🏷️ Craigslist Scraper: Search URLs, Cars, Housing & Deals

Supercharge your lead generation, automotive arbitrage, real estate intelligence, and local commerce with the ultimate Craigslist Scraper and Search API. Extract verified seller contacts (phone numbers and emails), car VINs and specs, apartment details, prices, exact map coordinates, and full-resolution photo galleries across any US metro area in seconds.

Simply paste any Craigslist search URL, choose from 50+ top US metro areas, or enter your target keywords—no browser automation setup, maintenance, or IP bans!

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🌟 Why This Craigslist Scraper Outperforms the Rest

• 📞 Direct-Contact Extraction for Lead Generation: Automatically parses real phone numbers and email addresses directly from the listing description. Filter by un-obfuscated contacts for outbound sales, automotive buying, or real estate wholesaling.
• ⚡ 10x Faster SAPI Batch Discovery: Powered by Craigslist internal JSON feed architecture, retrieving thousands of matching postings in seconds without bulky browser overhead or JavaScript execution delays.
• 🚗 Deep Automotive Intelligence: Extract vehicle year, make, model, trim, odometer mileage, full 17-character VIN, transmission, fuel type, and clean/salvage title status directly from car and truck postings.
• 🏠 Comprehensive Real Estate & Housing Data: Scrape apartments, homes for rent, commercial listings, and vacation rentals with bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage (sqft), laundry, and parking details.
• 🏙️ 50+ Top US Metros Dropdown: Effortlessly select from 50+ major US metropolitan areas (New York, Los Angeles, SF Bay Area, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Seattle, Atlanta, etc.), or paste any custom Craigslist subdomain.
• 🔗 Direct Search & Listing URL Support: Simply copy and paste any Craigslist search URL, category page, or direct listing URL from your browser. All filters, keywords, metros, and price bounds are automatically parsed and applied.
• 👤 Owner vs. Dealer Classification: Instantly distinguish between private party sellers (for sale by owner) and commercial dealerships before reaching out.
• 📸 Full-Resolution Photo Galleries: Extract up to 24 high-resolution photo URLs (1200x900) per post for visual inspection, computer vision training, or catalog syndication.
• 🛡️ Chrome 124 TLS Impersonation & Proxy Rotation: Integrated with Apify residential proxies and genuine browser TLS fingerprints to prevent 429/403 blocks.
• 💰 100% Free Server Compute: Backed by Pay-Per-Event (PPE) monetization—you pay $0 for server compute and RAM, and are only billed for verified listings saved to your dataset.
• ⚙️ Multi-Format Data Export: Download clean, structured data directly to Excel, CSV, JSON, or integrate seamlessly with Python, Node.js, Webhooks, Google Sheets, or Zapier.

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🎯 Popular Use Cases

• 📞 Sales Lead Generation & Wholesale Outbound: Capture live seller phone numbers and emails for cars, equipment, real estate, and professional services for automated outreach.
• 🚙 Automotive Flippers & Dealerships: Track undervalued cars, trucks, and motorcycles as soon as they are listed. Filter by price, private owner status, and mileage to find profitable flips before anyone else.
• 🏠 Real Estate, Rentals & Housing Intelligence: Scrape apartments, houses for rent, commercial real estate, and vacation properties with location coordinates, bedroom counts, and square footage.
• 📦 E-commerce & Resale Arbitrage: Source discounted electronics, smartphones, power tools, musical instruments, and vintage collectibles to resell on eBay, Amazon, Mercari, or Facebook Marketplace.
• 🛋️ Moving Sales & Estate Liquidations: Monitor neighborhood garage sales, estate liquidations, and deep discounts on furniture and appliances.
• 💼 Lead Generation & Service Contractor Sourcing: Discover local service providers, home contractors, freelancers, and gig workers across metropolitan regions.

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🔗 Supported URL Formats & Examples

You can paste URLs directly into the searchUrl or startUrls input fields:

URL Type	Example URL	What Gets Extracted
Search with Filters	https://losangeles.craigslist.org/search/cta?query=tacoma&min_price=5000&max_price=20000	Keyword, category, price bounds, and metro are auto-applied
Filtered by Owner	https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cto?query=civic	Auto-detects Cars & Trucks by Owner (cto)
Category Browsing	https://chicago.craigslist.org/search/sss	Automatically scrapes all items in the For Sale category
Apartments / Housing	https://newyork.craigslist.org/search/apa?min_price=2000&max_price=3500	Rental housing with beds, baths, sqft, and location details
Paginated Search URL	https://miami.craigslist.org/search/cta?s=120	Starts scraping from result offset 120
Modern Direct Listing	https://www.craigslist.org/view/d/santa-monica-2015-nissan-nv2500/7782194820	Deep detail extraction for that exact listing
Legacy Direct Listing	https://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/cto/d/culver-city-2018-toyota-camry/7782194820.html	Resolves canonical listing and extracts all attributes

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🔄 Pagination & High-Volume Sourcing

Unlike traditional scrapers that slowly click through paginated HTML pages, this Actor utilizes a high-efficiency two-step query engine:

1. Query Initialization: Analyzes your search filters, resolves the target metro area, and determines total matching results.
2. Batch Ingestion: Streams matching results directly from Craigslist server-side cache in batches of hundreds or thousands of postings in seconds.
3. Offset & Depth Control: Use the maxItems parameter to specify exactly how many results you need (from 1 up to 10,000+). Use offset (or paste a URL with ?s=120) to skip already-scraped listings or resume previous jobs.

