Craigslist Scraper

Pull classified listings from Craigslist at scale — titles, prices, descriptions, images, post IDs, GPS coordinates, posted timestamps, and category-specific attributes (year, make, model, odometer, bedrooms, sqft, salary) across cars, housing, jobs, electronics, furniture, services, gigs, community, and events. Built for lead-gen sales teams, used-car dealers, real-estate investors, classifieds aggregators, journalists, and ML researchers who need a clean, structured Craigslist feed without paying $8 per 1,000 rows or wrestling with hundreds of city subdomains by hand.

Why This Scraper?

• Coverage of 50 major Craigslist regions — New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and 41 more in a single dropdown. Need a smaller city? Paste the subdomain URL (raleigh, halifax, anything *.craigslist.org) and the actor figures out the rest.
• 13 category presets — For Sale (all), Cars & Trucks, Electronics, Furniture, Apartments / Houses, Rooms & Shares, Sublets & Temporary, Jobs, Gigs, Services, Community, Resumes, and Events. No memorising Craigslist's three-letter abbreviations.
• Six condition tiers plus four sort orders — filter to New, Like New, Excellent, Good, Fair, or Salvage and choose Newest, Relevance, Lowest Price, or Highest Price ordering. Layer on min/max price, has-image, and posted-today toggles for tightly scoped pulls.
• Per-listing detail enrichment — every row carries the full body text, the complete attributes object (year, make, model, odometer, paint, fuel, transmission, bedrooms, sqft, employment type, compensation), the full image gallery, post ID, latitude/longitude, and posted/updated timestamps.
• Paste search URLs OR detail URLs directly — drop any Craigslist link into startUrls and the actor auto-detects whether it's a search results page (paginates and pulls cards) or an individual posting (fetches the detail page). Mix and match in a single run.
• Bilingual + multi-currency aware — handles English and French regions (Montreal, Quebec) and emits currency: "CAD" on the six Canadian markets (Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton, Montreal) versus "USD" everywhere else. No silent price-comparison bugs.
• Surfaces deleted postings as isDeleted: true — instead of crashing or silently dropping a row, removed listings are tagged so downstream catalogues can deactivate them and stay in sync.
• Direct-contact extraction for lead-gen — every detail-enriched row carries phoneNumbers[] and emails[] parsed from the posting body, plus a contactObfuscated boolean that flips to false whenever a real phone or email is published. Filter contactObfuscated == false for outbound-ready leads, or sort by len(phoneNumbers) + len(emails) to prioritise the most reachable posters.
• Up to 24 image URLs per posting — full-resolution gallery, not thumbnails, sourced from the JSON-LD product blob with embedded JS fallback.

Use Cases

Lead Generation

• Build live used-car-buyer lead lists with prices, mileage, and seller location
• Surface FSBO real-estate sellers in target ZIP codes for outbound campaigns
• Capture small-business equipment posters across services and gigs categories
• Filter postings where contact info is published versus relayed for higher-conversion outreach

Market Research & Pricing

• Track median prices for used cars by make/model/year across 50 metros
• Compare apartment rental asking prices week over week in growth markets
• Monitor inventory turnover by counting daily new postings against deletions
• Benchmark electronics resale prices against retail for arbitrage signals

Competitive Intelligence

• Power classifieds aggregator portals with normalised cross-region data
• Feed dropshipping and resale platforms with daily Craigslist deal candidates
• Monitor competitor dealer postings across cars-by-dealer and furniture-by-dealer categories
• Index local services pricing for service-marketplace startups

Academic & ML Research

• Train language models on millions of unstructured classifieds descriptions
• Study regional housing affordability through scraped rent and sublet listings
• Analyse labour market demand using Craigslist Jobs and Gigs categories
• Build geographic price-distribution datasets keyed on the lat/lng fields

Journalism & Civic Analysis

• Track gig economy labour conditions through Gigs category postings
• Document informal housing markets from Rooms & Shares and Sublets categories
• Surface community events and notices for local-news beat coverage
• Investigate scam patterns by sampling repeated obfuscated-contact postings

Getting Started

Quick start — city + keyword

The simplest run: pick a city, type a search term, set a row cap.

{
    "region": "sfbay",
    "searchTerm": "honda civic",
    "maxResults": 100
}

Filtered cars search

Cars & Trucks in New York, like-new condition, $5k–$20k, photos required, newest first.

