CFPB Consumer Complaints Search - Financial Company Complaint Data

Search the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's public complaints database. Find complaints filed against banks, mortgage lenders, credit card companies, debt collectors, credit reporting agencies, and other financial institutions. Filter by company, product type, issue, state, and date. Get complaint narratives, company responses, and resolution outcomes. No API key required.

Data comes directly from the official CFPB Consumer Complaint Database API, which contains over 4 million complaints filed since 2011.

What You Get

Field	Description
complaintId	CFPB complaint ID
dateReceived	Date CFPB received the complaint
product	Financial product category (e.g. Mortgage, Credit card, Student loan)
subProduct	Product sub-category
issue	Complaint issue type
subIssue	Issue sub-category
companyName	Company the complaint is against
companyResponse	Company's response to the complaint
state	Consumer's state
submittedVia	How the complaint was submitted (web, phone, referral, etc.)
timely	Whether the company responded within the required timeframe
consumerNarrative	Consumer's written description of the problem (when provided)

Use Cases

• Company due diligence — Research complaint volume and common issues for a bank, lender, or financial company before a business relationship or investment.
• Competitive intelligence — Compare complaint rates, response quality, and issue types across competing financial institutions.
• Regulatory research — Analyze complaint patterns across product types or issue categories to understand industry-wide consumer pain points.
• Legal and litigation support — Retrieve complaint narratives and issue data for a specific company and time period for legal research or expert witness work.
• Market research — Identify the most common consumer issues with financial products to inform product development or positioning.
• Journalism — Investigate patterns of consumer harm at specific financial companies using structured, searchable complaint data.
• Credit union and community bank positioning — Pull large-bank complaint data to quantify problems that smaller institutions can use as differentiation.
• Risk and compliance analysis — Monitor complaint trends for companies in a portfolio or supply chain to identify emerging regulatory risk.

How to Use

Step 1: Open the actor on Apify

Go to the actor page and click Try for free.

Step 2: Configure your input

Option A — Search complaints for a specific company

{
  "company": "WELLS FARGO & COMPANY",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Option B — Full-text search with date range

{
  "searchTerm": "unauthorized charges",
  "dateFrom": "2023-01-01",
  "dateTo": "2024-12-31",
  "maxResults": 200
}

Option C — Filter by product and state

{
  "product": "Mortgage",
  "state": "CA",
  "maxResults": 500
}

Option D — Get complaints with consumer narratives only

{
  "company": "EQUIFAX",
  "product": "Credit reporting",
  "hasNarrative": true,
  "maxResults": 100
}

Option E — Search by issue type

{
  "issue": "Incorrect information on your report",
  "dateFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "maxResults": 300
}

Step 3: Run and export

Click Start. Results typically return within 15 seconds for most queries. Larger result sets (up to 10,000 records) complete within a minute.

Input Reference

Field	Type	Description
searchTerm	string	Full-text search across all complaint fields
company	string	Filter by company name (e.g. "BANK OF AMERICA", "EQUIFAX")
product	string	Filter by product category (e.g. "Mortgage", "Credit card", "Student loan")
issue	string	Filter by issue type
state	string	Filter by consumer state (2-letter code)
dateFrom	string	Start date in YYYY-MM-DD format
dateTo	string	End date in YYYY-MM-DD format
hasNarrative	boolean	Only return complaints with a consumer narrative (default: false)
maxResults	integer	Max complaints to return (default: 100, max: 10,000)

Cost Estimate

This actor uses the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database public API, which is free. Apify charges only for compute time.

• Actor start fee: ~$0.10 per run
• Compute: Very low — most runs complete in under 20 seconds
• Typical cost for 1,000 complaint records: under $0.15 total
• Large jobs (10,000 records): under $0.25 total

Output Formats

Results are stored in an Apify dataset and can be exported as:

• JSON — Full structured output preserving all fields
• CSV — Flat format ready for spreadsheet or database import
• Excel — Direct download from the dataset view
• Google Sheets — Connect via Apify's Google Sheets integration
• Zapier / Make — Trigger downstream workflows when a run completes

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. The CFPB Consumer Complaint Database is a free public government resource. No authentication is required.

How many complaints are in the database? The CFPB database contains over 4 million complaints filed since July 2011. It grows by tens of thousands of records per month.

What products are covered? The database covers all financial products regulated by the CFPB: mortgages, credit cards, student loans, auto loans, personal loans, checking and savings accounts, money transfers, debt collection, credit reporting, payday loans, and prepaid cards.

What does the company response field contain? Companies are required to respond to CFPB complaints within 15 days. The companyResponse field captures the company's stated resolution: "Closed with monetary relief", "Closed with explanation", "Closed with non-monetary relief", "Closed", or "In progress".

What is the consumer narrative? When a consumer consents to public disclosure of their complaint, the full narrative text is included in the database. Use hasNarrative: true to filter to complaints with this text, which provides qualitative detail beyond the structured fields.

How current is the data? The CFPB publishes complaints to the public database after the company has had 15 days to respond or after the complaint has been open for 15 days, whichever comes first. There is typically a 2-3 week lag between complaint receipt and public availability.

Can I filter by multiple companies at once? The current actor supports filtering by one company name per run. For multi-company comparisons, run the actor once per company and combine the resulting datasets, or use the searchTerm field with a keyword that appears across multiple company entries.