BusinessesForSale Listings Scraper

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Extract public business-for-sale listings from BusinessesForSale.com search, category, country, franchise, and detail pages.

Use this actor to turn acquisition-search pages into clean datasets with titles, locations, asking prices, revenue hints, cash flow, descriptions, listing URLs, images, tags, and optional detail-page enrichment.

What does BusinessesForSale Listings Scraper do?

BusinessesForSale Listings Scraper collects public listing cards from BusinessesForSale.com.

It is built for lead sourcing and market-comps workflows where you need structured rows rather than manually opening dozens of search result pages.

The actor starts from one or more BusinessesForSale URLs and follows pagination until it reaches your maxItems limit or maxPagesPerStartUrl safety cap.

Who is it for?

• 🧭 Acquisition entrepreneurs building shortlists of SMB opportunities.
• 💼 M&A analysts comparing asking prices and revenue hints across markets.
• 🏢 Business brokers tracking competing listings and franchise inventory.
• 📊 Market researchers monitoring sectors, countries, and price bands.
• 🔔 Deal origination teams that need repeatable, exportable lead lists.

Why use this actor?

Manual listing research is slow and inconsistent.

This actor gives you repeatable extraction with a clear input, a structured dataset, and Apify integrations for exports, webhooks, schedules, and APIs.

You can run it daily or weekly to monitor new public listings without copying data by hand.

Key features

• Extracts public BusinessesForSale listing cards.
• Supports search, category, country, franchise, and filtered URLs.
• Captures asking price, revenue, cash flow, franchise fee, and investment fields when shown.
• Saves listing URL, contact URL, image URL, tags, labels, and source URL.
• Optional detail-page enrichment for longer descriptions and seller metadata.
• Pagination support with a configurable page cap.
• Runs HTTP-first without a browser for lower compute cost.

Example start URLs

Use any public BusinessesForSale search page, for example:

https://www.businessesforsale.com/search/businesses-for-sale
https://www.businessesforsale.com/search/franchise-businesses-for-sale
https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/search/businesses-for-sale
https://www.businessesforsale.com/search/work-from-home-businesses-for-sale

Data fields

How much does it cost to scrape BusinessesForSale listings?

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing.

Current pricing is a $0.005 run-start event plus tiered per-listing pricing: FREE $0.000052054, BRONZE $0.000045265, SILVER $0.000035306, GOLD $0.000027159, PLATINUM $0.000018106, and DIAMOND $0.000012674 per saved listing.

The default input is intentionally modest so your first run is cheap.

For large monitoring jobs, start with a small maxItems value, inspect the data, then increase the limit.

Input settings

Start URLs

Add one or more BusinessesForSale URLs.

The best inputs are search or category pages because they contain pagination.

Maximum listings

maxItems controls the total number of rows saved across all start URLs.

Open listing detail pages

Enable includeDetails when you need longer descriptions or seller metadata.

Keep it disabled for fast, cheap market scans.

Maximum pages per start URL

maxPagesPerStartUrl prevents unexpectedly large runs.

Use it together with maxItems for predictable costs.

Proxy configuration

The actor runs without proxy by default.

If your run is rate limited, enable Apify Proxy in the advanced section.

Example input

{
"startUrls":[
{"url":"https://www.businessesforsale.com/search/businesses-for-sale"}
],
"maxItems":100,
"maxPagesPerStartUrl":4,
"includeDetails":false,
"proxyConfiguration":{"useApifyProxy":false}
}

Example output

{
"listingId":"3968829",
"title":"Work From Home Profitable Clothing E-Commerce Store",
"url":"https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/work-from-home-profitable-clothing-e-commerce-store.aspx",
"sourceUrl":"https://www.businessesforsale.com/search/businesses-for-sale",
"location":"UK",
"listingType":"Business",
"askingPrice":"£5,900",
"revenue":"£20,000",
"cashFlow":"£1,600",
"description":"Profitable Clothing E-Commerce Store...",
"imageUrl":"https://www.businessesforsale.com/uploadsstatic/a3968829mediumthumbnail.jpg",
"tags":["Relocatable","Work From Home"],
"scrapedAt":"2026-06-24T04:54:54.900Z"
}

How to scrape BusinessesForSale listings

1. Open the actor on Apify.
2. Paste one or more BusinessesForSale search URLs.
3. Set maxItems to the number of listings you need.
4. Decide whether to enable detail-page enrichment.
5. Run the actor.
6. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or via API.

