Craigslist Search Listings

Purpose

Return a list of Craigslist postings matching a query in a given city and category — title, price, location, posting time, lat/lon, posting ID, and canonical listing URL. Read-only; never posts, edits, replies to, or flags any listing.

When to Use

• Daily / hourly monitoring of new listings matching a query (cars, bikes, apartments, jobs, free stuff, etc.).
• Bulk extraction across multiple cities, categories, or price/bedroom ranges.
• Anywhere you'd otherwise scrape Craigslist HTML — the JSON API is faster, cheaper, and structurally more reliable than rendering /search/{cat} and harvesting per-listing anchors.

Workflow

The Craigslist web UI is a thin client over a public JSON API at https://sapi.craigslist.org — no auth, no cookies, no session state, no anti-bot stealth required. Send a Referer header matching the target city subdomain; if your outbound IP is in a different region than the target city, add postal=<zip>&search_distance=<mi> to the query — the API geo-scopes by IP only when no postal is supplied (see the gotcha below). A residential proxy is not required. Lead with the API path; the browser path works as a fallback but pays a ~100× cost premium because the search page is fully JS-rendered (browse snapshot returns 0 a11y refs and harvesting per-listing URLs costs ~3 turns each).

1. Pick city + category (and optionally subarea). City is the Craigslist subdomain (sfbay, newyork, losangeles, seattle, chicago, boston, …). Category is the search-path abbreviation (sss for-sale-all, cta cars+trucks, apa apartments, ggg for-sale-by-owner, jjj jobs, zip free stuff, etc.). To scope to a specific subarea (city-within-region), prefix the category in searchPath — e.g. searchPath=sfc/apa for SF-proper apartments, searchPath=eby/cta for East Bay cars. Subarea codes are listed in each response's data.decode.locations[i][2]. Subarea-scoping is significantly more efficient than fetching region-wide and filtering client-side (e.g. apa returns ~9,800 bay-wide vs. ~253 for sfc/apa).

2. First page:

   GET https://sapi.craigslist.org/web/v8/postings/search/full
       ?searchPath={cat}
       &query={q}
       &sort={date|rel|priceasc|pricedsc}
       &batch=1-0-360-1-0
       &lang=en&cc=us
   Referer: https://{city}.craigslist.org/
   

   Returns JSON with data.totalResultCount, data.items[], and decode tables under data.decode. Confirm the response is scoped to the right region via data.areas (e.g. {"3": {"name": "newyork"}}) — if it shows the wrong city, add postal=<zip>&search_distance=<mi> (any ZIP in the target metro) to override the IP-based geo-scope.

   Common filter params (append as query args; check data.humanReadableParams to confirm acceptance): min_price, max_price, min_bedrooms, max_bedrooms, min_bathrooms, bundleDuplicates=1, hasPic=1, postal=<zip>, search_distance=<mi>, availabilityMode=available, auto_make_model=<text>, min_auto_year/max_auto_year, min_auto_miles/max_auto_miles. Unrecognized params are silently dropped.

3. Decode each item. data.items[] is an array of positional arrays. Critical: many fields are offsets / lookup keys, not absolute values — always read against data.decode.*:

   • item[0] — postingIdOffset. Absolute id = data.decode.minPostingId + item[0].
   • item[1] — postedDateOffset (seconds). Absolute epoch = data.decode.minPostedDate + item[1].
   • item[2] — categoryId (integer). Maps to a 3-letter sub-category abbreviation (cat3) used in canonical URLs. The mapping is not in the response — it's a fixed Craigslist enum. Observed values: 68 → bik (bicycles), 93 → spo (sporting goods), 122 → pts (parts), 197 → bop (bicycle parts/accessories), 5 → fua (furniture by-owner), 101 → foa (furniture all). Other categories will need to be back-derived or resolved via the redirect-URL fallback in step 4.
   • item[3] — price as integer (0 or missing for free items).
   • item[4] — "locIdx:hoodDescIdx:hoodIdx~lat~lon". Look up data.decode.locations[locIdx] → [1, city, subareaAbbr]; data.decode.locationDescriptions[hoodDescIdx] → display location string; parse lat~lon for coordinates.
   • Title — last array element that is a plain string (i.e. not a tagged [code, ...] block). For cta (cars+trucks) this is item[-1]. For apa (apartments) and other housing categories, a trailing [5, beds, sqft] housing-meta block pushes the title earlier — iterate from the end and take the first plain string.
   • Tagged blocks [code, value] mid-array: code === 5 is [beds, sqft] (housing categories); code === 6 is the URL slug; code === 10 is the formatted price string ("$1,350"); code === 4 is image-id refs; code === 13 is the geo/cluster cell.

