Socrata Open Data API Scraper

What this Actor scrapes

Several hundred US (and some EU) city, county, and state governments publish their open data through the Socrata Open Data API (SODA) — a standard /resource/<dataset-id>.json REST interface with a SQL-like query language (SoQL). Every portal exposes a different dataset: NYC's 311 complaints, Chicago's crime reports, Seattle's permits, LA's budget lines — same protocol, completely different columns.

This Actor is a generic, cross-portal harvester, not a single-vertical scraper. You supply a list of {portal_domain, dataset_id} pairs (plus optional SoQL filters), and we return every matching row from every target in one run — whatever shape that dataset happens to be.

What we handle for you

• 🔁 We retry with exponential backoff on 429 and 5xx responses —
• 📄 We page every target for you — $limit/$offset walked
• 🧩 We fan out across portals in one run — mix a 311 feed and a crime
• 🧱 We isolate failures per target — an unknown or private dataset
• 🧊 We keep the dataset clean — Pydantic-validated rows, ISO-8601
• 💰 You pay only for results that land. No data → no charge beyond the

Use cases

• Civic analytics — pull a city's 311 or crime feed on a schedule and
• Journalism / research — cross-reference multiple portals' datasets
• Proptech / real-estate diligence — pull permit, inspection, or code
• Academic / policy research — bulk-export any Socrata dataset into a
• Compliance monitoring — watch an inspections or recalls dataset for

Input

Paste this into the Apify Console, or send it as the run input over the API. Proxy settings are on by default; you rarely need to touch them.

{
  "targets": [
    {
      "portal_domain": "data.cityofnewyork.us",
      "dataset_id": "erm2-nwe9",
      "soql_where": "agency='NYPD'",
      "label": "NYC 311"
    },
    {
      "portal_domain": "data.cityofchicago.org",
      "dataset_id": "ijzp-q8t2",
      "label": "Chicago crime"
    }
  ],
  "page_size": 1000,
  "max_items_per_target": 20,
  "proxy_configuration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Output

One row per result, schema-validated before it is written. Export JSON, CSV, Excel or XML from the run, or read it over the API.

portal_domaindataset_idtarget_labelrecord_idscraped_atdata

{
  "portal_domain": "data.cityofnewyork.us",
  "dataset_id": "erm2-nwe9",
  "target_label": "NYC 311",
  "record_id": "46882077",
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-31T09:15:03.000Z",
  "data": {
    "unique_key": "46882077",
    "agency": "NYPD",
    "complaint_type": "Noise - Vehicle",
    "status": "Closed"
  }
}

Pricing

You pay only for results that land. Cap any run with maxTotalChargeUsd. See pricing & billing for worked examples.