Use this Facebook groups search scraper as a Facebook group finder scraper for publicly discoverable communities in a topic or local market. Enter keywords and optional locations, then export canonical group URLs, names, member counts when shown, privacy labels, descriptions, activity text, and search rank. Run it as a Facebook groups search API from your own workflows.
Use the dataset for community research, partnership prospecting, audience discovery, market mapping, or building a reviewed outreach list. The Actor searches only publicly discoverable results; it does not log in, scrape group posts, or expose member data.
Example input
{
"keywords": ["tesla owners", "photography"],
"locations": ["United States"],
"maxGroupsPerQuery": 10
}
Example output
{
"query": "tesla owners United States",
"rank": 1,
"matchedLocation": "United States",
"sourceType": "keyword_search",
"groupId": "teslamotorsclub",
"groupName": "Tesla Motors Club",
"groupUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/groups/teslamotorsclub/",
"descriptionSnippet": "A community for Tesla owners and enthusiasts...",
"discoverabilityText": "Anyone can find this group",
"profilePictureUrl": "https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/group.jpg",
"privacyLabel": "Public",
"memberCountText": "128K members",
"memberCount": 128000,
"postFrequencyText": "10 posts a day",
"postsPerDay": 10,
"postsPerMonth": 300,
"groupType": "Group",
"viewerJoinState": "CAN_JOIN",
"collectedAt": "2026-08-10T12:00:00.000Z"
}
Fields unavailable in a public result are returned as null, never guessed.
Input settings
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
keywords |
string[] | One to 20 topics, niches, brands, or community phrases. |
locations |
string[] | Optional cities, regions, or countries. Every location is combined with every keyword. |
maxGroupsPerQuery |
integer | Maximum groups saved per keyword/location query, from 1 to 100. |
Input recipes
Find local professional communities
{"keywords":["startup founders","digital marketing"],"locations":["London"],"maxGroupsPerQuery":20}
Map hobby communities across locations
{"keywords":["landscape photography"],"locations":["New York","California"],"maxGroupsPerQuery":30}
Who is it for?
Use this Actor for community research, partnership prospecting, local-market mapping, audience discovery, and reviewed outreach preparation when you need public group discovery rather than group posts or member profiles.
Tips and limits
- Use specific phrases for more relevant groups.
- Add locations only when geography matters; locations create a query cross-product.
- Results depend on what is publicly indexed at collection time. Profile, member, privacy, discoverability, and activity fields are
nullwhen a public source does not expose them. - Duplicate canonical group URLs are saved once per run, preserving their first query and rank.
- A query may legitimately return no public groups. Login walls, challenges, and private-only content are rejected rather than represented as scraped data.
- Respect Facebook's terms, privacy rights, and applicable law. Review results before outreach or automated decisions.
API usage
cURL
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetch_cat~facebook-groups-search-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"keywords":["startup founders"],"locations":["Berlin"],"maxGroupsPerQuery":10}'
JavaScript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('fetch_cat/facebook-groups-search-scraper').call({ keywords: ['startup founders'], maxGroupsPerQuery: 10 });
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
Python
from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient('YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('fetch_cat/facebook-groups-search-scraper').call(run_input={'keywords': ['startup founders'], 'maxGroupsPerQuery': 10})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
Results are available from the run's default dataset and can be exported as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS.
MCP and integrations
Connect AI tools through Apify MCP, or add it to Claude CLI:
claude mcp add apify "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch_cat/facebook-groups-search-scraper"
{"mcpServers":{"apify":{"url":"https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch_cat/facebook-groups-search-scraper"}}}
Example prompts: “Find public photography groups in London” or “Export up to 50 public startup founder groups.” You can also send datasets to Google Sheets, webhooks, Make, Zapier, or n8n using Apify integrations.
Support
Open an issue from the Actor's Apify Console page with the input, run ID, expected behavior, and a public example. Do not include credentials, cookies, or personal data.
