MacRAE's Blue Book Scraper: US Industrial Suppliers

Industrial supplier directory scraper for procurement teams, sourcing agents, B2B sales and market researchers: type a product such as ball valves, cnc machining or injection molding, and get manufacturers and distributors from MacRAE's Blue Book ("America's Original Industrial Directory Since 1893", as its home page says) as clean rows with phone, fax, street address, website, business type, certifications and every product heading they list. Filter by US state or Canadian province.

It works over plain HTTP, with no browser and no login. 20 suppliers with full details took 41 seconds in the Apify cloud (one run). List-only mode reads 25 suppliers per request.

What you get

• Contacts: company name, phone, toll-free, fax, website, street, city, state, ZIP, country, LinkedIn / Facebook / X / YouTube links. Contact-person names are not collected.
• What they do: business type (Manufacturer, Distributor, Service, Exporter, Importer) with isManufacturer and isDistributor flags, certifications as listed (ISO 9001, AS9100, ITAR ...), all product and service headings with their codes, company description, featured products and logo for advertisers.
• How you found them: category, number of suppliers in that category, keyword or company name, state, company ID, profile URL.

Not on this site: MacRAE's Blue Book is a request-for-quote directory. It does not publish prices, minimum order quantities or e-mail addresses (e-mail goes through a site form). For e-mails, feed the website column into Website Contact Extractor.

Sample output

Real rows from the cloud run with the default input (ball valves, 20 results, 41 seconds):

Company	Phone	City	Type	Website
Global Hose & Industrial Sales Co. (SDVOSB)	615-262-2620	Nashville, TN	Manufacturer / Distributor / Service	global-hose.com
Modern Industrial	888-517-2310	Fort Mill, SC	Distributor	modernindustrial.com
Metal Worx Express	267-401-1670	Huntingdon Valley, PA	Distributor / Service	metalworxexpress.com
Nycoil Co	864-288-9906	Spartanburg, SC	Manufacturer	nycoil.com
R & A Industries Inc.	781-393-9114	Medford, MA	Distributor / Service	raindusa.com

Fill rates on those 20 rows: phone 90%, website 95%, street 100%. On 300 hydraulic cylinders suppliers (test run): phone 99%, fax 94%, website 90%, street address 100%, business type on most rows, certification 11%. 61% are manufacturers.

Use cases

• Supplier sourcing: shortlist certified machine shops or valve makers in a region and call them for quotes.
• B2B lead generation: lists of US manufacturers by product line, with phone and website, for sales outreach.
• Distributor search: find who distributes a product line in a state or province.
• Market mapping: count suppliers per state or per product, see who holds which certification.
• Data enrichment: look companies up by name and add phone, address and product lines to your CRM.
• AI agents: an agent can call this actor with a product keyword and read back suppliers (see the MCP note below).

Pricing

$1.50 per 1,000 suppliers ($0.0015 per result), pay per result, no start fee. Failed requests and filtered rows are never charged.

Job	Rows	Cost
Quick test (default)	20	$0.03
One product in one state	about 50	$0.08
One large heading, e.g. all "Prototypes" suppliers	1,319	about $2

Apify's free plan ($5 of monthly credit) covers about 3,300 results.

Other actors on the Store (free-plan prices, read 5 Nov 2026). Some ThomasNet actors charge less per row, for a different directory:

Actor (30-day users)	Price per 1,000 suppliers
This one	$1.50, details included, no start fee
scrapers_lat MacRAE's Blue Book (1)	$20.00
zen-studio ThomasNet (154)	$4.99
azzouzana ThomasNet (23)	$1.00 + $0.005 per run
memo23 ThomasNet (16)	$1.00 + $0.005 per run
dami_studio ThomasNet (3)	$0.85 + $0.001 per run
fraktalapi ThomasNet (2)	$1.00 + $0.00005 per run
ahmed_jasarevic ThomasNet (1)	$0.90 + $0.00005 per run
exuberantal Global Sources, ThomasNet and Kompass (1)	$0.75

FAQ

Does it return prices or minimum order quantities? No, because the site does not publish them. Suppliers quote on request. Use the phone number or website to ask.

Does it return e-mails? No. The site takes messages through a form and does not show addresses. Pair it with Website Contact Extractor on the website column.

Why are a few rows from another state? Advertisers can appear in a state's list as "serving

How current is the data? It is what each supplier's listing shows today. Listings are kept up by the suppliers, so some details can be old (a certification year, for example). Check before you rely on one.

Why fewer rows than the heading's total? Filters, maxResultsPerSearch, or uniqueCompanies skipping a company already saved from another heading. RUN_SUMMARY gives the counts.

How long does a big pull take? With profiles, plan on roughly a row a second: the demo run averaged about 4 seconds a request in the cloud at 4 parallel requests, and the actor never goes over 300 requests a minute. A 1,319-supplier heading would take around 20-25 minutes (an estimate, not a measured run). List-only mode reads 25 rows per request. Raise maxConcurrency if you need more speed.

Is there an official API? Not a public one that we could find. This actor reads the same public pages you see in a browser and returns them as JSON.

For AI agents (MCP): input is a list of product keywords (e.g. ball valves) plus optional states and filters; output is one JSON row per supplier with phone, address, website, business type, certification and product headings; typical cost is $0.03 for 20 rows; use it when you need US or Canadian industrial manufacturers or distributors of a given product. It does not return prices, MOQs or e-mails.

