🏠 Craigslist Scraper: Multi-Category Listings Extractor

Enterprise-grade Craigslist scraper that automatically extracts listings from multiple categories — For Sale, Jobs, Housing, Services, and more — clean, structured, and ready for market research, job tracking, or data analysis.

High-quality Craigslist Web Scraper for Researchers, Analysts, and Data Teams

Automatically collects listings from any Craigslist city and category — clean, structured, ready for analysis or integration.

Built for:

• Market researchers & analysts
• Real estate professionals tracking housing trends
• Job market analysts monitoring employment opportunities
• Data scientists building market intelligence systems
• Researchers tracking local economy trends

✅ Multi-category scraping (For Sale, Jobs, Housing, Services, etc.)
✅ City-based filtering (any Craigslist city)
✅ Smart search query filtering
✅ Rich metadata (title, price, location, date posted, URL)
✅ Automatic pagination handling
✅ Rate limiting & respectful crawling

👉 Runs on Apify • No code required • Pay only for compute used

🚀 Why This Scraper

✔ Multi-Category Support
Scrape multiple categories simultaneously (For Sale + Jobs + Housing) in a single run.

✔ City Flexibility
Works with any Craigslist city (newyork, losangeles, chicago, sanfrancisco, etc.).

✔ Smart Search Filtering
Optional search queries to filter listings by keywords (e.g., "iphone", "developer", "apartment").

✔ Clean & Structured Output
Consistent JSON format with title, price, location, date posted, and direct URLs.

✔ Respectful Crawling
Built-in delays between requests and pages to avoid overloading servers.

✔ Fast & Efficient
Powered by Python + BeautifulSoup + httpx — optimized for static HTML content.

✔ Safe & Controlled
Automatic pagination limits, request throttling, and configurable max listings.

💼 Use Cases

• Market Research — Track pricing trends across cities and categories
• Job Market Analysis — Monitor employment opportunities by location
• Real Estate Intelligence — Track housing availability and pricing
• Competitive Intelligence — Monitor local business listings
• Academic Research — Study local economy and market dynamics
• Data Collection — Build datasets for ML/AI training

📊 Supported Categories

• sss — For Sale (electronics, furniture, vehicles, etc.)
• jjj — Jobs (full-time, part-time, contract positions)
• hhh — Housing (apartments, houses, rooms for rent)
• ccc — Community (activities, events, local news)
• eee — Events (concerts, festivals, meetups)
• ggg — Gigs (one-time jobs, freelance work)
• rrr — Resumes (job seekers)
• bbb — Services (professional services, business services)

⚙️ How It Works

1. Provide city code and select categories
2. Optionally add search query and set limits
3. Run the Actor
4. Download clean, structured listing datasets

🧩 Input Configuration

Example JSON Input

{
  "city": "newyork",
  "categories": ["sss", "jjj", "hhh"],
  "searchQuery": "bike",
  "maxListings": 100,
  "maxPages": 2,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

Single Category Example

{
  "city": "losangeles",
  "categories": ["jjj"],
  "searchQuery": "developer",
  "maxListings": 50,
  "maxPages": 1
}

Multiple Categories Without Search

{
  "city": "chicago",
  "categories": ["sss", "hhh"],
  "searchQuery": "",
  "maxListings": 200,
  "maxPages": 3
}

Key Options

• city — City code for Craigslist (required)

  • Examples: newyork, losangeles, chicago, sanfrancisco, boston, seattle
  • Format: lowercase, no spaces (e.g., newyork not new-york)

• categories — Array of category codes to scrape (required)

  • Options: sss (For Sale), jjj (Jobs), hhh (Housing), ccc (Community), eee (Events), ggg (Gigs), rrr (Resumes), bbb (Services)
  • Can select multiple: ["sss", "jjj"] scrapes both For Sale and Jobs

• searchQuery — Optional search query to filter listings

  • Examples: "iphone", "developer", "apartment", "bike"
  • Leave empty ("") to get all listings in category

• maxListings — Maximum number of listings to scrape (default: 50, max: 1000)

  • Applies across all categories combined
  • Stops when limit is reached

• maxPages — Maximum number of pages per category (default: 2, max: 10)

  • Each page contains ~120 listings
  • Higher values = more data but longer runtime

• proxyConfiguration — Proxy settings for anti-bot protection

  • Use Apify Proxy: {"useApifyProxy": true}
  • Custom proxies: {"proxyUrls": ["http://user:pass@host:port"]}

📂 Output Dataset

All listings are saved to a single dataset with the following structure:

Example Output Record

{
  "title": "Huffy Disney Minnie 12\" Bike Girls Bicycle Two Wheeler$30Staten Island",
  "price": "$30",
  "location": "Staten Island",
  "datePosted": "2024-01-15T12:00:00",
  "url": "https://newyork.craigslist.org/stn/bik/d/staten-island-huffy-disney-minnie-12/7890496670.html"
}

Field Descriptions

• title — Full listing title text
• price — Price if available (e.g., "$100", "$1,500")
• location — Location/neighborhood if specified
• datePosted — Date when listing was posted (ISO format when available)
• url — Direct link to the listing page

Output Notes

• Empty fields ("") indicate data not available for that listing
• All URLs are absolute and ready to use
• Data is deduplicated within each run
• Results are sorted by page order (newest first)

🏁 Getting Started

Quick Start on Apify

1. Click "Try for free" on the Actor page
2. Enter city code (e.g., newyork)
3. Select categories (e.g., ["sss", "jjj"])
4. Optionally add search query
5. Set max listings and pages
6. Click Run
7. Download your dataset when complete

📋 Popular City Codes

City	Code	Example URL
New York	newyork	https://newyork.craigslist.org
Los Angeles	losangeles	https://losangeles.craigslist.org
Chicago	chicago	https://chicago.craigslist.org
San Francisco	sanfrancisco	https://sanfrancisco.craigslist.org
Boston	boston	https://boston.craigslist.org
Seattle	seattle	https://seattle.craigslist.org
Miami	miami	https://miami.craigslist.org
Dallas	dallas	https://dallas.craigslist.org

Note: Use lowercase, no spaces or hyphens. Check Craigslist for your city's exact code.

⚠️ Important Notes

Legal Disclaimer

⚠️ This scraper is for educational and personal use only.

Please respect Craigslist's Terms of Service and use responsibly. Craigslist prohibits automated scraping in their Terms of Service, so use this tool at your own discretion.

Best Practices:

• Start with small volumes (default maxListings: 50)
• Use built-in rate limiting (automatic delays)
• Consider using Apify proxies for high-volume runs
• Test on specific city/category combinations before scaling
• Respect robots.txt and server resources

🛠️ Technical Details

Performance

• Speed: ~2-5 seconds per page (with delays)
• Throughput: ~120 listings per page
• Memory: Low footprint, efficient parsing
• Reliability: Automatic retries and error handling

Limitations

• Static HTML parsing (no JavaScript rendering)
• Rate limiting built-in (2s delay between pages)
• Max 1000 listings per run
• Max 10 pages per category

📧 Support

• Issues: Use Apify Issues tab on Actor page
• Email: kidaxxb@gmail.com

🏷️ Tags

craigslist, web-scraping, listings, market-research, real-estate, jobs, housing, data-extraction, apify, python, beautifulsoup, market-intelligence, local-data, classifieds

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