Craigslist Scraper — Listings, Classifieds & Phone/Email Leads

Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by craigslist, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. "craigslist" is referenced only to describe the publicly available website this Actor collects data from.

Extract postings from any Craigslist city and category — housing & rentals, real estate for sale, cars, for‑sale items, services, gigs and jobs. Get the title, price, beds/baths/sqft, full attribute set, body text, location & geo, photos and dates — plus the phone numbers and emails advertisers leave in the post body (the lead). Run it in monitoring mode to get only brand‑new posts each time.

No login, no API key, no browser — fast, reliable extraction powered by Craigslist's own public JSON API, with every post a structured record and a lead score.

Why this Craigslist scraper?

Most Craigslist tools scrape one category and return a title and a price. This actor reads Craigslist's official search + posting API across every category, resolves each post to its canonical URL, and ships the richest record in the category — including the contact details that make a posting a usable lead.

Data	Generic crawlers	This actor
Title, price, category, canonical URL	partial	✅ ~100%
Location, neighborhood & geo (lat/lng)	partial	✅
Beds / baths / sqft + full attributes (housing type, laundry, parking, furnished, condition…)	❌	✅
Full body text	partial	✅
Phone & email leads from the post body	❌	✅ (esp. services & gigs)
Photos, posted/updated dates, repost-of	❌	✅
Works across housing, real estate, for‑sale, services, gigs, jobs	one category	✅ all
Monitoring — only new posts	❌	✅
Lead score (0–100)	❌	✅

Use cases

• Service & contractor leads — services and gigs advertisers (movers, plumbers, mechanics, cleaners, web/creative pros…) almost always post a phone number in the body. Filter by category + city and export a ready‑to‑call list.
• FSBO & real‑estate prospecting — pull for‑sale‑by‑owner and rental listings with price, beds/baths/sqft, address and geo — leads for agents, investors, iBuyers and proptech.
• Marketplace & price research — track for‑sale inventory and pricing (cars, furniture, electronics, equipment) across cities.
• Recruiting & gig sourcing — scan jobs and gigs for roles, employers and rates.
• New‑post monitoring — schedule it to alert you the moment a new matching post appears (new FSBO listing, new gig, new service provider).

How to use

1. Sign up for Apify — the free plan is enough to try this actor.
2. Open the Craigslist Scraper, add one or more sites (austin, sfbay, newyork…), pick categories, and add optional keywords/filters.
3. Click Start and watch postings stream into the dataset table.
4. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS — or pull results via the Apify API.

Input

{
    "sites": ["austin", "sfbay"],
    "categories": ["services-all", "real-estate-for-sale"],
    "keywords": ["plumbing"],
    "maxResults": 200,
    "maxPrice": 3000,
    "includePostDetails": true,
    "monitorMode": false
}

• sites — Craigslist sites: the subdomain (austin, sfbay, newyork, losangeles) or a metro name (Austin, New York, San Francisco). Required unless you use startUrls.
• categories — pick from the list (apartments, rooms, real estate for sale, for‑sale, cars, furniture, electronics, services, skilled trades, jobs, gigs, community…) or type any raw 3‑letter Craigslist code (apa, rea, cto, bbb).
• keywords (optional) — each is run against every site × category.
• startUrls — paste Craigslist search URLs (.../search/apa?query=loft&max_price=2000) or individual post URLs.
• minPrice / maxPrice / minBedrooms / maxBedrooms / hasImage / postedTodayOnly / titleOnly / searchNearby — filters.
• includePostDetails (default true) — fetch each post's full body, attributes, address, dates and the phone/email lead. Turn off for a faster, list‑only run.
• monitorMode (default false) — return only posts not seen in previous runs.
• proxyConfiguration — proxy settings (Apify proxy with automatic fresh‑session rotation by default).

Output

By default you get one clean table of postings. A posting record (type: "posting"):

{
    "type": "posting",
    "postId": "7941186152",
    "postingUuid": "wjx3nuc2LZFaNNzudJgFqD",
    "url": "https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/sks/d/san-jose-plumber/7941186152.html",
    "title": "San Jose Plumber - Plumbing & Sewer",
    "category": "skilled trade services",
    "categoryCode": "sks",
    "section": "services",
    "site": "sfbay",
    "price": null,
    "neighborhood": "San Jose",
    "streetAddress": null,
    "latitude": 37.33, "longitude": -121.88,
    "bedrooms": null, "bathrooms": null, "sqft": null,
    "attributes": [], "attributeMap": {},
    "bodyText": "Friendly professional plumber, 24/7 …",
    "hasContactInfo": true,
    "contactPhone": "408-539-6608",
    "contactPhones": ["408-539-6608"],
    "contactEmails": [],
    "images": ["https://images.craigslist.org/..._600x450.jpg"],
    "imageCount": 3,
    "postedAt": "2026-06-15T21:08:59.000Z",
    "leadScore": 70,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-15T21:30:00.000Z"
}

A housing/real‑estate record adds price, bedrooms, bathrooms, sqft, housingType, laundry, parking, furnished, streetAddress and a full attributeMap.

What to expect (field coverage)

Field	Coverage
postId, uuid, canonical URL, title, category, geo, body, posted date	~100%
price, beds/baths/sqft & attributes	housing / real estate / for‑sale
phone in body	high for services & gigs (advertisers want calls); lower for housing/jobs (those use Craigslist's anonymized reply)
photos	when the post has any

Craigslist's search API returns up to ~360 results per query — the actor logs the full total and recommends narrowing with keywords, price or a sub‑category for deeper coverage (no silent truncation).