Why this one

• $1.50 per 1,000 suppliers, details included, no start fee, against $20.00 for the only other MacRAE's Blue Book actor we found. ThomasNet actors read a different directory (prices under Pricing), so run this next to one of them if you want the widest supplier list.
• Keyword to heading matching: the site splits products into thousands of headings ("valves" matches 521). The actor ranks them (same words first, then the largest) and reads the best few, or all of them if you ask.
• By state: "Ohio", "TX" or "ON"; each keyword runs once per state, using the site's own local lists.
• Filters before you pay: manufacturer or distributor, certification text ("AS9100"), phone or website present. Filtered rows are never charged.
• One row per company across headings and keywords, by default.
• Fast list-only mode when you just need names and locations: 60 rows took 2.5 seconds in a test run outside the cloud.

Example inputs for common jobs

First 20 ball valve suppliers with full details (default):

{ "searchTerms": ["ball valves"], "maxResultsPerSearch": 20 }

AS9100 machine shops in Ohio and Texas:

{ "searchTerms": ["cnc machining"], "states": ["OH", "TX"], "maxResultsPerSearch": 0, "certificationContains": ["AS9100"] }

Manufacturers with a phone and a website across every heading that matches:

{ "searchTerms": ["hydraulic cylinders"], "maxCategoriesPerSearch": 0, "maxResultsPerSearch": 500, "businessTypes": ["manufacturer"], "requirePhone": true, "requireWebsite": true }

Look companies up by name:

{ "companyNames": ["Parker Hannifin", "Mueller Co"], "maxResultsPerSearch": 10 }

A whole category you already picked, from its URL:

{ "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.macraesbluebook.com/search/product_company_list.cfm?prod_code=6045900" }], "maxResultsPerSearch": 0 }

Names and locations only, fast:

{ "searchTerms": ["injection molding"], "maxResultsPerSearch": 500, "scrapeDetails": false }

How to use

1. Enter one or more product keywords, company names or macraesbluebook.com URLs.
2. Optionally add states or provinces and set Max suppliers per search (default 20; 0 = everything listed).
3. Optionally add filters: business type, certification, phone or website present.
4. Click Start. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read it through the API.

Input

Field	Type	Meaning
searchTerms	list	Product or service keywords, 3-40 characters
companyNames	list	Companies to look up by name
startUrls	list	Category, profile or search result URLs
states	list	US states or Canadian provinces, name or code
maxResultsPerSearch	integer	Default 20; 0 = everything listed
maxCategoriesPerSearch	integer	Headings read per keyword. Default 3; 0 = all matches (up to 300)
scrapeDetails	boolean	Default true. false = list data only, much faster
uniqueCompanies	boolean	Default true: a company is saved and charged once per run
requirePhone, requireWebsite, requireCertification	boolean	Skip rows without it
certificationContains	list	Keep rows whose certification mentions any of these
businessTypes	list	manufacturer, distributor, service, exporter, importer
basedInStateOnly	boolean	Drop advertisers listed as "serving

states applies to keywords and company names; a start URL keeps whatever state it already has.

Output

One JSON row per supplier (trimmed example from a real run):

{
  "companyName": "Hi-Tech Controls, Inc.",
  "companyId": "877222",
  "phone": "303-680-5159",
  "tollFreePhone": null,
  "fax": "303-680-5344",
  "website": "http://www.hitechcontrols.com/?ex=e3iejl-7s51d1-2hsph-du9m5x",
  "street": "7374 S. Eagle Street",
  "city": "Centennial",
  "state": "CO",
  "postalCode": "80112",
  "country": "USA",
  "servingArea": null,
  "businessActivities": [
    "Manufacturer",
    "Distributor",
    "Exporter"
  ],
  "isManufacturer": true,
  "isDistributor": true,
  "certification": "ISO 9001:2000",
  "products": [
    "BALLS: Valve",
    "BOXES",
    "BOXES: Custom",
    "BOXES: Electrical"
  ],
  "productCodes": [
    "424200",
    "859200",
    "865500",
    "867600"
  ],
  "productCount": 184,
  "featuredProducts": [],
  "description": "Hi-Tech Controls, Inc. and their supplier, HELUKABEL®, are a one stop source for wires and cables requiring RoHS, UL, CSA, Harmonized & CE approval. Cables for ...",
  "linkedin": null,
  "facebook": null,
  "twitter": null,
  "youtube": null,
  "instagram": null,
  "videoUrls": [],
  "logoUrl": null,
  "timeZone": "Mountain",
  "listingType": "basic",
  "detailsScraped": true,
  "matchedCategory": "Ball Valves",
  "matchedCategoryCode": "8322750",
  "categorySupplierCount": 411,
  "searchTerm": "ball valves",
  "searchType": "keyword",
  "stateFilter": null,
  "profileUrl": "https://www.macraesbluebook.com/search/company.cfm?company=877222",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.macraesbluebook.com/search/product_company_list.cfm?prod_code=8322750",
  "position": 12,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-02T18:47:23.828Z"
}

The key-value store also holds RUN_SUMMARY: results per search, headings read, filtered rows, ignored inputs and why each search stopped.

Integrations

Run it on an Apify schedule, through the Apify REST API, the JavaScript / Python clients, Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, or from AI agents via the Apify MCP server. Join runs on companyId to track new and removed suppliers.

This actor is not affiliated with MacRAE's Blue Book. It reads public pages that the site's robots.txt allows (read 5 Nov 2026: keynoteselector.cfm, /Templates/ and /search/special/ are disallowed, and the actor reads none of them).

Need a custom scraper or a ready dataset? Hire me on Fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/rel8ble