🔎 Facebook Groups Search Scraper

Facebook Groups Search Scraper — Discover Groups by Keyword with Member Counts & Activity

Find Facebook groups by keyword — or scrape group URLs you already have — and get each group's name, ID, member count, posting frequency, public/private visibility, join state and profile picture.

Mix keywords and direct links in one run, up to 500 groups per keyword, with rows saved live as each group is read.

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What is Facebook Groups Search Scraper?

Facebook has millions of groups and no usable way to survey them. Its own search is inconsistent, unrankable and impossible to export, so finding the right communities in a niche is normally an afternoon of manual clicking.

This Actor solves the discovery step. Type bmw or photography and it finds Facebook groups matching that topic, then visits each group's About page and pulls the facts you need to judge it:

• memberInfo — how big the community actually is.
• postFrequency — a readable activity figure, computed from the group's own posting stats and normalised into "3.2 posts a day", "5.1 posts a week" or "Very low activity". This is the field that separates a living community from a 90,000-member ghost town.
• visibility and viewerJoinState — whether it is public or private, and whether you can join.

You can also paste full group URLs directly. Those are always scraped in full, regardless of the per-keyword limit, so keyword discovery and known-group monitoring work in the same job.

Scope, stated plainly: this Actor returns group-level information. It does not extract member lists, member profiles or post content — it tells you which groups exist and which are worth your time.

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What data can you extract?

Field	Description
name	Group name
id	Facebook group ID
url	Canonical group URL
memberInfo	Member count as Facebook publishes it
postFrequency	Readable activity rate — posts per day, week or month
visibility	Public or Private
viewerJoinState	Whether the group can be joined
profilePictureUri	Group image
type	Record type
query	The keyword that produced this row

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Why teams research Facebook groups

For community marketing

Before you spend weeks building presence in a group, you want its size and its pulse. postFrequency next to memberInfo answers both in one column pair.

For lead research

Groups are where your buyers gather by topic. Finding the twenty active groups in a niche is the first step of any community-led motion.

For competitor and category insight

Which communities exist around a product category, how large they are, and which are private tells you where the real conversation happens.

For advertising research

Group topics and sizes are a fast read on audience interests before you build targeting.

For event and local marketing

Local groups — city, neighbourhood, hobby — are discoverable by keyword and rankable by activity.

For moderation and brand safety

Track groups using your brand name, and see whether they are public, private or dormant.

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How to find groups step by step

1. Decide your input: search keywords (bmw, photography, austin real estate), full group URLs, or both together.
2. Paste them into Keywords or group links.
3. Set Max groups per keyword (1–500). This does not limit direct URLs — all of those are scraped.
4. (Optional) Adjust connection settings; defaults work for most runs.
5. Click Start, then export the Output tab as CSV, Excel or JSON.

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⬇️ Input

Example input

{
  "startUrls": [
    "bmw",
    "tesla owners",
    "https://www.facebook.com/groups/123456789012345/"
  ],
  "maxItems": 100
}

Input reference

Field	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	array	— (required)	Search keywords, full Facebook group URLs, or a mix of both in one run. Keywords trigger discovery; URLs are scraped directly.
maxItems	integer	100	Groups per keyword, 1–500. Does not apply to direct group URLs — all of those are scraped.
proxyConfiguration	object	default	Optional. Leave as-is for best compatibility. If the first attempt returns nothing, the Actor upgrades the connection automatically and retries.

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⬆️ Output

Example output

{
  "query": "bmw",
  "id": "123456789012345",
  "name": "BMW Owners Club",
  "url": "https://www.facebook.com/groups/123456789012345/",
  "profilePictureUri": "https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/…",
  "visibility": "Public",
  "memberInfo": "184.2K members",
  "postFrequency": "12.4 posts a day",
  "type": "Group",
  "viewerJoinState": "CAN_JOIN"
}

Illustrative values — a live run returns current Facebook data.

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Usage recipes

Rank a niche by real activity

{
  "startUrls": ["home renovation", "interior design", "diy furniture"],
  "maxItems": 200
}

Sort the export by postFrequency, not by memberInfo. Large and quiet is a common and misleading combination.

Find joinable public groups only

Filter for visibility: "Public" and viewerJoinState: "CAN_JOIN" — those are the communities you can participate in immediately.

Monitor groups you already track

Put their URLs in startUrls and schedule a weekly run. Watching memberInfo and postFrequency move over time shows which communities are growing and which are fading.

Local market discovery

{
  "startUrls": ["austin real estate", "austin buy sell trade", "austin small business"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Brand monitoring

Search your brand name and any common misspellings, then review what comes back — including private groups you cannot see inside.

Segment by keyword

With several keywords in one run, group the export by query to compare community landscapes across topics.

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How does this compare to Facebook's official API?

