Craigslist Dataset API
Classified listings for jobs, housing, services, and goods across hundreds of local markets.
Available Data
Here's what you can extract from Craigslist using AlterLab:
Business Use Cases
How businesses use Craigslist data to make better decisions:
- Local market pricing research
- Rental market analysis
- Used goods market intelligence
- Regional demand patterns
How It Works
Select your target city and category on Craigslist
Provide a Craigslist search URL for your target city and category. Craigslist organizes by city subdomain (sfbay.craigslist.org, newyork.craigslist.org) with category codes in the path (apa for apartments, fuo for furniture, etc.).
AlterLab retrieves listings from the simple HTML pages
Craigslist serves mostly static HTML — one of the most accessible formats for data collection. AlterLab fetches the listing pages without complex rendering requirements, returning complete results quickly and reliably.
Get local market pricing and listing data
Receive listing titles, prices, locations, posting dates, and descriptions across as many cities as you need — structured for local market price comparisons, rental market research, or regional demand analysis.
Key Insight
Craigslist is uniquely valuable for two high-return use cases: rental market analysis and arbitrage research. For rentals, collecting apartment listings across dozens of cities reveals true market rents (not asking rents reported by aggregators) — critical for real estate investment decisions, relocation planning, or building rental market indices. For arbitrage, comparing used goods prices across Craigslist markets surfaces price gaps between regions: items that trade for $150 in one city may sell for $400 in another. Unlike Amazon or eBay, Craigslist does not use aggressive bot detection or JavaScript challenges, so data collection is fast and cost-effective at scale.
Data Freshness
Craigslist listings are typically active for 7-30 days before expiring. For rental market monitoring, daily collection ensures you capture new listings as they appear. For used goods pricing research, weekly collection gives sufficient data for price trend analysis.
Quick Start
POST https://alterlab.io/api/v1/scrape
X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY
{
"url": "https://craigslist.org/...",
"advanced": { "render_js": true }
}Need an API key? — no credit card required. 5,000 requests included.
Pricing at Scale
AlterLab uses pay-as-you-go pricing — no monthly minimums, no contracts. Balance never expires.
| Volume | Static pages | JS-rendered pages |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 requests | $0.20 | $2.00 |
| 10,000 requests | $2.00 | $20.00 |
| 100,000 requests | $20.00 | $200.00 |
| 1,000,000 requests | $200.00 | $2,000.00 |
Static pages: $0.0002/request · JavaScript-rendered pages (like Craigslist): $0.002/request · First 5,000 requests free. Full pricing details →
Frequently Asked Questions
What Craigslist data can I extract?
You can extract publicly posted listing data including titles, descriptions, prices, locations, posting dates, and category information from any Craigslist market.
Can I monitor multiple cities at once?
Yes. AlterLab can collect data from Craigslist listings across any number of cities simultaneously, enabling regional market comparisons and trend analysis.
How do I get Craigslist data without getting blocked?
Craigslist does not use aggressive bot detection like Cloudflare or JavaScript challenge pages — it serves mostly static HTML. However, it does rate-limit rapid sequential requests from the same IP. AlterLab handles this automatically through residential proxy rotation: your requests come from different IPs across different cities, matching the geographic structure of the data you are collecting. You send a URL, AlterLab returns clean structured data — no IP management, no rate limit handling, no parser maintenance.
Related Use Cases
Responsible Use
AlterLab is designed for extracting publicly available data. Always review the terms of service for any website you access, respect robots.txt directives, and ensure your use case complies with applicable laws in your jurisdiction.
Data Extraction Guides
Python Web Scraping API
Official Python SDK with async support and 5,000 free scrapes to start.
Anti-Bot Handling API
Automatic challenge handling for protected platforms — no extra configuration needed.
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Pricing
From $0.0002/request. No subscriptions. Balance never expires.
Your first scrape.
Sixty seconds.
$1 free credit — up to 5,000 scrapes. No credit card.
Just a POST request.
No credit card required · $1 free credit, up to 5,000 scrapes · Balance never expires