Scrapeless + Activepieces

Add live web data to Activepieces flows — Google SERPs, local business results, Amazon products — using the Scrapeless Scraper API.

Works today with the built-in HTTP piece; scrapeless-openapi.yaml is included as a validated schema if you'd rather generate a custom piece.

Use case

Activepieces orchestrates apps and can't fetch a protected page. This supplies the data step for:

• Rank tracking — a scheduled SERP snapshot into Sheets, Airtable, or Postgres.
• Local lead generation — businesses by category and city, into your CRM.
• Price monitoring — an Amazon check on a cron with a Slack alert.
• Enrichment — a webhook triggers a lookup and writes the result back.

Requirements

• Activepieces — cloud or self-hosted
• A Scrapeless API key — create a free account

Setup with the HTTP piece

Add HTTP → Send HTTP request:

Field	Value
Method	POST
URL	https://api.scrapeless.com/api/v1/scraper/request
Headers	x-api-token → your key
Body type	JSON
Body	see below
Failure Mode	retry_all — see the quirks section

{ "actor": "scraper.google.search", "input": { "q": "web scraping api" } }

Then add Loop on Items over {{step_1.body.organic_results}} (or {{step_1.body.local_results.places}}) so each result is handled individually.

Keep the key in a connection or a project variable rather than pasting it into the header field of every flow — flows get exported and shared.

What to send

Goal	Body
Google SERP	{"actor":"scraper.google.search","input":{"q":"web scraping api"}}
Local businesses	{"actor":"scraper.google.search","input":{"q":"plumbers in Austin, TX","tbm":"lcl"}}
Next page of local results	add "start": 20 — 20 per page, num is ignored
Amazon product	{"actor":"scraper.amazon","input":{"action":"product","url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09B8V1LZ3"}}
Amazon search	{"actor":"scraper.amazon","input":{"action":"keywords","keywords":"smart speaker"}}

scraper.google.shopping is retired (15002); tbm: "shop" returns no shopping results.

Response shapes and quirks

• scraper.google.search returns results at the top level — body.organic_results[], or body.local_results.places[] with tbm: lcl.
• scraper.amazon nests the product under body.result.

All observed live:

• Sporadic 400s that succeed on retry. The HTTP piece has its own Failure Mode dropdown — set it to retry_all. Do not pick retry_5xx: Scrapeless's transient failures come back as 400, so a 5xx-only policy skips exactly the case you need. The default is continue_none, which lets one transient 400 kill the run.
• Padded strings — local-pack phone, type, and hours have a leading space. Trim in a Code piece.
• Empty local fields — place_id, gps_coordinates, thumbnail are empty for local results.
• Prices are display strings — "$49.99". Parse before comparing in a Branch condition.

A Code piece is the cleanest place to normalize before storage:

export const code = async (inputs) => {
  const clean = (v) => (typeof v === 'string' ? v.trim() : v);
  const places = inputs.response?.local_results?.places ?? [];
  return places.map((p) => ({
    name: clean(p.title),
    category: clean(p.type),
    rating: p.rating ?? null,
    reviews: p.reviews ?? 0,
    phone: clean(p.phone),
    address_snippet: clean(p.address),
  }));
};

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause and fix
401	Header must be x-api-token, not Authorization.
Reference resolves to nothing	Remember body — it is {{step_1.body.organic_results}}, not {{step_1.organic_results}}.
Only one row stored	Add Loop on Items over the results array.
400 that passes on re-run	Known API behavior — set the HTTP step's Failure Mode to retry_all (not retry_5xx).
Empty local_results	Query lacks local intent. "plumbers in Austin, TX" works; "plumbing" often does not.
Branch on price never fires	Comparing "$49.99" as text. Parse to a number in a Code piece first.

Verification status

A flow built from this README was published and run on a self-hosted Activepieces 0.82.0 CE (2026-08-12), with piece-http 0.11.18. The run reached SUCCEEDED:

Claim	Result
HTTP piece config above (POST + x-api-token + JSON body)	HTTP 200, local_results.places = 20
{{step_1.body...}} is the right reference shape	{{step_1.body}} resolved to the full SERP inside the next step
Local-pack strings arrive padded	Confirmed in the run: phone came through as " (512) 690-4935", type as " Plumber"
The Code piece below, verbatim	Returned 20 normalized rows, phone trimmed to "(512) 690-4935"

• The API calls are verified live — every actor and body here was executed against the real Scrapeless API on 2026-08-11; the quirks come from those runs.
• The schema is validated — scrapeless-openapi.yaml passes openapi-spec-validator as OpenAPI 3.0.3.
• No flow JSON is shipped, on purpose. Flow exports carry a pieceVersion and are tied to the instance that produced them, so a stale export fails to import for a reader on a different version — worse than following six setup fields. The setup above is what was actually executed.

Project structure

scrapeless-activepieces/
├── scrapeless-openapi.yaml   # validated OpenAPI 3.0.3, for the custom-piece route
└── LICENSE

Related

• Product: Scraping API · Deep SERP API
• Integration page: Scrapeless with Activepieces

License

MIT — see LICENSE.