Meetup Events Scraper

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🎯 What this scrapes

Meetup is where AI, data, startup, and tech communities run their events — and every public listing is a B2B-intent signal. This Actor searches Meetup's public events feed by keyword (optionally scoped to a city), reads each event's server-rendered data (no login, no API key), and turns it into clean, structured rows: when and where the event is, whether it's in-person or online, how many people are going, the capacity, the fee, and which group is hosting it — with a direct link to that group's Meetup page.

Pair it with our Lu.ma Event Discovery Scraper for a two-Actor events-intelligence suite covering the same B2B buyer across both platforms.

🔥 What we handle for you

• 🛡️ Browser fingerprint impersonation — curl-cffi mimics real Chrome / Firefox / Safari TLS handshakes so Meetup serves a browser, not Python.
• 🌐 Proxy rotation via Apify Proxy — a fresh session and exit IP whenever you need one.
• 🔁 Retries with exponential backoff on 403 / 408 / 429 / 5xx — up to 5 attempts per page, so a transient block never costs you a row.
• 🧮 Aggregate RSVP counts, no PII — we emit the "going" count only; individual attendee identities are never touched.
• 🧊 Clean, typed dataset rows — Pydantic-validated, ISO-8601 timestamps, stable IDs, JSON / CSV / Excel export straight from the Apify Console.
• 💰 Pay-Per-Event pricing — you only pay for events that land in your dataset. No data, no charge.

💡 Use cases

• Event-led lead gen — surface hosting groups and their Meetup pages for the topics your buyers care about.
• Community & ecosystem mapping — track which AI / data / startup groups are active in a city over time.
• Competitive intelligence — watch a rival's or partner's event cadence, turnout, and pricing.
• Sponsorship prospecting — find well-attended events worth a partnership pitch, ranked by going count.
• Trend research — aggregate events across keywords and cities to spot what's heating up.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the page.
2. Add one or more keywords (e.g. ai, startup) and, optionally, a location (e.g. New York, NY).
3. Pick an event type (any / physical / online) and click Start. Output streams into the run's dataset.
4. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
keywords	array	yes	["ai"]	Search terms — one Meetup search per keyword. Accepts a bare string too.
location	string	no	—	City / region for the Meetup location filter (e.g. New York, NY). Leave empty for a global relevance search.
eventType	string	no	any	Filter emitted rows: any, physical (in-person), or online (virtual).
maxEventsPerKeyword	integer	no	50	Max events per keyword (1–500). One search page yields roughly 27; use several keywords for more breadth.
includeDescription	boolean	no	true	When off, description is emitted as null for a leaner row.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Apify Proxy configuration. The default shared pool is sufficient.

Example input

{
  "keywords": ["ai", "startup"],
  "location": "New York, NY",
  "eventType": "any",
  "maxEventsPerKeyword": 50,
  "includeDescription": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

📤 Output

Every row is one public event.

Field	Type	Notes
search_keyword	string	The input keyword that produced this row.
event_id	string	Meetup internal event ID.
title	string	Event title.
event_url	string	Canonical public event URL.
date_time	string	Event start time (ISO-8601 with timezone offset).
event_type	string	physical or online.
is_online	boolean	True when the event is virtual.
going_count	integer	Number of members going (aggregate RSVP count).
max_tickets	integer | null	Capacity cap, when the host set one.
is_free	boolean	True when the event has no fee.
fee_amount	number | null	Ticket fee amount, when paid.
fee_currency	string | null	ISO currency code of the fee, when paid.
venue_name	string | null	Venue name, when present.
venue_address	string | null	Venue street address, when present.
venue_city	string | null	Venue city, when present.
venue_state	string | null	Venue state / region, when present.
venue_country	string | null	Venue country code, when present.
latitude	number | null	Venue latitude, when the feed exposes it.
longitude	number | null	Venue longitude, when the feed exposes it.
group_name	string | null	Hosting group display name.
group_url	string | null	Hosting group Meetup URL.
description	string | null	Event description; null when includeDescription is off.
scraped_at	string	ISO-8601 timestamp of when this row was recorded.

Example output

{
  "search_keyword": "ai",
  "event_id": "315229748",
  "title": "Build the AI Future: LinuxONE & IBM Hands-On in NYC",
  "event_url": "https://www.meetup.com/ai-modeling-and-machine-learning-in-action-sponsored-by-ibm/events/315229748/",
  "date_time": "2026-07-21T08:30:00-04:00",
  "event_type": "physical",
  "is_online": false,
  "going_count": 50,
  "max_tickets": 50,
  "is_free": true,
  "fee_amount": null,
  "fee_currency": null,
  "venue_name": "IBM 1 Madison Avenue",
  "venue_address": "1 Madison Avenue",
  "venue_city": "NYC",
  "venue_state": "NY",
  "venue_country": "us",
  "latitude": null,
  "longitude": null,
  "group_name": "IBM AI - New York City",
  "group_url": "https://www.meetup.com/AI-Modeling-and-Machine-Learning-in-Action-Sponsored-by-IBM/",
  "description": "Join us in New York City for a full-day, hands-on meetup...",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-10T15:00:00+00:00"
}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.005	One-off warm-up charge per run
result	$0.004	Per event written to the dataset

Example: 1 000 events ≈ $4.00. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

🔒 Privacy & GDPR

This Actor scrapes public-by-design event metadata only. Hosting groups are public organizer pages Meetup surfaces by design. RSVPs are emitted strictly as an aggregate count (going_count) — individual attendee identities, emails, and phone numbers are never collected. That's a deliberate design choice, not a limitation: the "who's going" list carries personal data, so we take only the number, never the people.

🚧 Limitations

• Per-keyword results are page-limited. Meetup's public find feed serves roughly the first ~27 events per search, and it does not expose a reliable cursor for deep pagination on this surface. We deliberately do not ship a fragile pagination hack (reliability beats depth — a Devil Scrapes rule). To widen coverage, run several keywords (and/or several locations) in one run; each keyword is its own search.
• Geo coordinates are sparse. The find feed exposes venue name and address but usually not latitude / longitude, so latitude / longitude are frequently null.
• Public feed only. Private, members-only, or draft events are not accessible.
• Attendee lists are out of scope — see Privacy & GDPR above.

❓ FAQ

Do I need a Meetup login or API key?

No. Everything comes from the public, server-rendered find feed — no auth at all.

How many events do I get per keyword?

Roughly the first page Meetup serves for that search (~27). For broader coverage, pass multiple keywords — each one runs its own search.

Does it collect attendee data?

No. We emit only the aggregate "going" count. Individual RSVP identities are never collected.

Can I filter to only in-person or only online events?

Yes. Set eventType to physical or online; leave it any for both.

Why is latitude / longitude sometimes null?

The public find feed usually exposes the venue name and address but not coordinates. We return null rather than guessing.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report.

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