Lancers Scraper — Japan freelance projects, budgets & design competitions

Get clean, structured listing data from Lancers (ランサーズ) — Japan's largest crowdsourcing and freelance marketplace, with millions of posted projects, design competitions and micro-tasks. Search any keyword, filter by category, work type or budget, and download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel. No login, no browser, no proxy setup.

What you get

Run it with the default input (python, projects) and results look like this:

{
  "url": "https://www.lancers.jp/work/detail/5589147",
  "workId": 5589147,
  "title": "テックコンサルタント／テクニカルインタビュアー 募集",
  "workType": "project",
  "workTypeJa": "プロジェクト",
  "category": "AI・Webコンサルティング",
  "categoryId": 266,
  "budgetMin": 300000,
  "budgetMax": 500000,
  "budgetCurrency": "JPY",
  "budgetText": "¥300,000 〜 ¥500,000",
  "paymentType": "fixed",
  "deadline": "2026-08-27T16:41:19+09:00",
  "deadlinePassed": false,
  "daysUntilDeadline": 6,
  "isRemoteFriendly": false,
  "description": "## 仕事内容\n\nテックコンサルタントとして、エンジニア採用における技術面接・技術評価を担当していただきます。\n\n候補者の技術スキルや開発経験、問題解決能力、設計力、コミュニケーション能力などを確認し…",
  "descriptionLength": 1034,
  "source": "lancers",
  "searchKeyword": "python",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-21T02:23:30.829Z"
}

22 fields per listing, including the full client brief (Markdown, typically 500–2,500 characters — not a teaser), the budget range as real numbers in JPY, the Lancers category, the proposal deadline converted to ISO-8601 with the Japan offset, and a deadlinePassed flag so you can separate live listings from closed ones in one click.

Who uses this

• Freelancers and agencies entering Japan — see what clients actually pay for Python, WordPress, logo, video-editing or translation work before you quote
• Rate benchmarking & market research — thousands of historical listings with budgetMin / budgetMax per category; aggregate by category and paymentType to build a price index for the Japanese outsourcing market
• Job-alert and proposal bots — run every hour with onlyOpen: true, diff on workId, and be the first to propose on new postings
• Lead generation for dev shops and SaaS — every listing is a company or individual with a budget and an unmet need, described in their own words
• Demand research — count how many open projects mention AI, LLM, Shopify, Unity or any other stack right now on Japan's biggest freelance marketplace

How to use

1. Enter a keyword — Japanese terms (Webサイト, ロゴ, 動画編集, 記事作成) match far more listings than English ones, but python, WordPress, Shopify work too
2. Optionally pick a category (system, web, design, writing, translation, multimedia, business, task)
3. Pick a work type: project (default — the classic "post a job, pick a freelancer" listing), competition, task, agent, or all
4. Optionally turn on onlyOpen to get only listings still accepting proposals, and set a minBudget / maxBudget in yen
5. Set maxItems (default 50; Lancers pages 30 at a time)
6. Run, then download from the Dataset tab as JSON / CSV / Excel, or pull it through the Apify API

Example input

{
  "keyword": "WordPress",
  "category": "web",
  "workType": "project",
  "onlyOpen": true,
  "minBudget": 50000,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Output fields

Field	Description
url	Listing page on lancers.jp
workId	Lancers numeric listing ID — use it to de-duplicate between runs
title	Listing title
workType / workTypeJa	project (プロジェクト), competition (コンペ), task (タスク) or agent (エージェント案件)
category / categoryId	Lancers sub-category, e.g. Webシステム開発・プログラミング, ロゴ作成・デザイン
categoryGroup	The category group you filtered by (empty when searching all)
budgetMin / budgetMax	Budget range in yen as numbers (null when the client did not set one side)
budgetCurrency	Always JPY when a budget is present
budgetText	Human-readable budget, e.g. ¥300,000 〜 ¥500,000
paymentType	fixed, hourly, monthly, per_task or prize — see note below
deadline	Proposal deadline, ISO-8601 with +09:00 offset
deadlinePassed	true when the deadline is already in the past
daysUntilDeadline	Days left (negative once closed)
isRemoteFriendly	true when the brief mentions リモート / 在宅 / remote
description	Full client brief as posted (Markdown, line breaks preserved)
descriptionLength	Character count of the brief
source	lancers for marketplace listings, lancers_agent for agent contracts
searchKeyword	The keyword you searched, handy when merging several runs
scrapedAt	UTC timestamp of the scrape

Notes on reliability

• The scraper reads the same JSON feed the Lancers search page renders from, so fields stay consistent instead of breaking every time the design changes
• Requests are paced at roughly one per second with automatic back-off on HTTP 429 / 5xx, so long exports keep running instead of failing halfway
• Listings without a budget come back with null budget fields rather than a misleading 0
• Results are de-duplicated on workId within a run

Limitations

• Client name, proposal count and posting date are not included. Lancers protects its listing pages with a bot challenge, so this Actor deliberately stays on the search feed and does not open individual pages. The feed already carries the full brief, budget, category and deadline; if you need the client's profile or the live proposal count, open the url in a browser
• paymentType is inferred from wording in the title and brief (時給 / 時間単価 → hourly, 月額 / 月単価 → monthly, otherwise fixed). Competitions are always prize, tasks per_task
• minBudget / maxBudget follow Lancers' own rule: a listing matches when its budget range overlaps yours, so a ¥5,000–¥10,000 listing still appears with minBudget: 10000
• workType: agent rows are Lancers Agent monthly contracts that are mixed into keyword search; their url points at a retired domain and may not open, so they are excluded unless you ask for them
• Lancers search matches listings from the last several years by default. Use onlyOpen: true for live listings only, or filter on deadlinePassed

Legal

This Actor collects publicly available listing data for research, benchmarking and lead-generation purposes. Respect Lancers' terms of service and applicable data-protection law when using the output.