Scraping 187,000 Romanian Businesses: Building a B2B Lead Gene...

#python #data #webscraping #tutorial

Update (October 2026): instead of scraping, I now serve the official registry itself (4.2M firms from ONRC, ANAF status, financial statements since 2008) as Leadgen, a REST API and MCP server with a free key: https://leadgen.adrianhomelab.com/?src=devto

I needed Romanian B2B leads and couldn't find a good scraper for local business directories. So I built one.

The Problem

Most lead generation tools focus on the US and Western European markets. If you're doing business in Romania or Eastern Europe, you're stuck with:

Manual directory browsing
US-centric tools that don't understand local directory structures
Outdated databases with stale contacts

The Solution

I built a Romanian Business Directory Scraper that works with listafirme.ro — one of Romania's largest business registries with 187,000+ companies in Bucharest alone.

What It Extracts

For each company, the scraper pulls:

Company name (Denumire)
CUI — Romanian tax identification number
Trade register number (Nr. Reg. Com.)
Full address — Street, city, county (județ)
CAEN code — Business activity classification
Founding date
VAT status — Plătitor/neplătitor de TVA

Sample Output

{
  "companyName": "BORG DESIGN SRL",
  "cui": "RO14837428",
  "tradeRegister": "J40/8118/2002",
  "address": "Str. Ing. Stefan Hepites 16A",
  "city": "Sectorul 5",
  "county": "Bucuresti",
  "category": "Proiectarea structurii și conținutului website...",
  "foundedDate": "2002-08-26"
}

Coverage

41 counties (județe) supported
187,009 companies in București alone
Pagination handled automatically (3,741 pages for București)
Detail page extraction for full company data

Use Cases

B2B Lead Generation — Build targeted contact lists by industry and region
Market Research — Analyse business density by county or CAEN category
Competitor Analysis — Map competitors in your sector by region
Local SEO — Build citation lists for Romanian businesses

Try It

The tool is on the Apify Store: Romanian Business Directory Scraper

Pricing: $0.01 per business listing extracted. Free tier covers ~500 listings.

Anyone else building tools for the Romanian/Eastern European market? Would love to hear what directories you're working with.

🔗 Links

Apify Store: https://apify.com/darknezz/ro-business-scraper
GitHub: https://github.com/darksider4all/multi-tool-content-api

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