CaFE + ZAPP Art Opportunities & Public Art Commissions Scraper

One run pulls the entire live CallForEntry (CaFE) + ZAPP board — the main US directory of art calls — and turns it into a flat, sortable dataset: public-art commissions with real budgets ($10k–$1M+), entry & jury fees, deadlines, a free-entry flag and a 0–100 opportunity score. HTTP-only. No login, no API key, no proxies, no browser.

Who this is for

• Artists hunting paid work: public-art commissions on this board publish budgets from $10,000 to $1,000,000. Sorting the whole board by budgetUsd takes one run — refreshing it by hand means paging through 600+ calls.
• Artist coaches, newsletters & communities: a weekly "best free-entry calls" or "biggest commissions closing soon" digest is one scheduled run + one filter.
• Public-art consultants & fabrication studios: track every new RFQ/RFP with a budget the moment it appears.

Why this beats refreshing the board manually

The board mixes $25-fee members-only exhibitions with $300,000 free-to-apply public commissions and gives you no way to sort by money. This actor derives what the board doesn't show:

Field	What it tells you
budgetUsd	Published project budget. null = not published (never fake-zeroed).
lowestFeeUsd / isFreeEntry	Cheapest way in; true = $0 to apply.
isPaidCommission	COMMISSION-type call with a budget above $0 — the real money rows.
budgetToFeeRatio	Budget per fee dollar — instant "worth it?" signal.
daysLeft / urgency	Deadline math: critical (<3d), soon (<14d), open, rolling, closed.
competition	Bucketed from the board's own historical average-applications figure, when published.
opportunityScore	0–100: budget (45, log scale to $200k) + fee (25, free best) + time window (15) + openness (15, invitation-only scores 0). Closed calls hard-score 0.

Plus everything the board knows: type (COMMISSION / EXHIBITION / COMPETITION / FESTIVAL_FAIR / GRANT / RESIDENCY), city & state, eligibility, disciplines, organizer name & website, direct apply URL, posted & updated timestamps.

Input (all optional)

{
  "statuses": ["OPEN"],
  "types": ["COMMISSION"],
  "freeEntryOnly": false,
  "paidCommissionsOnly": true,
  "minBudgetUsd": 25000,
  "sortBy": "budget",
  "maxItems": 1000
}

Empty input = every OPEN call on the board, best opportunity first.

How to schedule this actor (do this — it's the whole point)

The board moves daily: new commissions appear, deadlines pass, budgets get claimed. A snapshot is stale in a week.

1. Open the actor page → Schedules → Create new.
2. Cron 0 7 * * 1 (every Monday morning) is plenty for most artists; use 0 7 * * * daily if you chase critical deadlines.
3. Add input like the example above, e.g. paidCommissionsOnly: true.
4. Point the run at a named dataset, or wire the Integrations tab to email/Slack/Sheets so new high-score rows land in your inbox.

A weekly schedule with maxItems: 1000 costs well under a dollar a month.

Honesty notes

• Only data the board itself publishes publicly. Rate-limited polite crawl (~7 requests per run).
• Unknown ≠ zero: missing budgets and fees stay null and score neutral, never inflated.
• Non-USD fees (rare) are left null rather than guessed.
• The board's own index double-counts some records; this actor crawls both sort directions and dedupes by id, so you get real unique calls.

Related actors (same maintainer)

• Reedsy Writing Contests Scraper — prize-money writing contests with free-entry flag.
• Class Action Settlements Scraper — open US settlements, no-proof cash flags.
• Whop Content Rewards Scraper — creator clipping campaigns with payout proof.

Was this Actor useful?

If it saved you a manual crawl, a ⭐ review on the Store page genuinely helps other artists find it. Hit a problem? Open an issue in the Issues tab — parser drift gets fixed fast.