Waze Traffic Scraper

Extract real-time traffic data from Waze including accidents, hazards, police reports, road closures, and live traffic congestion. Perfect for logistics routing, fleet optimization, and traffic analysis.

📦 What you get

• Traffic alerts: Accidents, hazards, road closures, police traps, construction zones
• Traffic jams: Real-time congestion with speed, severity, and delay information
• User activity: Waze user locations (anonymized by default for privacy)
• Configurable area: Search any location with custom radius

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⚠️ Important: Understanding empty results

Getting 0 alerts or 0 jams is completely normal! This simply means there's no traffic data in that location at that specific moment. The Actor is working correctly.

How to verify the Actor is working:

• ✅ If you see any users in the results, the Actor is working perfectly
• ⚠️ If you get 0 alerts, 0 jams, AND 0 users, this might indicate an issue, though in very remote areas or during off-peak hours, this could occasionally be legitimate

Many locations have quiet periods with no incidents. Try a busy city center during rush hour for more data, or schedule runs every few minutes to capture data as it appears.

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⚙️ Input

Configure what data to collect and where:

Field	Type	Required	Description
latitude	number	Yes	Center point latitude (e.g., 40.7128 for NYC)
longitude	number	Yes	Center point longitude (e.g., -74.0060 for NYC)
radiusKm	number	No	Search radius in kilometers (default: 10, max: 100)
includeAlerts	boolean	No	Include traffic alerts (default: true)
includeTrafficJams	boolean	No	Include traffic jams (default: true)
anonymizeUsernames	boolean	No	Remove usernames for privacy (default: true, recommended)

Example input:

{
  "latitude": 34.0522,
  "longitude": -118.2437,
  "radiusKm": 15,
  "includeAlerts": true,
  "includeTrafficJams": true,
  "anonymizeUsernames": true
}

📊 Output

The scraper returns structured data with human-readable fields:

Alert structure

{
  "id": "alert-123456/abc-def-ghi",
  "uuid": "abc-def-ghi-jkl-mno",
  "type": "ACCIDENT",
  "subtype": "ACCIDENT_MAJOR",
  "description": "Multi-vehicle accident",

  "location": {
    "x": -118.2437,
    "y": 34.0522
  },

  "reportedAt": "2026-01-26T15:30:00.000Z",
  "reportedAtMillis": 1737907800000,

  "reliability": 10,
  "confidence": 8,

  "source": "Waze User",
  "reportedBy": "User",

  "thumbsUp": 15,
  "commentCount": 3,
  "comments": [...]
}

Traffic jam structure

{
  "uuid": "jam-xyz-123-abc",
  "street": "I-405 North",
  "city": "Los Angeles",
  "country": "US",

  "level": 4,
  "severity": "Severe",
  "type": "Large",

  "speedKmh": 8.5,
  "speedMph": 5,
  "lengthMeters": 1200,
  "lengthMiles": "0.75",
  "delaySeconds": 420,
  "delayMinutes": 7,

  "reportedAt": "2026-01-26T15:35:00.000Z",
  "reportedAtMillis": 1737908100000,

  "route": [
    { "x": -118.243, "y": 34.052 },
    { "x": -118.244, "y": 34.053 }
  ]
}

📖 Understanding the data

Alert types

• ACCIDENT: Traffic accidents (MINOR, MAJOR)
• HAZARD: Road hazards (ON_ROAD, ON_SHOULDER, CONSTRUCTION, WEATHER)
• POLICE: Police presence or speed traps (user-reported)
• ROAD_CLOSED: Road closures
• WEATHERHAZARD: Weather-related hazards

Traffic jam severity levels

• Level 1: Light traffic - minimal slowdown
• Level 2: Moderate traffic - noticeable delay
• Level 3: Heavy traffic - significant slowdown
• Level 4: Severe traffic - very slow movement
• Level 5: Standstill - traffic at a complete stop

Reliability scores

• Reliability (0-10): Overall trustworthiness based on reporter history and confirmations
• Confidence (0-10): Waze's internal confidence based on number of reports and validations
• Thumbs up: Number of users who confirmed the alert is still accurate

Timestamps

All timestamps are provided in two formats:

• reportedAt: Human-readable ISO 8601 format (e.g., "2026-01-26T15:30:00.000Z")
• reportedAtMillis: Unix timestamp in milliseconds for calculations

To convert millis to a date:

const date = new Date(1737907800000);
console.log(date.toISOString()); // "2026-01-26T15:30:00.000Z"

⚠️ Important limitations

199 alert cap: Waze returns a maximum of 199 alerts per query, regardless of area size. In busy cities, this means you'll only see a fraction of all alerts.

Single snapshot: Each run captures one moment in time. Alerts appear and disappear within minutes.

Better coverage: For comprehensive monitoring, schedule the scraper to run every 3-5 minutes. This can capture 50-70% of alerts in busy areas instead of just 10-20%.

Radius optimization: Larger areas don't always give more data due to the 199 cap. In dense cities, use a smaller radius (3-5 km) to focus on your area of interest, or run multiple locations.

💼 Common use cases

• Logistics routing: Optimize delivery routes with real-time traffic conditions
• Fleet management: Monitor traffic patterns across multiple locations
• Urban planning: Analyze traffic patterns and incident frequency
• Traffic monitoring: Track incidents in real-time for specific areas
• Research: Study traffic trends and congestion patterns over time
• Alert systems: Build notifications for specific types of incidents

⏰ Scheduling for better coverage

To capture more data, schedule regular runs:

Every 5 minutes (Apify cron: */5 * * * *)

• Cost: ~$2-3/month for one location
• Coverage: 50-70% of alerts

Every 10 minutes (Apify cron: */10 * * * *)

• Cost: ~$1-2/month for one location
• Coverage: 30-50% of alerts

Every 30 minutes (Apify cron: */30 * * * *)

• Cost: ~$0.50/month for one location
• Coverage: 15-25% of alerts

💡 Cost savings tip: Higher Apify subscription tiers (Bronze, Silver, Gold) offer volume discounts on pay-per-event charges. With a Gold plan, you can save up to 70% compared to the base price.

💡 Tips for best results

1. Start with a medium radius (10 km) and adjust based on results
2. Keep anonymizeUsernames enabled for privacy protection (enabled by default)
3. Monitor alert counts - if you consistently get exactly 199 alerts, try a smaller radius
4. Multiple locations - for city-wide coverage, run multiple smaller areas instead of one large area
5. Frequent runs - schedule every 3-5 minutes for better coverage in busy areas

🔒 Privacy and ethical use

This scraper collects publicly visible data. User data is anonymized by default to protect privacy.

Recommendations:

• Keep anonymizeUsernames enabled (default)
• Don't use this data to track, stalk, or harass individuals
• Comply with local privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA, etc.)
• Use data for legitimate purposes like research, traffic analysis, or public safety

What we do:

• Only access publicly available data
• Anonymize user information by default
• Provide privacy controls (anonymization options)
• Warn users about privacy implications
• Don't bypass any authentication or restrictions

💬 Support

Have questions or issues? Please create an issue in the Actor's Issues tab on Apify.