Tips for better results

• Use filtered BusinessesForSale URLs for more targeted datasets.
• Keep includeDetails off for broad scans.
• Enable includeDetails for final shortlists.
• Schedule recurring runs for monitoring workflows.
• Use sourceUrl to separate rows from multiple markets or categories.

Common workflows

M&A lead sourcing

Run one or more category pages weekly and export rows to a CRM or spreadsheet.

Broker inventory monitoring

Track competing listings by sector and location.

Market comps

Compare asking prices, revenue hints, and cash-flow hints across segments.

Franchise research

Use franchise search URLs to collect franchise fees, investment ranges, and location data.

Integrations

Apify datasets can be consumed by:

• Google Sheets automations.
• Zapier or Make scenarios.
• CRM imports.
• BI dashboards.
• Data warehouses.
• Slack or email alerts via webhooks.

API usage with Node.js

import{ ApifyClient }from'apify-client';
const client =newApifyClient({token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN});
const run =await client.actor('automation-lab/businessesforsale-listings-scraper').call({
startUrls:[{url:'https://www.businessesforsale.com/search/businesses-for-sale'}],
maxItems:100,
maxPagesPerStartUrl:4,
includeDetails:false
});
const{ items }=await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

API usage with Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
import os
client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("automation-lab/businessesforsale-listings-scraper").call(run_input={
"startUrls":[{"url":"https://www.businessesforsale.com/search/businesses-for-sale"}],
"maxItems":100,
"maxPagesPerStartUrl":4,
"includeDetails":False,
})
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
print(items)

API usage with cURL

curl"https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~businessesforsale-listings-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN"\
-H'Content-Type: application/json'\
-d'{
 "startUrls": [{"url":"https://www.businessesforsale.com/search/businesses-for-sale"}],
 "maxItems": 100,
 "maxPagesPerStartUrl": 4,
 "includeDetails": false
 }'

MCP integration

Use this actor from Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or other MCP clients through Apify MCP.

MCP URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/businessesforsale-listings-scraper

Claude Code setup:

$claude mcp add apify-businessesforsale "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/businessesforsale-listings-scraper"

Claude Desktop JSON config:

{
"mcpServers":{
"apify-businessesforsale":{
"url":"https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/businessesforsale-listings-scraper"
}
}
}

Example prompts:

• “Run the BusinessesForSale listings scraper for UK businesses and summarize the top acquisition targets.”
• “Compare asking prices and cash-flow hints for the latest franchise listings.”
• “Export new work-from-home business listings into a spreadsheet.”

Scheduling

Create an Apify schedule to run the same search URLs daily, weekly, or monthly.

For monitoring workflows, keep the input focused and use downstream deduplication by url or listingId.

Limits and caveats

BusinessesForSale pages may omit some finance fields.

The actor returns only fields that are public on the page.

Some detail pages may have shorter public seller metadata than others.

FAQ

Can I scrape a country or category page?

Yes. Paste any public BusinessesForSale search, country, category, franchise, or filtered URL into startUrls.

Does the actor contact sellers?

No. It only extracts public page data and never submits inquiry forms.

Troubleshooting

Why are some price or revenue fields missing?

The listing page did not publish that field, or it uses a label that is only preserved in the raw financials object.

Why is my run slower with detail pages enabled?

Detail enrichment opens one extra page per listing. Disable includeDetails for broad scans.

What if I get rate limited?

Reduce run size, increase the page cap gradually, or enable Apify Proxy in the advanced input section.

Legality and responsible use

This actor extracts publicly available listing information.

You are responsible for using the data in accordance with applicable laws, platform terms, and privacy rules.

Do not use this actor to submit contact forms, spam sellers, or bypass private access controls.

Related scrapers

Explore other Automation Lab actors for lead sourcing, company research, real estate, and market intelligence:

• https://apify.com/automation-lab/google-maps-lead-finder
• https://apify.com/automation-lab/website-contact-finder
• https://apify.com/automation-lab/zillow-scraper
• https://apify.com/automation-lab/realestate-scraper

Changelog

0.1

Initial version for public BusinessesForSale search/category extraction with optional detail enrichment.