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🛡️ Failure Handling & Anti-Blocking Architecture

This Actor is engineered for mission-critical reliability:

• Automatic Proxy Rotation: When a request encounters a rate limit (HTTP 429 or 403), the Actor immediately rotates to a fresh residential IP session and retries with exponential backoff.
• Deleted & Expired Listing Fallback: If a listing is removed or returns HTTP 404/410 between search discovery and detail fetch, the Actor gracefully falls back to the discovery summary. Every listing with a valid ID is preserved in your dataset and never dropped.
• Incremental Dataset Flushing: Data is pushed to your Apify dataset and billed in real-time batches of 10 items. Even if an Actor run is interrupted or aborted, all scraped data up to that second is securely saved in your dataset.

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📥 Input Configuration

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	Array	[]	List of Craigslist search, category, or direct listing URLs.
searchUrl	String	""	Single Craigslist search or listing URL.
searchQuery	String	""	Keyword to search for (e.g. toyota tacoma, iphone 15, sofa).
category	Select	"cta"	Category code (e.g., cta for cars, sss for all for sale, ela for electronics, apa for housing).
subdomain	Select	"losangeles"	Select from top 50 US metros (Los Angeles, New York, SF Bay, Chicago, etc.) or paste custom URLs.
minPrice	Integer	null	Minimum listing price in USD.
maxPrice	Integer	null	Maximum listing price in USD.
purveyor	Select	"all"	Seller type: all (All Sellers), owner (By Owner), or dealer (By Dealer).
maxItems	Integer	50	Maximum number of listings to extract (1 to 10,000).
offset	Integer	0	Number of initial results to skip for pagination or bookmarking.
scrapeDetails	Boolean	true	When true, fetches full listing pages for complete vehicle specs, VINs, phone/email contacts, descriptions, and full photo galleries.
maxConcurrency	Integer	5	Maximum number of parallel detail page requests.
proxyConfiguration	Object	Residential	Apify proxy configuration (residential proxies recommended).

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📤 Sample Output Data

Each result is delivered in clean, structured JSON ready for analysis:

{
  "listingId": "7782194820",
  "url": "https://www.craigslist.org/view/d/santa-monica-2015-nissan-nv2500-high/7782194820",
  "title": "2015 Nissan NV2500 High Roof Cargo Van",
  "price": 18500,
  "condition": "excellent",
  "description": "Clean 2015 Nissan NV2500 High Roof van. V8 5.6L engine, automatic transmission, cold A/C. Call or text me at (310) 555-1234 or email seller@gmail.com for questions. Clean title in hand.",
  "postDate": "2026-09-13T18:42:15-0700",
  "city": "Santa Monica",
  "state": "CA",
  "zipCode": "90401",
  "latitude": 34.0195,
  "longitude": -118.4912,
  "isDealer": false,
  "contactObfuscated": false,
  "phoneNumbers": [
    "(310) 555-1234"
  ],
  "emails": [
    "seller@gmail.com"
  ],
  "isVehicle": true,
  "vehicleYear": 2015,
  "vehicleMake": "Nissan",
  "vehicleModel": "NV2500",
  "vehicleMiles": 112400,
  "vehicleVin": "1N6BF0KY5FN812345",
  "vehicleTransmission": "automatic",
  "vehicleFuelType": "gas",
  "vehicleTitleStatus": "clean",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://images.craigslist.org/00B0B_1ZBm7qXYZ_600x450.jpg",
  "imageUrls": [
    "https://images.craigslist.org/00B0B_1ZBm7qXYZ_1200x900.jpg",
    "https://images.craigslist.org/00H0H_2CDe8rUVW_1200x900.jpg"
  ]
}

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💰 Pay-Per-Event Pricing

This Actor operates under Apify's Pay-Per-Event (PPE) monetization model:

• Free Compute & RAM: You pay $0 for server compute. Server runtime, CPU, and RAM usage are completely free.
• Pay Only for Results: You only pay for successfully extracted listings saved to your dataset.
• Automatic Tier Discounts: Volume discounts automatically apply based on your Apify subscription tier (Free, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond).
• Fair Guarantee: If a query returns 0 items (no IDs found), you are not charged for listings.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Can I extract phone numbers and emails?

Yes! The Actor automatically scans every listing description for phone numbers and email addresses and includes them in phoneNumbers[] and emails[]. The contactObfuscated field is set to false whenever direct contact information is detected.

Can I paste a search URL directly from my browser?

Yes! Simply copy any search URL from your browser (e.g. https://losangeles.craigslist.org/search/cta?query=tacoma&min_price=5000&max_price=20000) and paste it into searchUrl or startUrls. The Actor automatically parses the metro subdomain, keyword, category, and price range.

How many listings can I scrape in one run?

You can scrape from a single listing up to 10,000+ items per run by adjusting maxItems.

Does it support housing and real estate attributes?

Yes! For housing and apartments (apa, rea, roo), the Actor extracts bedrooms, bathrooms, sqft, housing type, laundry, and parking details whenever available.

Which US metro areas are supported?

All 400+ official Craigslist US metro areas are supported. You can select from the top 50 metros directly in the dropdown or paste any regional URL for smaller cities.

How does the Actor handle deleted or sold listings?

Craigslist listings are occasionally deleted between when a search query runs and when the detail page is fetched. This Actor detects HTTP 404/410 status codes gracefully and preserves the discovery record (listing ID, URL, title, price, location) in your dataset rather than dropping it.