4. Construct canonical post URL:

   https://{city}.craigslist.org/{subareaAbbr}/{cat3}/d/{slug}/{postingId}.html
   

   • postingId from step 3 (offset + minPostingId)
   • subareaAbbr from data.decode.locations[locIdx][2] (e.g. nby, sby, sfc, eby, pen)
   • cat3 from the categoryId enum (step 3)
   • slug from the [6, ...] tagged block

   Wrong cat3 will 404. If you don't know the mapping for a categoryId, fall back to https://{city}.craigslist.org/search/{cat}?postingId={postingId} which redirects to the canonical URL.

5. Paginate (only if results > 360):

   GET https://sapi.craigslist.org/web/v8/postings/search/batch
       ?batch=1-{OFFSET}-1080-1-0-{startTs}-{endTs}
       &cacheId={cacheId from step 2}
   Referer: https://{city}.craigslist.org/
   

   Increment OFFSET in steps of 1080. startTs/endTs are the data.cacheTs from step 2's response and the current epoch.

Browser fallback

When the API is unreachable or geo-locked away from the target city (rare — postal=<zip> almost always resolves it), open https://{city}.craigslist.org/search/{cat}?query={q}&sort=date directly (bypassing the bare-domain geo-redirect), then capture browse get html body and split per-listing chunks by the regex <div data-pid="(\d+)" class="cl-search-result. Within each chunk, extract:

• URL: <a class="main" href="(...\.html)" (gallery view) or class="...posting-title" href="(...)" (text view)
• Title: class="label">([^<]+)</span> inside the posting-title anchor
• Posted: class="result-posted-date">([^<]+)</span> (relative time, e.g. "6h ago" or "4/30")
• Neighborhood: class="result-location">([^<]+)</span>
• Price: class="priceinfo">([^<]+)</span>
• Housing meta (br/sqft, when present): class="housing">([^<]+)</span>

