Craigslist Classifieds Scraper

Scrape public Craigslist listings by city, category, keyword, filters, or search URL.

Use this Actor to export local listing data for resale research, housing scans, pricing checks, classified alerts, and API workflows. It saves one dataset row per public listing and can optionally open listing detail pages for richer fields.

At a glance

• Best for: Craigslist search exports, local marketplace monitoring, apartment scans, garage-sale tracking, and price research.
• Inputs: Craigslist search URLs or structured city/category/query filters, price range, image filter, sort order, posted-today filter, item limit, detail mode, and proxy settings.
• Outputs: Listing URL and IDs, title, price, structured address, timestamps, description, category attributes, full image URLs, map coordinates, quality signals, reply availability, and contact details explicitly published in the public listing body.
• Access: Public Craigslist pages only. No login, cookies, private seller data, relay-address reveal, or protection bypass.
• Cost: $0.005 per run plus the item event for each saved Craigslist listing.

What can it do?

Craigslist Classifieds Scraper turns public Craigslist searches and listing URLs into structured local-listing rows.

• Export Craigslist search results by city, category, keyword, price range, image filter, sort order, and posted date.
• Open listing pages when needed to collect public descriptions, attributes, images, timestamps, and map fields.
• Extract stable structured search data from Craigslist's JSON-LD and merge it with current result links, reducing dependence on CSS layout details.
• Inspect data quality through parseConfidence, warnings, detailFetched, and detailError fields.
• Collect self-disclosed public contacts from the listing body while leaving Craigslist relay contacts obfuscated.
• Monitor local marketplaces for housing, resale, jobs, garage sales, community posts, and other public categories.
• Build alerts and dashboards by scheduling stable Craigslist searches and deduplicating listing URLs.
• Use it as a Craigslist listings API for CSV, JSON, Excel, RSS, Dataset API, or AI-agent workflows.

Input example

{
  "cityOrSite": "sfbay",
  "category": "sss",
  "query": "desk",
  "maxItems": 10,
  "includeDetails": true,
  "minPrice": 20,
  "maxPrice": 250,
  "hasImage": true,
  "sort": "date",
  "postedWithin": "anytime",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

Output example

{
  "id": "1234567890",
  "opaqueId": "j9QQELK78mxUE2ubupRngt",
  "url": "https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/fuo/d/san-francisco-standing-desk/1234567890.html",
  "title": "Standing desk",
  "price": 120,
  "currency": "USD",
  "category": "sss",
  "cityOrSite": "sfbay",
  "neighborhood": "San Francisco",
  "location": "San Francisco",
  "postedAt": "2026-07-03T09:30:00-0700",
  "updatedAt": null,
  "description": "Adjustable standing desk in good condition.",
  "attributes": {
    "condition": "good"
  },
  "imageUrls": ["https://images.craigslist.org/example.jpg"],
  "latitude": 37.7749,
  "longitude": -122.4194,
  "sellerContactAvailable": true,
  "contactEmails": ["seller@example.com"],
  "contactPhoneNumbers": [],
  "contactObfuscated": false,
  "detailFetched": true,
  "detailError": null,
  "parseConfidence": 1,
  "warnings": [],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-03T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Common workflows

• Local price research: Track prices for furniture, bikes, cars, tools, or rentals in a city.
• Housing scans: Search apartment category apa with price limits and detail pages enabled.
• Daily alerts: Schedule a small posted-today run for categories such as garage sales or free items.
• API export: Feed public listing rows into spreadsheets, dashboards, internal alerts, or AI agents.

Tips

• Use direct search URLs for exact searches: Paste a Craigslist URL into startUrls when you already tuned filters in a browser.
• Use structured inputs for repeatability: cityOrSite, category, and query are easier to schedule and modify.
• Open details only when needed: includeDetails adds richer fields but makes runs slower.
• Keep limits small for alerting: Use maxItems: 10 to 50 for recurring monitoring.

Limits and caveats

• Public pages only: The Actor does not log in and does not bypass private contact protections.
• Reply button is not contact data: sellerContactAvailable only reports whether a public reply control was detected.
• Some categories have sparse fields: Price, map, timestamps, image, and attribute fields depend on the listing and category.
• Craigslist can block or throttle traffic: Use modest limits and proxy settings when needed.
• Deleted listings: A direct URL that returns HTTP 404 or 410 fails clearly; it is never silently emitted as a current listing.
• Run diagnostics: RUN_SUMMARY distinguishes successful, partial, valid-empty, and failed outcomes and records bounded source/detail errors.

API usage

Run through the Apify API with the same JSON keys as the input schema.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetch_cat~craigslist-classifieds-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"cityOrSite":"sfbay","category":"sss","query":"desk","maxItems":10,"includeDetails":true}'

JavaScript / Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('fetch_cat/craigslist-classifieds-scraper').call({
  cityOrSite: 'sfbay',
  category: 'sss',
  query: 'desk',
  maxItems: 10,
  includeDetails: true,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("fetch_cat/craigslist-classifieds-scraper").call(run_input={
    "cityOrSite": "sfbay",
    "category": "sss",
    "query": "desk",
    "maxItems": 10,
    "includeDetails": True,
})
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
print(items)

MCP and AI agents

For AI agents, use the official Apify MCP server. A focused single-Actor server URL is:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/craigslist-classifieds-scraper

Claude CLI:

claude mcp add apify-craigslist --transport http "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/craigslist-classifieds-scraper"

JSON configuration for MCP clients:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify-craigslist": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/craigslist-classifieds-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• "Run Craigslist Classifieds Scraper for SF Bay desk listings under 250 dollars, then return title, price, neighborhood, and URL."
• "Find today's Seattle garage sales with images and save the results to a dataset."

Support

Open an issue on the Actor page if a public Craigslist page stops working or an expected field is missing. Include the run ID or run URL, input JSON, expected output, actual output returned by the dataset, and a reproducible public URL when safe to share. Do not include private contact data or API tokens.

Privacy and data handling

This Actor runs with Apify limited permissions and only processes data needed for the documented run. It uses search/listing inputs and public product, marketplace, or listing records to produce the output dataset and sends requests to public Craigslist Classifieds pages/endpoints; results are stored in Apify run storage for your account. FetchCat does not use your inputs or outputs for advertising, does not use them for model training, and does not retain them outside the Apify run except for transient support debugging when you explicitly share run details. You are responsible for using the Actor lawfully, respecting the target site's terms, and avoiding unnecessary personal or sensitive data in inputs.