishment ID (FHRS ID)
businessName, businessType, businessTypeId	Registered name and FSA business type, for example Restaurant/Cafe/Canteen
ratingValue, ratingKey	The rating (0–5) or Scottish status such as Pass or Improvement Required, plus the FSA rating key
schemeType	FHRS (England, Wales, Northern Ireland) or FHIS (Scotland)
ratingDate	Date of the inspection or rating
newRatingPending	true when a newer rating is awaiting publication
hygieneScore, structuralScore, confidenceInManagementScore	Inspection sub-scores, when the FSA publishes them
address, addressLine1–addressLine4, postcode	Full address and its parts
phone	Phone number, when the local authority supplied one
latitude, longitude, distanceMiles	Coordinates, and distance from your search point in a radius search
localAuthorityName, localAuthorityCode, localAuthorityBusinessId, localAuthorityWebsite	Responsible council and its references
rightToReply	The business's published right-to-reply text, when present
fsaUrl, apiUrl	Public FSA rating page and the API record used
source, scrapedAt	Source label and collection time

Each run also writes an OUTPUT record with the number of records returned, total matching records, pages fetched and any warnings.

How do I check food hygiene ratings in bulk?

Search by name, place, rating or exact ID, set Maximum results, and run. Every search goes to the FSA's public ratings service, so no API key, cookies or browser are needed.

• Business name search: a keyword matched against business names, such as pizza or The Golden Lion. It defaults to restaurant; clear it to list every business that matches your other filters.
• Address or postcode: a town, street or postcode, such as Leeds or B1 1AA.
• Rating filter: 5, 4, 0 and so on, with Rating operator Equal, At least or At most. For Scotland, choose scheme FHIS and a status such as Pass.
• Business type, local authority and country IDs: numeric FSA identifiers for narrower searches.
• Exact FHRS IDs: up to 100 IDs; when present, every other filter is ignored.
• Maximum results: 1–1,000, default 25. This is also the maximum number of charged records.

Five-star pizza places in Birmingham:

{
  "searchQuery": "pizza",
  "address": "Birmingham",
  "rating": "5",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Re-check known businesses by FHRS ID:

{
  "establishmentIds": ["1865746", "80928"]
}

How do I find food hygiene ratings near a postcode or location?

Use a postcode in Address or postcode, or a coordinate pair with a radius. For a radius search, clear the default name keyword, enter latitude and longitude, set Radius in miles (0.1–100, default 5) and sort by distance:

{
  "searchQuery": "",
  "latitude": 51.5074,
  "longitude": -0.1278,
  "radiusMiles": 1,
  "rating": "2",
  "ratingOperator": "LessThanOrEqual",
  "sortBy": "distance",
  "maxResults": 100
}

This returns businesses rated 2 or lower within a mile of central London, closest first, with distanceMiles filled.

When should I use it, and when not?

Use it when you need official hygiene ratings for many UK food businesses at once: screening venues before a partnership, enriching a restaurant or takeaway list, monitoring a chain or a council area, or building a food-safety dataset.

Use another Actor when:

• You want customer reviews, star ratings or opening hours: Google Maps Restaurant Scraper or OpenTable Scraper.
• You need Seattle restaurant inspection results: Seattle Restaurant Inspections Scraper.
• You need UK school or childcare inspections: UK Ofsted Inspection Reports Scraper.
• You need every business in the country every night: download the FSA's open-data files instead of querying the live service repeatedly.

How do I get FSA food hygiene ratings through an API?

Call the Actor through the Apify API and read the dataset. You get normalized JSON with stable field names, pagination handled for you, and exports to CSV or Excel.

JavaScript with apify-client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('muhammadafzal/uk-food-hygiene-ratings-scraper').call({
    searchQuery: 'pizza',
    address: 'Birmingham',
    rating: '5',
    maxResults: 25,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.map((b) => [b.businessName, b.ratingValue, b.ratingDate]));

Python with apify-client:

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("muhammadafzal/uk-food-hygiene-ratings-scraper").call(run_input={
    "searchQuery": "cafe",
    "address": "Leeds",
    "maxResults": 20,
})
for business in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(business["businessName"], business["ratingValue"], business["postcode"])

Use it from an AI assistant

UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper works from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP client through Apify's MCP server. Add the single-tool URL https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=muhammadafzal/uk-food-hygiene-ratings-scraper to your client, then ask, for example: "Use UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper to list takeaways in postcode B1 1AA rated 2 or lower, with rating date and address." Include a result limit for large areas.

What does the output look like?

