Facebook Group Insights Scraper

Facebook Group Insights Scraper is a Facebook group scraper that extracts current public Facebook group details from exact group URLs—without supplying a Facebook account, cookie, access token, or third-party data API key.

The Actor returns the numeric group ID, name, full About description, location when present, privacy and discoverability, membership-question flag, cover image, audience size, creation date, admin information, rules, and scrape timestamp. Use it to monitor communities, compare audience sizes, enrich a group directory, or build research datasets.

Input

Add one to five URLs in groupUrls:

{
  "groupUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.facebook.com/groups/cheapmealideas/" },
    { "url": "https://www.facebook.com/groups/2200032550/" }
  ]
}

Slug URLs, numeric group-ID URLs, mobile URLs, and /about/ URLs are normalized automatically. maxRetries controls how many fresh proxy sessions are attempted if Facebook soft-blocks an exit IP.

Input options

Validation happens before any group is requested. Invalid inputs fail before the run-start charge. For a valid batch, unavailable or blocked URLs are recorded in the run summary while the other valid URLs continue.

Output

Each successful dataset item follows this stable core contract:

{
  "status": "success",
  "group_id": "126966114029232",
  "group_name": "Cheap Meal Ideas",
  "group_url": "https://www.facebook.com/groups/cheapmealideas/",
  "description": "This group is open for anyone to join or share with others...",
  "group_location": null,
  "privacy": "Public group",
  "has_questions": false,
  "cover_photo_url": "https://scontent...fbcdn.net/...jpg",
  "cover_photo_width": 720,
  "cover_photo_height": 405,
  "members_count": 6000000,
  "members_count_text": "6.0M members",
  "privacy_description": "Anyone can see who's in the group and what they post.",
  "discoverability": "Visible",
  "discoverability_description": "Anyone can find this group.",
  "created_at": "2010-11-29T01:18:52.000Z",
  "admin_count": 5,
  "rules": [],
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-29T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Unavailable, private, or repeatedly blocked URLs do not create a billable group row and do not stop the remaining valid URLs. Check the run summary for their count.

What this Actor does

Use one exact public group URL per target. The Actor returns one group-level record when Facebook makes that group's public details available. It does not require your Facebook credentials and does not use a paid third-party data API.

Who is it for?

• Community and social-media teams tracking the size of public communities.
• Market researchers comparing audience, location, privacy, and group age.
• Developers who need a numeric group ID from a human-readable URL.
• Data teams enriching existing URL lists with consistent metadata.
• Agencies building repeatable public-community monitoring reports.

This is a details Actor, not a feed crawler. It is a good fit when one clean row per group is more useful than thousands of post or comment records.

Use cases

• Track group member growth by scheduling repeat runs and comparing members_count.
• Compare community size, privacy, location, discoverability, and age for market research.
• Resolve a human-readable group slug to its numeric Facebook group ID.
• Enrich CRM, Sheets, n8n, Make, or warehouse records with group metadata.
• Build public-group directories and research datasets.

API usage

Run the Actor from Apify Console, API, CLI, JavaScript/Python clients, schedules, webhooks, or MCP-capable agents. Results are stored in the default dataset and can be exported as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS.

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('fetch_cat/facebook-group-insights-scraper').call({
  groupUrls: [{ url: 'https://www.facebook.com/groups/cheapmealideas/' }],
});
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/facebook-group-insights-scraper').call(run_input={
    'groupUrls': [{'url': 'https://www.facebook.com/groups/cheapmealideas/'}],
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

cURL

curl -X POST \
  'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetch_cat~facebook-group-insights-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"groupUrls":[{"url":"https://www.facebook.com/groups/cheapmealideas/"}]}'

Field reference

Limitations and responsible use

• Public groups only. Private group content and member lists are outside this Actor's scope; public-field availability can vary by group.
• The audience count is the public formatted count Facebook exposes; compact values such as 6.0M are converted to an integer estimate and preserved verbatim in members_count_text.
• Facebook can change its public page structure or temporarily block individual proxy exits. The Actor rotates sessions and returns clear errors when retries are exhausted.
• Cover-image URLs are signed CDN URLs and can expire; save the image separately if you need a durable asset.
• Use public data responsibly and follow applicable laws and platform terms.

Troubleshooting

If a public group returns an error, first open the exact URL in a logged-out browser and confirm it still exists. Removed, renamed, restricted, private, or region-limited groups may not expose a public About payload. Raising maxRetries can help when an individual residential exit is temporarily blocked, but it cannot make private data public.

For batch work, keep the unavailable URL in the input: the Actor records it in the run summary and continues processing the remaining groups.

Support

Open an issue from this Actor's Apify Console page with the input, run ID, expected behavior, and a public example URL. Do not include credentials, cookies, or personal data.