SoftwareSuggest Scraper — Global SaaS Directory API

Scrapes SoftwareSuggest — a global SaaS and software directory with multi-country category pages (US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, and more) — into clean JSON on Apify.

Store: https://apify.com/umararshad2/softwaresuggest-scraper

Unofficial community Actor — not affiliated with SoftwareSuggest. Collects only publicly listed software catalog data from category and product slug pages. Use responsibly and respect robots.txt + rate limits.

Why this Actor

SoftwareSuggest indexes CRM, HR, project management, accounting, marketing automation, helpdesk, and hundreds of other software categories with schema.org ItemList JSON-LD on directories and rich SoftwareApplication JSON-LD on product pages (name, description, image, AggregateOffer pricing, aggregateRating). SaaS research, alternatives tracking, and vendor lead-gen pipelines need that data as structured rows.

Dedicated Store competition is thin (one dedicated Actor at ~$5/1k with very low monthly users). This Actor undercuts at $1.20/1k and complements our B2B directory scrapers:

• GoodFirms Scraper
• SelectedFirms Scraper
• TechBehemoths Scraper
• Adzuna Jobs Scraper

What it scrapes

Public HTML only. robots.txt allows category and product slug pages. It disallows /profile/*, /softwareprofile/*, /*.php, and /v1//v2 APIs — this Actor never requests those paths.

1. Category directories — https://www.softwaresuggest.com/{category} and country variants /{category}/{country} (e.g. /crm-software/us). Parses ItemList JSON-LD + HTML card fallbacks. Country pages paginate with ?page=N.
2. Product pages — https://www.softwaresuggest.com/{slug} SoftwareApplication JSON-LD (offers, ratings, OS, vendor).
3. Direct URLs — pass category or product links via startUrls.

Uses Crawlee CheerioCrawler. No login. Defaults to Apify RESIDENTIAL proxy (datacenter IPs often get 403), maxConcurrency 2, and about 30 requests/minute.

Example categories

crm-software, hr-software, project-management-software, accounting-software, marketing-automation-software, helpdesk-software, erp-software, cms-software.

Example countries

us, uk, australia, canada, germany (and other public country path segments SoftwareSuggest exposes).

Pricing (PPE)

$1.20 / 1,000 products via custom event product-scraped ($0.0012 each), plus a small apify-actor-start ($0.00005 per GB of memory, minimum one). No platform-usage pass-through. The synthetic event apify-default-dataset-item is not enabled, so a product is not billed twice.

Memory: 512–2048 MB (default 1024).

Example input

{
  "category": "crm-software",
  "country": "us",
  "maxProducts": 50,
  "maxPages": 3,
  "includeProductDetails": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Or pass explicit URLs:

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.softwaresuggest.com/crm-software/uk",
    "https://www.softwaresuggest.com/hubspot-crm"
  ],
  "maxProducts": 25,
  "includeProductDetails": true
}

Example output

{
  "name": "Hubspot CRM",
  "slug": "hubspot-crm",
  "productUrl": "https://www.softwaresuggest.com/hubspot-crm",
  "category": "crm-software",
  "country": "us",
  "description": "HubSpot Client Management Software helps businesses…",
  "imageUrl": "https://images.softwaresuggest.com/software_logo/…",
  "ratingValue": 4.6,
  "reviewCount": 48,
  "lowPrice": 45,
  "highPrice": 3600,
  "priceCurrency": "USD",
  "pricingPlans": [
    { "name": "Starter", "price": 45, "currency": "USD", "unit": "Per Month" }
  ],
  "operatingSystem": "Web App",
  "applicationCategory": "BusinessApplication",
  "vendorName": "Hubspot CRM",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-01T04:00:00.000Z",
  "source": "softwaresuggest"
}

Input fields

Field	Type	Default	Notes
category	string	crm-software	Used when startUrls empty
country	string	—	Optional path segment (us, uk, …)
startUrls	string[]	—	Category or product URLs
maxProducts	integer	50	Cap 1–5000
maxPages	integer	5	Directory ?page= cap
includeProductDetails	boolean	true	Fetch SoftwareApplication pages
useMockData	boolean	false	Offline fixtures
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy on	Proxy editor

Rate limits & robots

• Never scrape /profile/* or /softwareprofile/* (robots Disallow).
• Stay on public category + product slug HTML only — no /v1//v2 APIs, no *.php.
• Polite defaults: concurrency 2, ≤ 30 requests/minute.
• Prefer Apify Proxy; switch to RESIDENTIAL if challenges appear.

Local development

cd /workspace/softwaresuggest-scraper
npm install
npm run build
APIFY_LOCAL_STORAGE_DIR=./storage npm run start:dev

Default local INPUT.json sets useMockData: true.

Deploy

$apify push

See BUILD.md for PPE monetization steps.

Limitations & ethics

• Public catalog data only. Does not log in, bypass CAPTCHAs, or scrape disallowed profile paths.
• Does not collect personal/sensitive user data as a focus.
• Users must comply with SoftwareSuggest’s Terms of Service and applicable law.
• Unofficial — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by SoftwareSuggest.

SEO keywords

SoftwareSuggest scraper, SoftwareSuggest API, SaaS directory scraper, software comparison scraper, CRM software directory scraper, global SaaS catalog API, SoftwareApplication JSON-LD scraper, software alternatives scraper, Apify SaaS scraper, PPE product-scraped, Cheerio Crawlee Apify Actor, multi-country software directory.