Hotfrog India Scraper

Scrape Hotfrog India — a free local-business directory covering restaurants, doctors, plumbers, salons, contractors, and thousands of other categories across every Indian city and town. Search by city + category/keyword (or search nationwide across all of India), or fetch full details for known business URLs. No login, no cookies, no API key required.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (city + category → list of businesses; leave city blank to search a category nationwide, or leave query blank to browse every category of business in one city) and byUrls (exact business detail lookup)
• Core fields: business name, address, phone number, category, city
• Optional deep fetch: enable fetchFullDetails to also pull each business's website URL, full description, geo coordinates, photos, opening hours, and payment methods (one extra request per listing)
• Filters: free-text keyword match, require-website, require-phone
• Empty fields are omitted — you'll never see null or "N/A" in the output

Output per business

• businessId — Hotfrog's internal listing ID
• businessName
• address, state, country (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails)
• phone
• fax (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails; present on a subset of listings)
• website — only present when fetchFullDetails/byUrls resolved one
• description
• latitude, longitude — geo coordinates (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails)
• images[] — business photo URLs (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails)
• logoUrl (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails)
• openingHours[] — human-readable weekly hours, e.g. "Monday, Tuesday: 09:00-18:00" (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails)
• paymentAccepted[] — accepted payment methods (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails)
• categories[] — Hotfrog's own directory category/categories for this business, e.g. ["Restaurants"] (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails; omitted when Hotfrog hasn't categorized the listing)
• keywords[] — the business's own directory keyword/tag list, e.g. ["Restaurant", "Italian restaurant"] (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails)
• offers[] — {name, url} promotions/specials the business has published, e.g. a seasonal menu flyer (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails; present on a subset of listings)
• faqs[] — {question, answer} FAQ pairs Hotfrog has generated for the listing (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails; present on a subset of listings, mostly hotels/services)
• isVerified — true when Hotfrog shows a "Verified on Hotfrog" badge on the listing; omitted (not false) for unverified/unclaimed listings, since Hotfrog doesn't distinguish "checked and not verified" from "never reviewed" (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails)
• verifiedAt, lastUpdatedAt — UTC timestamps of when the listing was verified and last updated on Hotfrog, present only on verified listings (mode=byUrls or fetchFullDetails)
• city — omitted for nationwide searches (the actual per-listing city is still visible in address)
• searchCategory — the category/keyword that matched this business (search mode)
• sourceUrl — canonical Hotfrog India business page
• recordType: "business", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byUrls
city	string	Mumbai	Indian city (mode=search). Leave blank to search nationwide across all of India (requires query)
query	string	restaurants	Category or keyword (mode=search). Leave blank, with city set, to browse every category of business in that city. At least one of city/query must be set
businessUrls	array	–	Business detail page URLs (mode=byUrls)
fetchFullDetails	boolean	false	Also fetch each listing's detail page for website + full description
keywordFilter	string	–	Keep only businesses whose name/description/address contains this text
requireWebsite	boolean	false	Keep only businesses with a website populated
requirePhone	boolean	false	Keep only businesses with a phone number
requireVerified	boolean	false	Keep only businesses with a "Verified on Hotfrog" badge. Only effective with fetchFullDetails/byUrls
maxItems	integer	30	Hard cap on emitted records
proxyConfiguration	object	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Apify Proxy configuration. Enabled by default since Hotfrog India rate-limits shared datacenter IPs; can be turned off

Example: restaurants in Mumbai

{
  "mode": "search",
  "city": "Mumbai",
  "query": "restaurants",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: full-detail plumbers with a website and phone

{
  "mode": "search",
  "city": "Bangalore",
  "query": "plumbers",
  "fetchFullDetails": true,
  "requireWebsite": true,
  "requirePhone": true,
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: nationwide category search

{
  "mode": "search",
  "city": "",
  "query": "wedding photographers",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: look up specific business URLs

{
  "mode": "byUrls",
  "businessUrls": ["https://www.hotfrog.in/company/12345/example-business/mumbai/restaurants"]
}

Use cases

• Build a lead list of restaurants, salons, or contractors in a given Indian city
• Enrich a CRM with phone numbers and websites for local businesses
• Research market density (how many plumbers/dentists/gyms exist per city)
• Verify a batch of known Hotfrog business URLs and pull their contact details
• Power a local-search or directory-comparison app with structured Hotfrog data
• Identify verified businesses for a partnership or advertising outreach list

FAQ

Does this require login or cookies? No. Hotfrog India is a public directory — every field in the output comes from publicly viewable pages.

Why do some businesses have no website or phone? Not every business listing has that information filled in on Hotfrog. Fields that aren't available are simply omitted rather than shown as empty/null.

Can I search any city in India? Yes — any city or town that Hotfrog India indexes. Larger cities return more results per category.

Can I search all of India at once instead of one city? Yes — leave the city input blank and this actor searches Hotfrog's nationwide scope, returning matching businesses from any city/state across India.

Can I browse every business in a city without picking a category first? Yes — leave query blank and set city to browse every category of business Hotfrog has listed for that city (records omit searchCategory since no single category was searched).

Is proxy required? No. This actor uses the free Apify datacenter-equivalent access pattern and does not require a paid residential proxy.

Limitations

• mode=search results depend on Hotfrog's own category matching; unusual keyword phrasing may return 0 results.
• When requireWebsite/requireVerified/requirePhone/keywordFilter are combined with fetchFullDetails, the actor stops early after 15 consecutive search-result pages with zero matches (instead of walking the full result set) — very restrictive filter combinations may therefore return fewer than the theoretical maximum even if a rare matching listing exists further down the list.
• Ratings/reviews counts are not reliably populated site-wide (most listings have 0 reviews), so this field is not included.
• sourceUrl opens normally in a real browser, but hotfrog.in's Cloudflare-backed edge returns 403 to bare curl/non-browser HTTP clients without a browser User-Agent — this is expected bot-detection behavior and does not indicate a broken link.
• No support for Hotfrog's other country domains (hotfrog.com, hotfrog.co.uk, etc.) — this actor is scoped to the India directory (hotfrog.in).
• city/query are converted to Hotfrog's Latin-only URL slugs. Accented Latin letters are folded to their plain-ASCII base automatically (e.g. café searches as cafe), but non-Latin scripts (Cyrillic, Chinese, Devanagari, etc.) have no ASCII equivalent and are dropped from the slug — use romanized/English terms for reliable results.