ParseForge Scrapers

The Numbers Box Office Scraper

parseforge/the-numbers-box-office-scraper

News & media

Scrapes movie box office charts from The Numbers and returns each movie as a flat row with rank, gross, distributor, theaters, and release date.

Run this scraper See the API call
Total users
2
Monthly active
1
Total runs
18
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Last modified
12 days ago

Overview

ParseForge

The Numbers Box Office Scraper

Scrape daily, weekend, and all-time domestic box office charts from The Numbers, up to 100 movies per run. Each row includes the distributor, gross, theaters, and release date. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

The Numbers publishes granular box office data that entertainment analysts and film journalists rely on, but manually copying chart rows is slow and error-prone. This Actor reads any public box office page on The Numbers and returns a clean dataset of movie performances. You get a fixed schema with no login or API key required.

Who uses it What they scrape The Numbers for
Film industry analysts Tracking which distributors are gaining or losing market share week over week.
Entertainment journalists Pulling the latest weekend box office numbers for a Monday morning report.
Academic researchers Building a historical dataset of domestic grosses to study release patterns.
Movie marketing teams Comparing their film's per-theater average against the rest of the top ten.

What it does

This Actor collects movie box office data from The Numbers chart pages and returns each movie as a flat row with its rank, gross, distributor, and theater count.

  • ๐ŸŽฏ Target any chart page: feed the Actor a daily, weekend, weekly, or all-time domestic box office URL from The Numbers.
  • ๐Ÿ”ข Limit the rows: set a maximum number of movies to scrape, from the top film down to the rank you need.
  • ๐ŸŒ Proxy rotation: runs through Apify's proxy infrastructure to keep requests healthy on long chart pulls.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with The Numbers data

๐Ÿ“Š Build a weekly box office tracker.

A film analyst runs the Actor every Monday on the weekend chart URL and appends the results to a spreadsheet that feeds a distributor trend dashboard.

๐Ÿ“ฐ Automate a Monday morning box office report.

An entertainment reporter triggers the Actor on the weekend domestic page and pastes the top ten table directly into their CMS.

๐Ÿ“ˆ Study seasonal release patterns.

A researcher scrapes the all-time chart once a quarter, filters by release month, and maps grosses to holiday windows.

๐ŸŽฌ Monitor a film's per-theater average.

A marketing team scrapes the daily chart during opening weekend and compares their movie's theater count and gross against the rest of the top ten.

Why choose this scraper

What you get
No manual copy-paste Pull a full chart into a structured table in one run instead of highlighting rows in a browser.
Fixed output schema Every movie comes back with the same columns, so you can stack runs into a time-series dataset.
Works on any chart Daily, weekend, weekly, and all-time domestic pages all share the same parser.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets The Numbers the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

The Numbers Box Office Scraper Build it in-house By hand
Setup Run it now, zero config Days of engineering None, but hours per pull
When The Numbers changes Maintained for you You fix it You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot Built in Your problem Browser only
Output Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export Whatever you build Copy-paste
Cost Pay per result Engineering time Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from any The Numbers box office chart URL and set a maximum item count so only the top N movies land in your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
 "startUrls": [
 {
 "url": "https://www.the-numbers.com"
 }
 ],
 "proxyConfiguration": {
 "useApifyProxy": true
 }
}

A larger pull:

{
 "startUrls": [
 {
 "url": "https://www.the-numbers.com"
 }
 ],
 "proxyConfiguration": {
 "useApifyProxy": true
 },
 "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.0045 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected Approximate cost
100 results $0.45
1,000 results $4.50
10,000 results $45.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

  1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
  2. Open the The Numbers Box Office Scraper.
  3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
  4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to The Numbers through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/the-numbers-box-office-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check that the URL you entered points to a box office chart page on the-numbers.com and not a movie detail page or a non-chart section. The Actor expects a table of ranked movies.

The run is timing out or taking too long.

Lower the Max items value to reduce the number of rows the Actor processes. If you are scraping a very long all-time chart, try breaking it into smaller yearly chart URLs.

Some columns are empty in my output.

The Numbers chart pages sometimes omit columns like theater count for older dates. The Actor returns whatever is present on the page; missing values will appear as empty cells in your dataset.

I'm getting blocked or seeing errors.

Make sure the proxy configuration is enabled and set to use Apify Proxy. This rotates IP addresses and helps avoid rate-limiting from The Numbers.

FAQ

Question Answer
Which The Numbers pages can I scrape? Any public box office chart page on the-numbers.com works. The default start URL points to the daily domestic box office, but you can paste in a weekend, weekly, or all-time chart URL.
How many movies can I scrape in one run? You set the maximum with the Max items field. The default is 100, and you can lower it to grab only the top 10 or raise it to pull a longer chart.
What data fields does the Actor return? Each row includes the movie's rank, title, distributor, weekend or daily gross, total gross, number of theaters, and release date, matching the columns on the chart page you scrape.
Does this Actor handle international box office charts? The parser is built for the domestic box office chart layout on The Numbers. International chart pages may use a different table structure and are not guaranteed to parse correctly.
Can I scrape historical box office data? Yes. The Numbers hosts all-time and yearly charts. Paste the URL of any historical chart page into the Start URLs field and the Actor will extract the rows.
Do I need an API key or login for The Numbers? No. The Actor reads the public chart pages directly. You do not need an account with The Numbers or any API registration.
What output formats are supported? You can export your dataset to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify run detail page.
How do I scrape multiple chart pages in one run? Add multiple URLs to the Start URLs array. The Actor will visit each one in sequence and collect the movies from every chart into a single dataset.
Can I schedule this Actor to run automatically? Yes. Use Apify's scheduler to run the Actor daily or weekly on a fixed chart URL, so you always have the latest box office numbers without manual triggers.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

๐Ÿ†˜ Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

โš ๏ธ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Nash Information Services, LLC. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.

Input

FieldTypeWhat it doesDefault
startUrls array List of URLs of The Numbers box office pages to scrape. Default is the daily domestic box office page. [{"url":"https://www.the-numbers.com"}]
maxItems integer Maximum number of movies to scrape from the box office page. 100
proxyConfiguration object Select proxies to use for scraping. {"useApifyProxy":true}

Pricing

from $4.07 per 1,000 results

Charged forWhat it isPrice each
result Single result in the default dataset. $0.00407 to $0.0045

Tiered: the lower figure is the price on a higher Apify plan. Billing and the free credit live on Apify.

API

One POST returns the dataset directly. Same shape for every scraper in the library, so swapping the slug is the only change.

POST ยท run and get results
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/parseforge~the-numbers-box-office-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "helloWorld": 123
  }'

Examples

Input that runs as-is.

input.json
{
  "helloWorld": 123
}

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Issues

We build and maintain this scraper, so a problem with it comes to us. Report it on the Apify listing and the thread stays attached to the scraper where the next person can find it: open an issue.

Broken and urgent, or you would rather not post in public? Write to parseforge@protonmail.com and it reaches the people who wrote it.

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