{
    "region": "newyork",
    "category": "cta",
    "priceMin": 5000,
    "priceMax": 20000,
    "condition": "like-new",
    "hasImage": true,
    "sort": "date",
    "maxResults": 200
}

Mix search URLs and detail URLs

Paste any combination of search-page URLs and individual posting URLs in one run. The actor auto-detects each.

{
    "startUrls": [
        "https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?max_price=3500&hasPic=1",
        "https://losangeles.craigslist.org/search/cta?query=tacoma&condition=30",
        "https://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/clo/d/example-listing/7903726578.html"
    ],
    "sort": "priceasc",
    "maxResults": 500
}

Input Reference

Where to Search

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	string[]	[]	Paste one or more Craigslist URLs. Accepts search pages, category pages, and individual posting URLs. When provided, these override the City + Category + Keyword fields. Plain URLs only.
region	select	New York City, NY	Craigslist city to search. Covers the most popular US and Canadian regions. If your city isn't listed, paste a Craigslist URL above instead — any subdomain works.
category	select	For sale (all)	What kind of listings to collect. Choose For Sale (all), Cars & Trucks, Electronics, Furniture, Apartments / Houses, Rooms & Shares, Sublets & Temporary, Jobs, Gigs, Services, Community, Resumes, or Events.
searchTerm	string	null	Optional keyword. Matches against the title and body of postings. Leave empty to return every listing in the selected category.

Filters

Optional filters applied at the Craigslist server side, so you only collect rows that already match.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
priceMin	integer	null	Only include postings priced at or above this amount. Ignored on categories without prices (Jobs, Community, Resumes).
priceMax	integer	null	Only include postings priced at or below this amount.
condition	select	Any condition	Restrict to a specific condition (For Sale categories only): New, Like new, Excellent, Good, Fair, or Salvage.
hasImage	boolean	false	When on, only return postings that have at least one photo.
postedToday	boolean	false	When on, only return postings published in the last 24 hours.
sort	select	Newest first	How Craigslist orders the search results: Newest first, Relevance, Lowest price first, or Highest price first.

Output Options

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
includeDetails	boolean	true	When on (default), every search result is followed with a second request to fetch the full description, attributes, complete image gallery, post ID, and posted timestamp. Turn off for faster runs that return only the search-card fields.
maxResults	integer	200	Hard cap on total postings across all sources. Set to 0 for no cap (an internal upper limit of 100,000 still applies). The actor stops requesting new pages once this number is reached but keeps the full final page even if it slightly overshoots.

Output

One flat row per listing. Here's a representative result with full details enabled:

{
    "url": "https://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/clo/d/new-york-1860s-fan/7903726578.html",
    "postId": "7903726578",
    "title": "1860s fan",
    "priceUsd": 9,
    "currency": "USD",
    "region": "newyork",
    "categorySlug": "sss",
    "categoryLabel": "For Sale",
    "subcategorySlug": "clo",
    "subcategoryLabel": null,
    "postedAt": "2025-12-20T17:30:19-0500",
    "updatedAt": null,
    "location": "(Upper East Side)",
    "latitude": 40.7651,
    "longitude": -73.9624,
    "attributes": {
        "condition": "good",
        "size_/_dimensions": "12 inch"
    },
    "description": "Antique hand fan from the 1860s. Carved bone sticks, hand-painted silk leaf with floral motif. Some wear consistent with age. From an estate collection — pickup in Manhattan.",
    "imageUrls": [
        "https://images.craigslist.org/00b0b_example1_600x450.jpg",
        "https://images.craigslist.org/00f0f_example2_600x450.jpg"
    ],
    "hasImages": true,
    "contactObfuscated": false,
    "phoneNumbers": ["(917) 325-5214"],
    "emails": ["seller@example.com"],
    "replyToken": "nyc/clo/7903726578",
    "isDeleted": false,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-05-10T14:30:00Z"
}

(Description and image arrays are truncated above for readability — the live row carries the full posting body and every gallery image.)

Core Fields

Field	Type	Description
url	string	Canonical posting URL
postId	string	Craigslist's numeric post identifier
title	string	Posting headline
priceUsd	number | null	Numeric price (named priceUsd for legacy reasons; populated for every region in the local currency)
currency	string	ISO currency code — USD for US regions, CAD for the six Canadian markets
region	string	City subdomain (e.g. sfbay, newyork, toronto)
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of when this row was captured

Category & Location

Field	Type	Description
categorySlug	string	Craigslist category code (sss, cta, apa, etc.)
categoryLabel	string	Human-readable category name
subcategorySlug	string | null	Detail-level subcategory (bik, cto, mca, etc.) when known
subcategoryLabel	string | null	Human-readable subcategory name
location	string | null	Free-text neighbourhood as Craigslist displays it (e.g. "(Upper East Side)")
latitude	number | null	Posting latitude — note Craigslist jitters by ~0.05 degrees for privacy
longitude	number | null	Posting longitude — same neighbourhood-level precision caveat

Description & Attributes

Populated when includeDetails is on.