The Facebook Graph API cannot do this. Group search was removed years ago, and what remains of the Groups API requires the group admin to install your app and grant permissions — it is built for tools that serve a group's own admins, not for discovering groups across the platform. There is no endpoint that returns "groups matching this keyword".

This Actor reads publicly available group information — the same names, member counts and activity figures any visitor sees on a group's About page — which is the only route to discovery at scale.

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Integrate and automate

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN>")

run = client.actor("scraperforge/facebook-groups-search-scraper").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": ["bmw", "tesla owners"],
    "maxItems": 100,
})

for g in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(g["query"], "|", g["name"], "|", g["memberInfo"], "|", g["postFrequency"])

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN>' });

const run = await client.actor('scraperforge/facebook-groups-search-scraper').call({
    startUrls: ['bmw'],
    maxItems: 100,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

REST API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/scraperforge~facebook-groups-search-scraper/runs?token=<YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"startUrls":["bmw"],"maxItems":100}'

n8n, Make, Zapier and AI agents

Call the Actor from n8n, Make, Zapier or an MCP-capable agent to feed group research into a spreadsheet or a community-tracking dashboard.

Schedules and webhooks

Attach a Schedule to track known groups over time and deduplicate on id, then route results with webhooks or the Google Sheets / Airtable / Slack integrations.

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Pricing and what you are charged for

Billing details for this Actor are shown on the Pricing tab of its page — check there for the current model and rates before a large run. Apify shows a cost estimate before and during every run.

maxItems applies per keyword, so three keywords at 200 each sets a ceiling of 600 discovered groups, plus every direct URL you supply.

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Limits, reliability and blocking

• Output is group-level. Member lists, member profiles and post content are not returned.
• maxItems does not limit direct URLs. Every group URL you paste is scraped, whatever the keyword cap.
• Keyword discovery is best-effort. Some keywords surface fewer groups than the cap, and results reflect what is publicly discoverable rather than Facebook's complete internal index.
• memberInfo is text, as Facebook writes it — "184.2K members", not an integer. Parse it if you need to sort numerically.
• postFrequency is derived from the group's published posting stats and normalised into a readable rate. Groups that publish no stats come back as "Unknown posts" or "Very low activity".
• Private groups return public metadata only — name, size, visibility — which is exactly what Facebook shows non-members.
• The connection upgrades automatically. If a first pass returns no group data, the Actor switches to a backup connection and retries rather than reporting an empty result.
• Group pages are read with deliberate pacing and limited concurrency, which keeps success rates up and makes large runs take time.
• Some groups return partial data when their About page omits fields; defaults such as "Unknown members" appear rather than nulls.
• Default run options are 4 GB memory and a 1-hour timeout; raise the timeout for many keywords at high limits.

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Is it legal to scrape Facebook group information?

This Actor collects publicly visible group metadata — names, member counts, activity figures and visibility, as shown to any visitor on a group's public About page. It does not log in, join groups, read posts, or collect member data.

Group names and images belong to their communities. Use the data for research and analysis, respect the fact that private groups are private, and comply with Facebook's Terms of Service and applicable data protection law. Discovering a group is not permission to harvest or message its members.

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❓ Frequently asked questions

Do I need a Facebook account or API key?

No. The Actor reads publicly available group pages without credentials.

Can I get the members of a group?

No. This Actor returns group-level information only — name, size, activity, visibility.

Can I mix keywords and group URLs?

Yes, freely, in the same run. Keywords trigger discovery; URLs are scraped directly.

Does maxItems limit my direct URLs?

No. It caps discovered groups per keyword. Every URL you paste is scraped.

Why is memberInfo a string?

Facebook publishes it as text ("184.2K members"). The Actor preserves it as shown; parse it if you need a number.

What does postFrequency mean?

A readable posting rate derived from the group's own statistics — per day, per week or per month, with "Very low activity" when there is barely any.

Can I see inside private groups?

No. Private groups return the public metadata Facebook shows non-members and nothing more.

Why did a keyword return fewer groups than my limit?

Discovery is limited to what is publicly findable for that term. Narrow niches simply have fewer groups.

Do I need a proxy?

Not usually. If a first pass returns nothing, the Actor upgrades the connection and retries automatically.

Which export format should I use?

CSV or Excel — the output is flat. JSON works equally well for pipelines.

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🔗 Related scrapers

• Facebook Groups Scraper — go deeper on groups you have selected.
• Facebook Group Posts and Details Scraper with Comments — the posts and comments inside a group.
• Facebook Search Scraper — search across Facebook more broadly.
• Facebook Posts Search Scraper — find posts by keyword.

Browse the full collection on the ScraperForge profile.

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💬 Feedback

Need numeric member counts, deeper discovery, or extra group fields? Open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor.