NoCowboys NZ Tradies Scraper — Phones, Websites & Ratings

Export New Zealand tradies and trade businesses from NoCowboys, the original Kiwi tradie-rating site — plumbers, electricians, builders, roofers, painters, drainlayers, landscapers, heat-pump installers and 220+ more categories — with each business's own published phone numbers (landline, mobile, freephone, in E.164), its website, physical and postal address, the categories and areas it services, its NoCowboys approval rating and rating count, the date of its most recent rating, and the association / licensing-board badges it shows (Licensed Building Practitioners, Electrical Workers Registration Board, Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board, Master Builders, Site Safe …).

One row = one business. A business found by several of your searches is delivered and charged once.

$4 per 1,000 businesses ($0.004 per business). No start fee, no proxy cost, nothing charged for filtered-out businesses, duplicates, or pages the site could not serve.

Who uses this

• Trade merchants and suppliers (building supplies, plumbing and electrical wholesalers) building a trade-account call list by region and trade
• Tradie software (job management, quoting, invoicing) and trade insurers sourcing NZ tradespeople to call
• Home-services agencies and lead-generation marketplaces recruiting contractors in a region
• Anyone who wants a tradie's reputation next to the contact: approval %, rating count, how recently customers rated them, and whether they show an LBP / EWRB / PGDB badge

What you get — measured on real runs (2026-09-23)

The whole directory, once: run u9vBigmG6HMMu3eKJ (allBusinesses, 19.7 minutes) delivered and charged 18,171 businesses — 16,298 from the searches (the site states 16,410 for all of New Zealand: 99.3%, every one of the 18 region searches read to 100% of its stated total) plus 1,878 that appear only in the site's sitemap. 998 are registered, 17,173 unregistered. Population fill:

Field	All 18,171	998 registered	Notes
phone / phoneE164	97.7%	99.7%	The business's own number from its own page — never a number from the "registered businesses nearby" box
landlinePhone	71.8%	21.0%	03/04/06/07/09 numbers
mobilePhone	21.0%	84.8%	NZ mobiles (02x)
phones with 2+ numbers	1.4%	24.9%	primary + alternative, labelled
website	20.7%	75.2%	registered: the page's Website link; unregistered: the business's own structured data (websiteSource)
physicalAddress	85.1%	35.3%	as printed; postcode 54.2% (only when the address ends in one)
categories, areasServed	92.0% / 91.8%	98.8% / 99.4%	what the business services, and where
primaryCategory, locality	84.1% / 66.6%	99.9% / 99.9%	from the page headline ("Electricians / Electrical Contractors in Mairangi Bay")
approvalPercent, latestReviewDate	41.6% / 41.5%	95.7%	null when nobody has rated the business; ratingCount is 100% (0 when none)
primaryContact	5.5%	99.5%	registered pages only
about	5.2%	94.3%	registered pages only
associations + board flags	3.3%	59.6%	LBP badge 171 businesses · EWRB 112 · PGDB 84
facebookUrl	2.6%	48.0%
latitude / longitude	1.9%	34.1%	the map pin, only on registered pages that embed a map

Four search frames, every business in each (runs UT60cLTGm1RpP13RL, OOhPw8SUHet0KNfBI, 8HhsTw7MWlbqpPcPy, k0zs0qJaYbg4nr90L) — plumbers × Canterbury 102/102, builders × Waikato & King Country 209/209, electricians × Auckland 550/550, and 60 profiles drawn at random from the sitemap — put phone at 98.0–99.5%, website at 19.1–37.5% and physical address at 70.0–95.1%; a trade search in a city returns more registered businesses than the directory as a whole, so its website and mobile fill runs higher.

Registered vs unregistered. A registered business pays NoCowboys for a full page (contact name, website, about, badges, map). An unregistered business is one customers rated that never signed up — its page still prints its phone number (97.6%) and usually its address. By default you get both (the site's own "Show unregistered businesses" option — plumbers NZ-wide: 1,046 instead of 117); set includeUnregistered off for registered only. registeredOnNoCowboys tells you which is which.

Coverage. Every search states a total ("209 results."). Every search in the runs above was read to 100% of its stated total, and every run writes the stated-vs-unique numbers to the RUN_SUMMARY record.

Activity. latestReviewDate is the directory's own activity signal: of the 7,549 businesses that have ever been rated, 1,022 were last rated in 2025–2026 and 1,212 last in 2007. Filter on it (and on ratingCount) if you want businesses customers are still hiring.