Field	Type	Description
description	string	Full posting body, with QR-code and reply-button noise stripped
attributes	object	Flexible per-category attribute map — typical keys include condition, make, model, year, odometer, paint, fuel, transmission, bedrooms, sqft, employment_type, compensation
postedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp when the posting was first published
updatedAt	string | null	ISO 8601 timestamp of last update — null when never updated

Media & Status

Field	Type	Description
imageUrls	string[]	Full-resolution image URLs from the posting gallery
hasImages	boolean	True when at least one image is attached
phoneNumbers	string[]	Phone numbers parsed from the posting body, formatted as (NNN) NNN-NNNN. Empty when the poster only exposes Craigslist's reply relay. Populated when includeDetails is on.
emails	string[]	Email addresses parsed from the posting body. Excludes Craigslist's own @reply.craigslist.org relay addresses. Populated when includeDetails is on.
contactObfuscated	boolean	false when at least one direct phone or email was extracted; true when the poster only publishes Craigslist's relay link
replyToken	string | null	Path component from the reply CTA — <region>/<cat>/<postId> — useful for de-duplicating across crawls
isDeleted	boolean	True when the posting returns "this post has been deleted" or 404s on the detail fetch

Tips for Best Results

• Use the canonical city subdomain. sfbay, not sf; washingtondc, not dc; losangeles, not la. The dropdown handles this for you, but if you paste a URL, double-check the host. Common aliases (sf, la, nyc, dc) are auto-corrected — anything else is sent as-is.
• Disable includeDetails for high-volume monitoring jobs. Detail fetches roughly double run time and pricing because each posting becomes two requests. For daily inventory sweeps where you'll re-fetch detail later, turn it off and you'll get title, price, link, location, and post ID at full speed.
• Treat latitude/longitude as neighbourhood-level. Craigslist intentionally jitters geo coordinates by roughly 0.05 degrees (~5 km) for poster privacy. They're great for clustering and metro-area heatmaps, useless for pinpointing an address.
• Pair condition: like-new with priceMin when hunting deals on cars or electronics — this catches motivated sellers while filtering out flippers who under-grade gear to drive negotiation.
• Mix search URLs and detail URLs in one run. Maintain a watchlist of specific postings (passed as detail URLs) alongside fresh discovery searches (passed as search URLs) — they all land in the same dataset.
• For Canadian markets, expect currency: "CAD". Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton, and Montreal return Canadian-dollar prices automatically. If your downstream pipeline assumes USD, branch on the currency field rather than the region.
• Use isDeleted for catalogue freshness. Re-running the same query will return isDeleted: true rows for postings that disappeared between runs. Sync this flag into your downstream system so your inventory matches reality.
• Filter contactObfuscated == false (or non-empty phoneNumbers/emails) for ready-to-reach leads. Most Craigslist postings hide contact behind the reply relay; the ones that publish a phone or email are the ones who want a direct call. Pair condition: like-new with non-empty phoneNumbers for direct-contact lead lists in resale categories.

Pricing

$1.40 per 1,000 results — flat pay-per-result. No compute charges — you only pay per result returned.

Results	Estimated Cost
100	$0.14
1,000	$1.40
10,000	$14.00
100,000	$140.00

A "result" is any row in the output dataset — one posting equals one result, whether or not detail enrichment is on.

Integrations

Export data in JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS. Connect to 1,500+ apps via:

• Zapier / Make / n8n — Workflow automation
• Google Sheets — Direct spreadsheet export
• Slack / Email — Notifications on new results
• Webhooks — Trigger custom APIs on run completion
• Apify API — Full programmatic access

Legal & Ethical Use

This actor is designed for legitimate market research, lead generation, journalism, and academic analysis of public Craigslist postings. Users are responsible for complying with applicable laws, Craigslist's Terms of Use, and local data-protection regulations. Do not use the extracted data for spam, harassment, mass-unsolicited contact, fraud, or any other unlawful purpose. Be especially mindful of fair-housing and equal-employment regulations when working with housing and jobs data.