How much does it cost to scrape craigslist?

This Actor uses Apify's pay-per-event pricing: you are charged only for the results it delivers, with no monthly rental and no start fee. The events it can charge are:

• Posting scraped - One Craigslist posting: title, price, category, full address/geo, beds/baths/sqft & attributes, body text, photos, posted/updated dates, and the phone number & email left in the post body (the lead). Lead score included.

The current price of each event is shown on the Pricing tab of this page. Set a maximum total charge on the run if you want a hard cap on spend, and use the input limits to control how much the Actor fetches.

Automate & schedule

• Apify API — start runs, fetch datasets, manage schedules over REST.
• apify-client for JavaScript and Python — official SDKs.
• Schedules — run it daily/hourly with monitorMode to catch new posts as they appear.
• Webhooks — trigger CRM import, Slack alert or an email sequence the moment a run finishes.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('scrapesage/craigslist-scraper').call({
    sites: ['austin'],
    categories: ['services-all'],
    keywords: ['moving'],
    maxResults: 100,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} postings`);

Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to 5,000+ apps — no code required:

• Make — multi‑step automation scenarios.
• Zapier — push new leads straight into your CRM.
• Slack — get notified when a monitored feed adds posts.
• Google Drive / Sheets — auto‑export every run to a spreadsheet.
• Airbyte — pipe results into your data warehouse.
• GitHub — trigger runs from commits or releases.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

The output is clean, LLM‑ready JSON. Call this actor from Claude, ChatGPT, or any agent framework through the Apify MCP server — ask your assistant to "find moving companies in Austin with a phone number" and let it run the scraper for you.

Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is agent-ready — AI agents can discover it, run it, and pay for it autonomously, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses pay-per-event pricing and limited permissions, so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

• x402 — an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the Apify MCP server — no account, no API key.
• Skyfire — agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

More scrapers from scrapesage

Build a complete local‑lead & real‑estate stack:

• Rent.com Scraper — apartment & rental listings, prices and property leads.
• Airbnb Scraper & Market Monitor — short‑term rental listings, prices and availability.
• Bark Listing Scraper — local service‑provider leads.
• Houzz Scraper — home & remodeling pros, contacts and reviews.
• Insurance Agent Scraper — State Farm & Farmers agent leads.
• US Business Formation Scraper — newly registered LLCs & companies as fresh B2B leads.
• Google Ads Transparency Scraper — who's advertising what on Google.

Tips

• Services & gigs = the best leads. Those advertisers post their phone in the body, so categories like services‑all, skilled‑trades, labor‑moving and labor‑gigs return the highest phone coverage.
• Narrow for depth. Craigslist caps a query at ~360 results — split a big category by keyword, price band or sub‑category to go deeper.
• Keep details on to capture the body, attributes and contact info; turn off for a fast list‑only pass.
• Monitor with monitorMode + a Schedule to get only new posts each run (perfect for time‑sensitive feeds).

FAQ

How do I pick a city? Use the Craigslist subdomain (austin, sfbay, newyork) or a metro name (Austin, New York). Each is scraped for every selected category.

Does it need the Craigslist API or a key? No. It reads Craigslist's public search and posting endpoints directly — no key, no login, no browser.

Will I always get a phone number? For services and gigs, usually yes (advertisers want to be called). For housing and jobs, posters often use Craigslist's anonymized reply, so a phone appears only when they typed it into the body — the actor still returns the full structured listing and flags hasContactInfo.

How many results per search? Craigslist returns up to ~360 per query. The actor reports the full result total and recommends narrowing with keywords, price or a sub‑category for more.

How do I monitor for new posts? Turn on monitorMode and create a Schedule. Each run returns only posts not seen before. It works alongside Apify Schedules — the schedule starts the run, monitor mode dedupes against earlier runs.

Is scraping Craigslist legal? This actor collects publicly available data only. You're responsible for using the data in compliance with applicable laws (e.g. GDPR/CCPA for personal data) and Craigslist's terms.

Data & lawful use

This Actor reads public listings and the seller information shown on them. Sellers on craigslist include private individuals, so seller names, usernames and any contact details are personal data. If you are in the EU or UK you are the data controller for what you do with them: have a lawful basis, use the data for market research, price monitoring or lawful sourcing, honour deletion requests, and do not send private sellers unsolicited marketing.

Under Apify's Standard Actor Contract, which governs your use of this Actor, you are the controller of any personal data in your input and output and scrapesage acts only as your processor: that data is processed solely to run your job, written only to your own Apify storage, never used for any other purpose and never shared onward. If you need help with a data-subject request that involves this Actor's output, open an issue on the Issues tab.

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by craigslist, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

"craigslist" and any related marks are the property of their respective owners and are used here only in a descriptive, nominative sense - to identify the publicly accessible website from which this Actor collects data. This Actor is not an official craigslist product, is not authorised or certified by craigslist, Inc., and does not distribute craigslist software. It collects only publicly available information; you are responsible for ensuring your use of that data complies with applicable laws, regulations and the terms of the source website.

Need help?

Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab, or visit the Apify help center. Feature requests are welcome — this actor is actively maintained.