Input

Field	Default	What it does
categories	["plumbers-plumbing-contractors"]	Category slugs as in nocowboys.co.nz/search/<location>/<category> — e.g. electricians-electrical-contractors, builders, roofing-contractors, painters-painting-contractors, drainlayers, heat-pump, landscaping-services, or all-categories. Names are normalised ("Plumbers / Plumbing Contractors" works).
locations	["wellington"]	new-zealand, a region (auckland, wellington, canterbury, waikato-king-country, bay-of-plenty, otago, hawkes-bay, manawatu, northland, nelson-bays, southland, taranaki, gisborne, thames-coromandel, wairarapa, wanganui, marlborough, west-coast) or a town/suburb slug (paraparaumu, hamilton, tauranga …). Every category is searched in every location.
includeUnregistered	true	Include businesses that never registered (still with their phone). Off = registered only.
allBusinesses	false	The whole directory: all categories × all of New Zealand, split region by region past the site's 7,000-result search limit, plus the businesses the site lists only in its sitemap. Set maxResults to 0 (about 18,000 businesses, ~20 minutes, ~$73).
businessUrls	[]	Specific profiles (https://www.nocowboys.co.nz/businesses/peter-jackson-plumbing or just peter-jackson-plumbing). When given, only these are fetched.
requirePhone	false	Skip businesses whose page shows no phone (not charged).
minRatingCount	0	Keep only businesses with at least this many NoCowboys ratings. Applied on the search result, before the profile is opened.
minApprovalPercent	0	Keep only businesses rated at least this approval % (0–100).
includeReviews	false	Add recentReviews (date, approval %, reviewer first name, excerpt), newest first. Same price.
maxReviewsPerBusiness	10	1–80.
maxResults	75	Stop after this many businesses. 0 = no limit.
maxPagesPerSearch	0	Limit each search's depth (100 businesses per page). 0 = all.
concurrency	4	Parallel requests (1–10).
requestTimeoutSecs	30	Hard deadline per request; slow requests are retried.
proxyConfiguration	none	Not needed — the site answers Apify's servers directly.

Example — every electrician and plumber in Auckland and Wellington with at least 5 ratings:

{
  "categories": ["electricians-electrical-contractors", "plumbers-plumbing-contractors"],
  "locations": ["auckland", "wellington"],
  "minRatingCount": 5,
  "maxResults": 0
}

Output — a real row (run u9vBigmG6HMMu3eKJ, 2026-09-23)

areasServed, categories, categorySlugs and whatWeDo are shortened here for reading (the real row lists 35 areas, 14 categories and 13 services); every other value is exactly as delivered.

{
  "businessId": 91683,
  "slug": "Astero-Electrical",
  "name": "Astero Electrical",
  "registeredOnNoCowboys": true,
  "phone": "021515838",
  "phoneE164": "+6421515838",
  "phoneType": "mobile",
  "mobilePhone": "021515838",
  "mobilePhoneE164": "+6421515838",
  "landlinePhone": "094755155",
  "landlinePhoneE164": "+6494755155",
  "phones": [
    { "number": "021515838", "e164": "+6421515838", "type": "mobile", "label": "primary", "source": "profile" },
    { "number": "094755155", "e164": "+6494755155", "type": "landline", "label": "alternative", "source": "profile" }
  ],
  "phoneSource": "profile",
  "phonesUnparsed": [],
  "website": "https://www.asteroelectrical.co.nz/",
  "websiteSource": "profile",
  "facebookUrl": null,
  "instagramUrl": null,
  "linkedinUrl": null,
  "socialLinks": {},
  "primaryContact": "Eugene",
  "physicalAddress": "1 Manaia Place, Mairangi Bay, 0630",
  "postcode": "0630",
  "postalAddress": "1 Manaia Place, Mairangi Bay, 0630",
  "locality": "Mairangi Bay",
  "primaryCategory": "Electricians / Electrical Contractors",
  "categories": ["Solar power", "EV Charger Install and Maintenance", "Emergency Electricians", "Electricians / Electrical Contractors", "Alarms & Security"],
  "categorySlugs": ["solar-power", "EV Charger install and maintenance", "emergency-electricians", "electricians-electrical-contractors", "alarms-security"],
  "areasServed": ["Takapuna", "Northcote", "North Shore City and Suburbs", "Mairangi Bay", "Albany"],
  "about": "I have got over 20 years' experience in electrical business",
  "whatWeDo": ["Wiring new houses", "Re-wirng old houses", "Troubleshooting", "Solar system installation", "All electrical maintenance"],
  "availability": "This week/ASAP",
  "approvalPercent": 98.6,
  "ratingCount": 60,
  "latestReviewDate": "2026-07-13",
  "otherRatingsCount": null,
  "mediaCount": 10,
  "associations": ["Electrical Worker's Registration Board"],
  "licensedBuildingPractitioner": false,
  "electricalWorkersRegistrationBoard": true,
  "plumbersGasfittersDrainlayersBoard": false,
  "noCowboysBadges": ["Registered - serious about their reputation on NC", "Customer Preferred - well liked in the NC community", "Bronze business - over 50 ratings"],
  "latitude": -36.728382,
  "longitude": 174.754715,
  "favouritesCount": 0,
  "pageViews": 9723,
  "logoUrl": null,
  "profileUrl": "https://www.nocowboys.co.nz/businesses/Astero-Electrical",
  "foundVia": ["https://www.nocowboys.co.nz/search/new-zealand/all-categories/5?registered=1&per-page=100"],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-23T06:01:12.239Z"
}

