SpareRoom.co.uk Scraper

Extract room-rental and flatshare listings from spareroom.co.uk, the UK's largest room-rental site. Gets rent, room type, neighbourhood, availability date, deposit, and bills-included status for every listing — a niche SpareRoom covers that whole-property portals like Rightmove and Zoopla don't.

Input

Field	Type	Description
location	string	UK area, city, or postcode to search (e.g. "London", "Manchester"). Defaults to "London"
maxRent	integer	Optional upper limit on monthly rent (GBP)
maxResults	integer	Maximum number of listings to return (default: 100)
proxyConfiguration	object	Proxy settings — the site has no anti-bot protection, so the default automatic proxy works fine

Output

Field	Type	Example
roomTitle	string	"Room for rent in lovely 2-bed Brockley flat"
rentPerMonth	number	950
rentPeriod	string	"pcm"
rentText	string	"£950 pcm"
currency	string	"GBP"
roomType	string	"double"
propertyType	string	"flat"
neighbourhood	string	"Brockley"
postcode	string	"SE4"
availableFrom	string	"1st Sep 2026"
depositAmount	number | null	1050
billsIncluded	boolean | null	false
advertiserRole	string	"current flatmate"
roomsInProperty	number | null	2
latitude	number | null	51.4597446
longitude	number | null	-0.029919
imageUrl	string	Primary listing photo URL
daysOld	number | null	0
isNew	boolean	false
roomDescription	string	Room/listing description text
url	string	Listing detail page URL
listingId	string	"18341577"
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp

Real output example

{
  "roomTitle": "Room for rent in lovely 2-bed Brockley flat",
  "rentPerMonth": 950,
  "rentPeriod": "pcm",
  "rentText": "£950 pcm",
  "currency": "GBP",
  "roomType": "double",
  "propertyType": "flat",
  "neighbourhood": "Brockley",
  "postcode": "SE4",
  "availableFrom": "1st Sep 2026",
  "depositAmount": 1050,
  "billsIncluded": false,
  "advertiserRole": "current flatmate",
  "roomsInProperty": 2,
  "latitude": 51.4597446,
  "longitude": -0.029919,
  "imageUrl": "https://photos2.spareroom.co.uk/images/flatshare/listings/square/10/07/100797576.jpg",
  "daysOld": 0,
  "isNew": false,
  "roomDescription": "Rooms for rent in Brockley, SE4: About the room myself The Room A fairly decent size (2.65m x 3.65m) large enough for a double bed, a desk, and storage...",
  "url": "https://www.spareroom.co.uk/flatshare/flatshare_detail.pl?flatshare_id=18341577",
  "listingId": "18341577",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-08T09:52:27.062Z"
}

How to scrape SpareRoom.co.uk data

1. Go to this actor's page on the Apify Store.
2. Click Try for free to open it in Apify Console.
3. Enter a UK location (e.g. "London", "Manchester"), optionally set a max rent, and adjust the max results and proxy settings if needed.
4. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
5. Download your data in JSON, CSV, Excel, or connect it to your workflow via API.

You can also schedule regular runs, set up webhooks for real-time notifications, or integrate the results directly into your application using the Apify API.

Notes

• Listing summaries come from structured data-listing-* attributes on each search result card — no separate hidden API needed, and more reliable than parsing rendered card text.
• Detail pages expose availability, deposit, and bills-included status in clean labelled <dl> blocks, plus coordinates in an inline JS config block.
• Pagination increments by 10 results per page — SpareRoom always returns 10 organic + up to 1 featured listing per page regardless of the requested page size.
• Expired or already-let listings are detected and skipped during the detail-page crawl.
• Weekly rents (pw) are normalized to a monthly figure (rentPerMonth, ×4.333) alongside the original rentText/rentPeriod for anyone who wants the raw value.
• billsIncluded is nullable — never coerced to false when the source doesn't state it.

Cost and performance

The cost depends on the number of results requested. As a rough guide:

• Search + detail-page crawl: roughly 2 HTTP requests per result (1 list-page slice + 1 detail page)
• No JavaScript rendering needed — this is a plain Cheerio (HTTP) crawl, so it's fast and cheap compared to browser-based scrapers

The actual cost depends on your Apify subscription plan and this actor's pay-per-result pricing. Check the actor's pricing tab and the Apify pricing page for details.

Note: usage cost only settles once a run reports SUCCEEDED — reading the dataset mid-run will undercount what you'll actually be charged.

Tips and tricks

• Start small: test with maxResults: 10 before running large scrapes.
• Filter by rent: set maxRent to skip listings above your budget and reduce noise.
• Schedule runs: set up recurring runs to keep your data fresh — SpareRoom listings turn over quickly.
• Integrate via API: use the Apify API or client libraries to fetch results programmatically.
• No login required: this actor scrapes publicly available data without needing an account.

Limitations

• Data is scraped from the public website and may change without notice.
• Some fields (deposit, bills-included, current household details) depend on what the poster filled in and may be blank for some listings.
• location uses SpareRoom's free-text area search, which works well for cities and named areas; postcode-district search is not covered.
• Respect the website's terms of service and use responsibly.

Related Scrapers

SpareRoom covers room-rental and flatshare listings — a different niche from whole-property portals. Build a complete view of the UK property market with these sibling scrapers from Studio AMBA:

• Rightmove Scraper — UK properties for sale and to rent, the country's largest property portal.
• Zoopla Scraper — UK properties for sale and to rent, Rightmove's biggest competitor.
• OnTheMarket Scraper — UK properties for sale and to rent from estate agents.

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape SpareRoom.co.uk? Web scraping of publicly available data is generally permitted. This actor only accesses information that is publicly visible to any website visitor. Always review the website's terms of service before scraping.

How often should I run this scraper? Room listings turn over quickly — daily runs are common for anyone tracking availability or rent trends. Set up a schedule in Apify Console to automate this.

Can I export the data to Google Sheets or Excel? Yes. After each run, you can download results in CSV, JSON, or Excel format directly from Apify Console. You can also connect results to Google Sheets using Apify integrations.

What if the scraper stops working? Websites change their structure occasionally. If you notice issues, please open an issue on the actor's page. We actively maintain this scraper and fix issues promptly.