# Company Lookup - Crunchbase & Wikidata Profiles (`antishock/crunchbase-lite-scraper`) Actor

Look up companies by search term and get name, description, industry categories, location, website, employee count and founding year. Tries Crunchbase first and falls back to the open Wikidata company graph, so it returns results without a proxy. For B2B lead lists and CRM enrichment.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/antishock/crunchbase-lite-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Ryan Zinburg](https://apify.com/antishock) (community)
- **Categories:** Lead generation, Business
- **Features:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 13 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $4.00 / 1,000 result items

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

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

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
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.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## 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.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Company Lookup - Crunchbase & Wikidata Company Profiles

Turn a search term into a table of **companies**: official name, what they do, their industry, headquarters, website, employee count and founding year. Search a niche such as "fintech" or "AI startups", or look up a specific company name.

No API key required.

### What you get per company

| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| `name` | Qonto |
| `shortDescription` | French business banking platform for SMEs and freelancers |
| `categories` | \["financial services", "fintech"] |
| `location` | Paris, France |
| `website` | https://qonto.com/ |
| `employeeCount` | 1600 |
| `inceptionYear` | 2016 |
| `slug` | stable identifier |
| `crunchbaseUrl` | only when a verified Crunchbase ID exists |
| `wikidataId`, `wikidataUrl` | the source record, for further enrichment |
| `source` | `crunchbase` or `wikidata` |

### Search filters

- **searchQuery** - the term to look up, e.g. `fintech`, `AI startups`, or a company name
- **category** - keep only companies whose industry matches, e.g. `financial services`
- **location** - keep only companies whose location matches, e.g. `Berlin`
- **maxItems** - how many companies to save

### Example input

```json
{
  "searchQuery": "fintech",
  "location": "Berlin",
  "maxItems": 50
}
```

### Use cases

- **B2B lead list building** - get companies in a niche with their websites as the outreach entry point
- **CRM enrichment** - turn a column of company names into industries, locations and sizes
- **Market mapping** - collect everyone operating in a category and see how they position themselves
- **Competitive research** - find the peer set around a company through its industry tags
- **Investor and scouting work** - filter by founding year and size to isolate a stage
- **Data cleaning** - replace inconsistent company names with their canonical form

### How the two sources work together

The actor tries **Crunchbase** first. Crunchbase blocks datacenter traffic, so that path only succeeds when you supply a residential proxy.

When Crunchbase is unavailable, it falls back to the **Wikidata company graph**, which is open, unmetered and reachable from anywhere. Wikidata is searched two ways, by company name and by full text, and the results are then filtered down to entities that are actually companies rather than concepts or people. Industry, headquarters and country references are resolved to readable labels.

This is why the actor returns useful results out of the box: the fallback is a real data source, not an error path.

### Scope and honesty about limits

This is **company lookup and profile enrichment**. It does not export funding rounds, investor lists, valuations or cap tables. Those sit behind Crunchbase's paid API and licence, and no scraper should promise them.

`crunchbaseUrl` is only set when a verified Crunchbase identifier exists for the company. It is never guessed from a name, so a missing value means "no confirmed Crunchbase profile", not a broken link.

### Notes

- Wikidata coverage is strong for funded, listed and notable companies and thin for very small local businesses. For local business data, a directory or map-based source is the better tool.
- `employeeCount` and `inceptionYear` are present when the source records them, which is common for larger companies and rarer for early-stage ones.
- The `category` and `location` filters are applied to the retrieved records, so a narrow combination over a small `maxItems` can legitimately return nothing.
- A run that finds no company fails with an explicit message rather than reporting an empty success.

# Actor input Schema

## `searchQuery` (type: `string`):

Company/startup search query, e.g. openai or AI startup Berlin.

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

Maximum number of companies to return.

## `category` (type: `string`):

Optional category keyword/slug filter, e.g. artificial-intelligence.

## `location` (type: `string`):

Optional location filter, e.g. Berlin.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "searchQuery": "AI startups",
  "maxItems": 50
}
```

# 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 = {
    "searchQuery": "AI startups"
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("antishock/crunchbase-lite-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 = { "searchQuery": "AI startups" }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("antishock/crunchbase-lite-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

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

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

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "searchQuery": "AI startups"
}' |
apify call antishock/crunchbase-lite-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,antishock/crunchbase-lite-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/IAO898pHfoeWpgRhe/builds/9wTXj1WRKku50iSL1/openapi.json