Boston 311 Complaints Scraper

Boston 311 Complaints Scraper

Scrape Boston 311 service requests by year, status, or search term, up to a million per run. Each complaint comes with its case ID, location, department, and full timeline. No API key or city account needed. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Boston's 311 portal holds years of public service requests, from pothole reports to missed trash pickups, but the web interface only lets you browse one page at a time. This Actor reads the open dataset directly, filtering by year, case status, or a free-text search across all fields, and returns every matching complaint in a structured row.\n\nIt pulls the same fields the city publishes: case number, type, address, neighborhood, department, status, open and close dates, and coordinates.

Who uses it	What they scrape Boston 311 for
City data analysts	Tracking how response times for pothole or rodent complaints change month over month.
Local journalists	Finding patterns in sanitation or housing complaints across neighborhoods for a story.
Community organizers	Pulling all open cases in a ward to measure city responsiveness ahead of a public meeting.
Researchers	Building a multi-year dataset of infrastructure failures for an urban planning study.

What it does

This Actor collects Boston 311 service requests filtered by year, status, or search query, and returns each complaint as a flat row with its full public record.

• 📅 Year selector: scrape the live feed or any annual dataset back to 2017.
• 🔍 Full-text search: filter by any keyword that appears in the case topic, address, or neighborhood.
• 📊 Status filter: pull only open cases, closed cases, or those still in progress.
• 📦 Bulk export: collect up to a million rows and download as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Boston 311 data

📈 Monitor service backlogs.

A city data analyst pulls all open cases weekly to see which departments have growing queues and flags them for the operations team.

🗺️ Map neighborhood hotspots.

A journalist scrapes a full year of rodent and sanitation complaints, geocodes the addresses, and builds a heatmap for an investigative piece.

📊 Compare year-over-year trends.

A researcher collects the 2022 and 2023 datasets for pothole reports to measure whether a new paving program reduced complaint volume.

🏘️ Audit ward-level responsiveness.

A community organizer filters open cases in a specific neighborhood and checks the average time to closure before a city council hearing.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key	Reads the public dataset directly, no registration or city credentials required.
Full history	Access yearly archives from 2017 through the current live feed.
Fixed schema	Every row returns the same fields: case ID, type, location, status, and dates.
Flexible output	Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML for your existing analysis tools.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets Boston 311 the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	Boston 311 Complaints Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When Boston 311 changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor with a year, a case status, and an optional search term, alone or together, and filters run as each complaint is read so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
  "maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
  "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.021 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$2.10
1,000 results	$21.00
10,000 results	$210.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Boston 311 Complaints Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Boston 311 through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/boston-311-complaints-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check your search query and filters. A very specific search term combined with a narrow year or status filter may match zero complaints. Try broadening the year range or clearing the search field.

The run stopped before reaching my maxItems.

The Actor stops when it has read all available complaints that match your filters. If the dataset for that year and status is smaller than your maxItems setting, the run will end early.

Some fields are empty in my results.

Not every complaint has every field populated. For example, a case that is still open will have an empty close date. This reflects the source data as published by the city.

The coordinates look wrong for some addresses.

The latitude and longitude come directly from the city's dataset. Some locations may be geocoded to a street segment midpoint rather than an exact address, which is a known characteristic of the source data.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need a City of Boston account or API key?	No. The Actor reads the same public dataset that powers the city's open data portal, so no login or key is required.
What years of data are available?	You can scrape the current live feed or any annual dataset from 2017 through 2026. Select the year in the input settings.
Can I filter by a specific neighborhood?	Yes. Use the search query field to enter a neighborhood name, and the Actor will return only complaints that mention it in the address, topic, or neighborhood field.
How many complaints can I scrape in one run?	You can set the maximum up to 1,000,000 rows. The Actor will stop when it reaches that count or when no more matching complaints remain.
What fields does each row include?	Each row returns the case number, type, address, neighborhood, responsible department, status, open date, close date, and latitude/longitude coordinates.
Can I get only open cases?	Yes. Set the case status filter to 'Open' and the Actor will return only complaints that have not yet been closed.
Does this work for other cities?	No, this Actor is built specifically for the Boston 311 dataset. Other cities use different systems and would need a separate scraper.
What export formats are supported?	You can download your results as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML directly from the Apify dataset tab.
Is the data real-time?	When you select the 'Current (live)' year option, the Actor pulls the most recent data available on the public feed, which is typically updated daily.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by City of Boston. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.