Two shortened records (sample values):

[
  {
    "fhrsId": 1865746,
    "businessName": "The Golden Lion",
    "businessType": "Pub/bar/nightclub",
    "businessTypeId": 7843,
    "address": "10 High Street, Cambridge, CB2 1AA",
    "postcode": "CB2 1AA",
    "ratingValue": "5",
    "ratingKey": "fhrs_5_en-gb",
    "schemeType": "FHRS",
    "ratingDate": "2026-07-29T00:00:00",
    "newRatingPending": false,
    "hygieneScore": 0,
    "structuralScore": 5,
    "confidenceInManagementScore": 0,
    "latitude": 52.2043,
    "longitude": 0.1218,
    "localAuthorityName": "Cambridge City",
    "fsaUrl": "https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1865746",
    "source": "Food Standards Agency FHRS API v2",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-26T09:00:00.000Z"
  },
  {
    "fhrsId": 1500001,
    "businessName": "Example Takeaway",
    "businessType": "Takeaway/sandwich shop",
    "postcode": "B1 1AA",
    "ratingValue": "2",
    "schemeType": "FHRS",
    "ratingDate": "2026-05-14T00:00:00",
    "newRatingPending": true,
    "distanceMiles": 0.31,
    "localAuthorityName": "Birmingham",
    "fsaUrl": "https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1500001",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-26T09:00:00.000Z"
  }
]

How much does UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper cost?

The Actor uses pay-per-event pricing. Platform usage is included in the event prices.

Event	FREE	BRONZE	SILVER	GOLD	PLATINUM / DIAMOND
Food hygiene rating result (one dataset row)	USD 0.002501	USD 0.002438	USD 0.002375	USD 0.002	USD 0.002
Actor start (per started GB of allocated memory)	USD 0.006251	USD 0.006094	USD 0.005938	USD 0.005	USD 0.005

The default memory is 256 MB, which is one start event. Worked totals on the FREE tier:

• Default search (25 records): 25 × USD 0.002501 + USD 0.006251 = USD 0.068776
• 1,000 records: 1,000 × USD 0.002501 + USD 0.006251 = USD 2.507251 (USD 2.005 on GOLD)

Each record is saved first and charged after it is saved. When your maximum cost per run is reached, the run stops after the last saved record, and every charged record is in the dataset.

How fresh and complete is the data?

• Official and current. Records come from the FSA's live ratings service, which local authorities update after inspections; the Actor adds no data of its own.
• A rating is not a food-quality score. It reflects hygiene standards found at the inspection date. Check ratingDate and newRatingPending.
• IDs can change when councils merge or replace their systems.
• Throttling is handled. The service can answer 403 or 429 when busy. The Actor retries with increasing waits and pauses between pages (requestDelayMs, default 500 ms). If a page still fails, you keep the records already collected and a warning in OUTPUT.
• Up to 1,000 records per run. Split larger areas by local authority or postcode.

FAQ

What do food hygiene ratings 0 to 5 mean?

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 5 is very good, 4 good, 3 generally satisfactory, 2 improvement necessary, 1 major improvement necessary and 0 urgent improvement necessary. Scotland's scheme uses Pass or Improvement Required.

Is an API key required?

No. The FSA ratings data is public, and the Actor needs no key or account.

Can I search Scotland?

Yes. Set Scheme type to FHIS. Ratings there are statuses such as Pass rather than numbers.

Why did I get fewer results than requested?

Fewer businesses matched, a filter was restrictive, the default restaurant keyword was still set, or the service throttled the run. Check totalMatchingRecords and warnings in OUTPUT.

Does it include the inspection scores?

Yes, hygieneScore, structuralScore and confidenceInManagementScore when the FSA publishes them for that business; otherwise they are null.

Is there a free food hygiene rating checker?

The FSA website lets anyone look up single businesses for free. This Actor is for bulk checks; you can run it on Apify's free plan, with each record charged at the FREE-tier price above.

Related Actors

Other travel and local-place data tools from the same developer:

• Google Maps Restaurant Scraper for restaurant reviews, phones and websites
• Kakao Map Scraper for Korean businesses and reviews
• Weedmaps Dispensary Scraper for US dispensary lists
• AllTrails Scraper for hiking trail data
• Momondo Flight Prices Scraper for flight fares

Legal and compliance

UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper uses public FSA rating data. Follow the FSA open-data terms: attribute the FSA, do not present a rating as a guarantee of food quality or safety, and direct questions about a specific business to its local authority. This is not legal advice, and the Actor is not affiliated with the Food Standards Agency.

Last verified: 2026-10-27