# Facebook Groups Scraper (`parseforge/facebook-groups-scraper`) Actor

Extract public Facebook group details including member count, privacy level, description, admin profiles, rules, cover photo, creation date, recent activity and pinned posts. Pass any group URL or slug and pull complete metadata into clean JSON, CSV or Excel for research and lead generation.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/parseforge/facebook-groups-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [ParseForge](https://apify.com/parseforge) (community)
- **Categories:** Social media, Lead generation
- **Stats:** 23 total users, 6 monthly users, 83.4% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per event

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

![ParseForge Banner](https://github.com/ParseForge/apify-assets/blob/ad35ccc13ddd068b9d6cba33f323962e39aed5b2/banner.jpg?raw=true)

## 👥 Facebook Groups Scraper

> 🚀 **Pull member count, privacy, description and admin info from any public Facebook group.** Export complete group metadata into clean JSON, CSV or Excel for research, lead generation and community intelligence.

The **Facebook Groups Scraper** visits any public Facebook group and returns the full public profile of that group. Each record carries the group name, slug, canonical URL, member count, privacy level (public or private), group description, cover photo, admin and moderator list, posted rules, join-approval flag, creation date, recent post preview and a set of intent signals such as recent activity and pinned content.

The Actor accepts group URLs or bare slugs, resolves them to canonical Facebook URLs, and paginates through the group description and metadata blocks. You get a dataset ready for pipeline tooling: lead intelligence, audience sizing, market research, content trend mapping and community outreach.

| 🎯 Target Audience | 💡 Primary Use Cases |
|---|---|
| Marketing researchers, community managers, lead generation teams, product marketers, journalists, academic researchers, agencies | Audience sizing, community mapping, competitor and niche discovery, influencer outreach, market research, content trend detection |

### 📋 What the Facebook Groups Scraper does

Five common workflows in a single run:

- 👥 **Group metadata export.** Name, URL, slug, description, cover photo and category in one record per group.
- 📏 **Member counts.** Formatted counts like "1.2M" parsed into integers so you can rank and filter.
- 🔒 **Privacy and access signals.** Public versus private flag, join-approval flag and membership-question flag.
- 👑 **Admin and moderator lists.** Profile names and links for the people running the group.
- 📜 **Group rules and recent activity.** Posted rules array plus the most recent public post preview.

> 💡 **Why it matters:** Facebook's own UI makes you click through group headers one by one and never lets you export. Lead-generation tools that claim to scrape groups usually return 5 or 10 fields and break every few weeks. This Actor gives you 25 fields, covers rules and admins, and keeps the format stable across runs.

### 📊 Data fields

Each record includes: `adminList`, `category`, `city`, `country`, `coverPhotoUrl`, `createdAt`, `description`, `groupId`, `memberCount`, `name`, `postCount`, `privacy`, `profilePicUrl`, `recentPostPreview`, `results`, `rules`, `scrapedAt`, `url`. These field names come straight from the actor's dataset schema, so what you see here is what lands in your dataset.

### 🚀 How to use

1. Gather group URLs or slugs from Facebook search or your own CRM.
2. Drop them into `startUrls`.
3. Set `maxItems` and keep `enrichGroup` true for the full metadata block.
4. Run the Actor and download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel.

### 🔗 Recommended Actors

| Actor | What it does |
|---|---|
| [Facebook Comments Scraper](https://apify.com/parseforge/facebook-comments-scraper) | Pulls threaded comments, replies, reactions and mentions from any public Facebook post. |
| [Facebook Marketplace Scraper](https://apify.com/parseforge/facebook-marketplace-scraper) | Exports listings, prices and sellers from Facebook Marketplace by city and query. |
| [Instagram Scraper](https://apify.com/parseforge/instagram-scraper) | Posts, reels and profile data from public Instagram accounts. |
| [TikTok Comments Scraper](https://apify.com/parseforge/tiktok-comments-scraper) | Same depth of comment extraction for TikTok videos. |
| [Twitter Scraper](https://apify.com/parseforge/twitter-scraper) | Pull public tweets, threads and user profiles. |

### 💡 Tips

- Pass slugs when you can. They are shorter and easier to dedupe than full URLs.
- Run weekly rather than daily. Member counts move slowly and residential bandwidth is not free.
- If a group returns empty fields, check that the URL resolves in an incognito window. Private groups won't be accessible here.

### ⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor collects only publicly accessible group metadata. You are responsible for complying with Facebook's Terms of Service, local data-protection laws (GDPR, CCPA) and any applicable research or journalism ethics. Review your use case before archiving or redistributing personal data.

### 🆘 Need Help?

If you hit a bug, have questions about setup, or need a scraper we haven't built yet, open our [contact form](https://tally.so/r/BzdKgA) or write to parseforge@protonmail.com. We also take on paid custom data projects.

For faster answers, join our [Discord](https://parseforge.co/discord). It's the best place to get support and suggest new actors.

# Actor input Schema

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of group posts to collect per run.

## `startUrls` (type: `array`):

List of Facebook group URLs (e.g. https://www.facebook.com/groups/12345) or group slugs.

## `enrichGroup` (type: `boolean`):

Fetch detailed metadata (rules, admins, recent post preview). Disable for faster basic scraping.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/groups/buynothingproject",
    "https://www.facebook.com/groups/humansofnewyork"
  ],
  "enrichGroup": true
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Complete dataset

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "maxItems": 10,
    "startUrls": [
        "https://www.facebook.com/groups/buynothingproject",
        "https://www.facebook.com/groups/humansofnewyork"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("parseforge/facebook-groups-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "maxItems": 10,
    "startUrls": [
        "https://www.facebook.com/groups/buynothingproject",
        "https://www.facebook.com/groups/humansofnewyork",
    ],
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("parseforge/facebook-groups-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/groups/buynothingproject",
    "https://www.facebook.com/groups/humansofnewyork"
  ]
}' |
apify call parseforge/facebook-groups-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=parseforge/facebook-groups-scraper",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/6fg93FZgktyH9rZHC/builds/WmrhdBS0nh737e992/openapi.json