Field reference

• businessId, slug, profileUrl — NoCowboys' own id and profile page. slug is the dedupe key (the site treats it case-insensitively).
• phone, phoneE164, phoneType — the first of the business's own numbers; mobilePhone / landlinePhone (+ E.164) — the first of each kind; phones — every distinct number with type (mobile, landline, freephone, or null for a 7-digit number printed without its area code), label (primary / alternative) and source.
• phoneSource — profile (the number shown on the page) or structuredData (the page shows no number but its own LocalBusiness data carries one — 3.4% of rows).
• phonesUnparsed — numbers the site stores in a form nobody can dial (a vanity number with its letters stripped, "0800"; two numbers welded into one, "092703078094409255"), kept exactly as printed and never put in phone.
• website, websiteSource — profile (the page's Website link, with NoCowboys' own utm_* tracking suffix removed) or structuredData.
• physicalAddress, postcode, postalAddress — as printed; the postcode only when the address ends in one.
• locality, primaryCategory — from the page headline; categories / categorySlugs, areasServed — the business's "Categories we service" and "Areas we service".
• approvalPercent (0–100, null with no ratings), ratingCount, latestReviewDate (an activity signal: a business last rated in 2012 is probably not trading the same way), otherRatingsCount (the page's "Other Ratings (n)" tab), mediaCount, favouritesCount, pageViews.
• associations — every association badge on the page; licensedBuildingPractitioner, electricalWorkersRegistrationBoard, plumbersGasfittersDrainlayersBoard — true when that board's badge is shown. These are NoCowboys badges, not a check against the official register — verify a licence on the board's own register before relying on it.
• noCowboysBadges — Registered, Customer Preferred, Over 10/25 ratings, Bronze/Silver/Gold business.
• primaryContact, about, whatWeDo, availability, socialLinks (facebookUrl, instagramUrl, linkedinUrl), latitude/longitude, logoUrl — registered pages.
• recentReviews (only with includeReviews) — date, ratingPercent, author (reviewer's first name as shown), text (the site's own excerpt, cut at ~500 characters).
• foundVia — the search (or sitemap / URL) that first found the business.

How it works — and the traps it handles

• Neighbours' phone numbers are on the page. An unregistered business's page prints "Before hiring them, consider these registered businesses nearby" with four other businesses' phone numbers. The actor cuts that box out before reading anything, takes phones only from the business's own tel: links (and its own structured data), and fails the run if any delivered number is not on the business's own page or appears in its own page's neighbour box (0 across the 18,171-business directory run, 14,197 of whose pages carried the box; 2 numbers were withheld because a business's own tel link repeated a neighbour's number).
• Searches stop at 7,000 results. Past result 7,000 a search answers 200 with zero businesses while still stating its full total (16,410 for all of New Zealand), then HTTP 500. The actor walks the served window and splits a larger search region by region (or, inside a region, category by category) — it never reads the empty pages as "end of data", and reports any window stop in RUN_SUMMARY.
• The search does not list every business. Businesses filed under no region or category are only in the site's sitemap (1,878 of its 8,580 business URLs appeared in no search in the whole-directory run). allBusinesses adds them.
• Registered-only by default on the site. The site's search shows only registered businesses unless you tick "Show unregistered businesses"; the actor does that for you (includeUnregistered).
• Profile pages are up to 710 KB (a busy business prints every one of its hundreds of reviews). A page cut short under HTTP 200 is detected (it must end in </html>) and re-fetched; HTTP 200 with a challenge page is a failed request, never "no businesses". If more than 20% of pages fail after retries, the run stops and says so rather than shipping a partial list.
• The same number under two businesses happens (one owner, two listings). It is reported in RUN_SUMMARY.phones, not withheld — each business published it as its own.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.004 per business delivered ($4 per 1,000). A run with the default input (maxResults 75) costs at most $0.30. Filtered-out businesses, duplicates across your searches and unreadable pages are never charged. If you set a maximum charge for the run, the actor stops delivering exactly at your budget.

Data limits

• No e-mail. NoCowboys never prints a business e-mail — contact goes through its own e-mail / SMS form. Use the website with a contact-page extractor if you need e-mail.
• No NZBN. NoCowboys pages do not show the business's NZBN or company number (0 of the pages measured).
• Unregistered pages are thin: phone (98%) and usually an address, but no website link, contact name, about text or badges on the page — the website for an unregistered business comes from the page's own structured data where the business once gave one (17.6% of unregistered businesses).
• Stale listings exist. The directory keeps businesses rated years ago; latestReviewDate (2012 on some) and ratingCount help you filter.
• Board badges are the directory's, not the register's (see Field reference).
• A whole-directory run takes ~20 minutes (measured 19.7 min at concurrency 6, 1.2 GB of pages); category × region searches take seconds.

Source

Data is read from public pages of nocowboys.co.nz: the /search/<location>/<category> listings (with the site's own "Show unregistered businesses" option), /businesses/<name> profiles and /sitemap.xml.