🏙️ Boston 311 Complaints Scraper

🚀 Export Boston 311 service requests in seconds. Case status, addresses, neighborhoods, and timestamps — ready for CSV, Excel, or JSON.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-26 · 📊 30 fields per record · City-wide coverage · Live + 10 historical years

The Boston 311 Complaints Scraper pulls service requests from Boston's open data portal (data.boston.gov). Each record covers one constituent report — potholes, street lights, missed trash pickup, graffiti — with full address, neighborhood, council district, assigned department, status, and resolution timestamps.

Live dataset plus archives back to 2017. Hundreds of thousands of records per year, geocoded.

Target Audience	Use Cases
Urban researchers	Track service equity across neighborhoods
Civic journalists	Spot trends in response times by district
Real estate analysts	Surface complaint density by ZIP code
Government affairs	Benchmark city department performance

📋 What the Boston 311 Scraper does

• Pulls live and historical 311 service requests
• Filters by year, case status, and free-text query
• Returns case ID, topic, status, full address, geocoordinates, and timestamps
• Exports CSV, Excel, JSON, XML

💡 Why it matters: 311 data is the highest-resolution civic signal a city emits. This scraper makes it one click away.

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
maxItems	integer	Cap on records (free: 10, paid: up to 1,000,000)
searchQuery	string	Free-text filter across all fields
year	enum	Live or any year 2017-2026
caseStatus	enum	All / Open / Closed / In progress

{
  "maxItems": 100,
  "year": "current",
  "caseStatus": "Open"
}

{
  "maxItems": 500,
  "year": "2025",
  "searchQuery": "pothole"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: the live current resource updates every few minutes. Historical year files are snapshots.

📊 Output

Field	Type	Description
🆔 caseId	string	BCS-XXXXXXXX case number
📝 caseTopic	string	Service category
🚦 caseStatus	string	Open / Closed / In progress
📍 fullAddress	string	Street address
🏘️ neighborhood	string	Boston neighborhood
🗳️ cityCouncilDistrict	string	District number
📅 openDate	datetime	When the case was opened
📅 closeDate	datetime	When the case was closed (nullable)
🌐 longitude / latitude	number	Geocoded coordinates

✨ Why choose this Actor

• 🆓 Free public data, no API key required
• 🏙️ City-wide coverage with 10 years of history
• 📐 Geocoded for spatial analysis

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	This Actor	Manual CSV download	Direct CKAN API
Filtering	✅	❌	⚠️ (manual params)
Pagination	✅	❌	⚠️
Multi-year	✅	❌	⚠️

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free account w/ $5 credit
2. Open the actor and fill the input
3. Run and download CSV/JSON

💼 Business use cases

• Real estate: Score listings by complaint density
• Operations research: Benchmark response times
• Civic tech: Build dashboards on top of the dataset
• Insurance: Identify high-claim areas

🔌 Automating Boston 311 Scraper

Use Apify integrations with Make, Zapier, Slack, Gmail, and webhooks to schedule scrapes and pipe data into your stack.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

• Research: Equity studies across neighborhoods
• Creative: Data art and city visualizations
• Non-profit: Advocacy for under-served areas
• Experimentation: ML training data

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Ask any AI assistant: "What can I do with the Boston 311 dataset?"

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

• 🔑 Do I need an API key? No.
• 📅 How fresh is the live data? Updates every few minutes.
• 🗺️ Are records geocoded? Yes — lat/lng included.
• 💰 Is it free? Free tier returns 10 records.
• 📊 Export formats? CSV, Excel, JSON, XML.
• 🏘️ Neighborhood granularity? Yes — Boston's official neighborhood labels.
• 🏛️ Is district included? Yes — council, police, fire, ward, precinct.
• 📜 How far back? 2017-present.
• 🔁 Can I schedule it? Yes, via Apify schedules.
• ⚖️ Is this legal? The source is open public data.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Make, Zapier, Slack, Gmail, Google Sheets, webhooks, REST API.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more open-data scrapers.

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Disclaimer: This actor scrapes only publicly available data from data.boston.gov, an open-data portal operated by the City of Boston. Use the data in accordance with the source's terms.