Skip browse snapshot/click on /search/ — snapshot returns 0 refs and click-through costs ~3 turns per listing. Stable across cta and apa in prior validation.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• Geo-redirect on bare domain: https://www.craigslist.org/ redirects to a city based on the request IP. Always open {city}.craigslist.org directly. Confirmed 2026-05-19: bare-domain still redirects; deep-link to subdomain is the only reliable bypass.
• API geolocates by request IP — postal=<zip>&search_distance=<mi> overrides it: No auth, no cookies, no anti-bot — but if no postal is supplied, the API scopes results to the city corresponding to the request's source IP, not the Referer header (e.g. a NY query from an SF IP silently returns {"1": {"name": "sfbay"}} results). Adding postal=<zip> for any ZIP in the target metro plus search_distance=<mi> forces the result set to that region. Re-verified 2026-05-19 with direct browse cloud fetch calls returning correct NYC apartments (postal=10001&search_distance=10, 860 results, data.areas shows newyork/newjersey/longisland/hudsonvalley cluster) and SF Bay bicycles (postal=94103&search_distance=25, 5,635 results, data.areas: {"1": "sfbay"}). A residential proxy is not required and is actively counterproductive — browse cloud fetch --proxies without postal is also geo-locked to the proxy's exit-IP region, and adding postal to a direct fetch is ~8× faster than the proxy path. Always verify scope via data.areas in the response.
• Snapshot returns 0 refs on /search/: The search page is fully JS-rendered (React). Don't use browse snapshot/click to enumerate listings — fall back to browse get html body + regex per the Browser fallback section.
• Compact response format: data.items[] uses positional arrays + data.decode.* lookup tables to keep the response small (~130 KB for 360 items). Don't expect named fields per item — decode by position.
• Pagination batch sizes: First page is ~360 (batch=1-0-360-1-0); subsequent batches are 1080 each (batch=1-OFFSET-1080-1-0). Mixing these sizes will cause the response to silently truncate.
• Free items have no price: item[3] may be 0 or absent. Map both to price: null (or "free") in your output; don't render $0.
• Posting time precision: The rendered HTML shows relative ("< 1 hr ago", "6h ago", "4/30"); absolute epoch is only available via the API as data.decode.minPostedDate + item[1].
• item[0] is NOT the postingId — it's an offset from data.decode.minPostingId. Naïvely treating item[0] as the postingId produces 404s on every URL you construct.
• data.decode.locations indexing is per-response, not stable. The same query at two different times can produce locations[1] → ["sfbay","sfc"] vs. locations[1] → ["sfbay","eby"]. The decode block is rebuilt per cache TTL — always look up locations[locIdx] from the response in hand, never cache or hardcode the table across requests.
• Neighborhood labels are unreliable: data.decode.locationDescriptions varies per response and per category. The same neighborhood may appear under different label-table indices across responses, may be missing in some categories (e.g. "Russian Hill" shows up in apa but is absent from cta decode tables), and is sometimes replaced by a generic city-level label by the poster. For neighborhood-scoped searches, use lat/lon bounding-box matching on item[4]'s coordinates as a fallback or supplement to label-string matching. Example bbox for North Beach + Russian Hill: lat 37.794–37.810, lon -122.425 to -122.404.
• Categories are an undocumented enum — the response decode tables don't include the categoryId → cat3 mapping; observed values across iters: 5→fua, 68→bik, 93→spo, 101→foa, 122→pts, 197→bop (and likely many more for non-bicycle queries). The redirect URL https://{city}.craigslist.org/search/{cat}?postingId={id} is the safest fallback when an unknown categoryId is encountered.
• Rate-limit self-imposed: No formal block but Craigslist throttles aggressive clients with terse 403s. Keep ≤ 1 req/s sustained; pagination loops should sleep ~1s between batches.
• Don't waste time on stealth fingerprinting — the API has no anti-bot today (verified 2026-05-19 via direct unproxied browse cloud fetch returning 200 + 134 KB JSON on the first try with no Referer). The expensive Browserbase --verified --proxies flags do not improve success rate and actively slow the path.

Expected Output

{
  "city": "sfbay",
  "category": "sss",
  "query": "bicycle",
  "sort": "date",
  "total_results": 5635,
  "listings": [
    {
      "posting_id": 7927446618,
      "title": "Kryptonite Evolution 1090 3 Ft Long 10mm Steel Bike Chain BRAND NEW",
      "price": "$100",
      "location": "san leandro",
      "subarea": "eby",
      "category_id": 197,
      "cat3": "bop",
      "lat": 37.6875,
      "lon": -122.1445,
      "posted_at_epoch_seconds": 1779140987,
      "url": "https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/bop/d/san-leandro-kryptonite-evolution-ft/7927446618.html"
    }
  ]
}

Free items omit price:

{
  "posting_id": 7926112233,
  "title": "Free moving boxes — Mission",
  "price": null,
  "location": "mission district",
  "subarea": "sfc",
  "cat3": "zip",
  "url": "https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/zip/d/.../7926112233.html"
}

When the postal-override resolves to a multi-area cluster (NY metro returns 4 sub-areas), data.areas enumerates them and individual listings carry the correct sub-area in locations[locIdx][1]:

{
  "city": "newyork",
  "category": "apa",
  "query": "studio",
  "total_results": 860,
  "areas": ["newyork", "newjersey", "longisland", "hudsonvalley", "elmira"],
  "listings": [
    {
      "posting_id": 7935281805,
      "title": "Newly renovated Charming Spacious Studio Near Prospect Park",
      "price": "$2,599",
      "location": "brooklyn",
      "subarea": "brk",
      "cat3": "apa",
      "lat": 40.6724,
      "lon": -73.9573,
      "url": "https://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/apa/d/brooklyn-newly-renovated-charming/7935281805.html"
    }
  ]
}