How to get local business leads by city and category

Who it is for

Disclosure: Atesen Software makes this Actor. It is on the Apify Store as Open Places Lead Finder.

The typical buyer is a local B2B salesperson or a marketing agency that needs a starting list of, say, dentists, plumbers or accountants in one city. You get rows you can load into a CRM or a spreadsheet and then call or research. You do not get e-mail addresses, social profiles, reviews, ratings, opening hours or photos. If you need those, a Google Maps tool is the better choice.

The data source is the Overture Maps Foundation "places" theme. The Actor finds your city boundary in Overture and keeps the places inside it, best confidence first.

1. Enter a city and a category

Open the Actor in Apify Console and choose the JSON input editor. This is the input of a real run (run ID jYo7SwCIKhCl29WFh, 12 November 2026): dentists in Austin, United States, 30 rows.

{
  "city": "Austin",
  "country": "US",
  "categories": ["dentist"],
  "maxItems": 30,
  "minConfidence": 0.8,
  "requirePhoneAndWebsite": true,
  "dropMobileNumbers": true,
  "includeClosed": false
}

• city and country (two-letter code) pick the area. Add region, for example TX, when several cities share a name. Use bbox as [minLon, minLat, maxLon, maxLat] for an exact map box instead.
• categories takes plain names such as dentist, plumber, restaurant, accountant, lawyer, real estate agent or hair salon. With several categories the rows alternate between them.
• minConfidence is Overture's own 0 to 1 score that the place exists. The default is 0.8.
• requirePhoneAndWebsite keeps only businesses with both. Switch it off to count every business, with empty fields where data is missing.
• dropMobileNumbers removes mobile numbers in countries where they can be recognised, for example GB, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL and AU. A mobile number often belongs to a one-person business.
• maxItems runs from 1 to 5,000. You pay per row written, so a small number is a cheap first test.

The real run took about 52 seconds and finished with 30 rows. A normal city search takes seconds to under a minute.

2. Read the rows

This is the first row of that run. The Actor's README shows the same row. It is a public business listing.

{
  "overtureId": "00870586-96a5-439c-a7fd-c6998589bee1",
  "name": "Kunik Orthodontics Austin",
  "category": "orthodontics",
  "street": "11821 Rock Rose Ave",
  "city": "Austin",
  "region": "TX",
  "postalCode": "78758-0063",
  "country": "US",
  "latitude": 30.404297,
  "longitude": -97.720406,
  "phone": "+15123277575",
  "website": "http://www.kunikorthodontics.com/",
  "brand": "Kunik Orthodontics",
  "confidence": 1,
  "operatingStatus": "open",
  "sourceDatasets": ["Overture", "Overture-signals", "meta"],
  "release": "2026-10-21.0"
}

The release field names the Overture release. Each run looks up the newest one, and Overture publishes a new release about once a month. Duplicates, meaning the same name and phone number, are removed. Places that Overture marks as permanently or temporarily closed are left out unless you set includeClosed.

Open the dataset, choose Export and download CSV or Excel. The key-value store holds a SUMMARY record with the run counts and the attribution text.

3. Check the list before you use it

Treat the export as a starting list, not as verified data. A few minutes of checking saves wasted calls.

1. Open the CSV and sort by confidence. Rows at 0.9 and above are the safest. Raise minConfidence and run again if you want a cleaner list.
2. Pick 10 rows at random. Open each website, and search the name and city to see that the business still exists.
3. Look at rows with an empty street, or with a web domain that does not resemble the name. In our hand check these were the flawed rows.
4. Treat an empty operatingStatus as unknown, not as open.
5. When you combine several runs, remove repeats by overtureId.

Limits

These numbers come from our own measurements on Overture release 2026-10-21.0, made on 12 November 2026. The samples are small, so read them as a rough guide.

• Closed businesses can remain. The default filter drops places that Overture marks as closed, but it cannot catch a closure that Overture does not know about. Overture's schema marks the status as optional, and it is not a measure of opening hours. In our test boxes the status is empty for 25.1% of places in Austin, 52.7% in Manchester and 98.5% in Toronto (all places, any confidence). A business that closed recently can be in your list. Check before you call.
• About 80% of the listed websites answer. On 12 November 2026 we requested the website of 240 random rows (confidence 0.7 and above, from a home connection, 8 second timeout). 69.2% answered normally, 10.8% refused automated requests (counted as alive), 6.7% returned an HTTP error such as 404 or 5xx and 13.3% could not connect. That puts roughly 80% alive, a lower bound, because some failed connections can be bot or country blocks. The share rose with confidence: 78.6% for scores from 0.8 to 0.9 and 86.2% at 0.9 and above. The margin is about 5 points. We have not repeated the test at the default 0.8 setting.
• Some rows are flawed. We reviewed 10 random rows by hand (confidence 0.7 and above), without calling anyone or opening the websites. We judged 6 clean, 2 unclear and 2 flawed. The flaws were an incomplete or empty address and a web domain that differs from the business name. Ten rows are a small sample, so this only shows the direction.
• Data is complete only in part. At confidence 0.7 and above, a phone number and a website were both present for 76.3% of places in Austin, 73.2% in Manchester and 88.2% in Toronto. For dentists in Austin the share was 91.1% (924 places). Some small businesses are missing everywhere.
• It does not replace Google Maps. There are no reviews, ratings, opening hours or photos. We measured data completeness only in Austin, Manchester and Toronto. We also ran the Actor for Berlin, Madrid and London and got full lists, but we did not measure those lists. Rural areas and most other countries are not measured.
• No e-mail addresses. The Actor neither collects nor guesses them. Social profile links and contact person names are not in the output either.
• You are responsible for consent. A phone number of a one-person business can be personal data. Mobile numbers are dropped by default in the countries listed above. You remain responsible for GDPR, PECR, CAN-SPAM, TCPA or your local marketing rules, and for having a legal basis or permission before you contact anyone.
• City areas follow Overture. The area is the Overture boundary of the city, which can differ from your idea of downtown or a postal city. Use bbox for exact control.

Data source and attribution

The places come from the Overture Maps Foundation. We read the attribution page, the places schema page and the CDLA-Permissive-2.0 text on 13 November 2026 and checked the statements below against them. Most contributors publish under CDLA-Permissive-2.0, the Foursquare data under Apache-2.0 and AllThePlaces data under CC0. The Overture attribution page lists the places sources and their licences. Section 2.1 of the CDLA-Permissive-2.0 text asks you to include the agreement text when you share the data. Overture's own credit line, "Overture Maps Foundation, overturemaps.org", is optional on the attribution page, and the Foursquare data carries its own copyright notice. Keep the attribution line below anyway. This is not legal advice.

Every run writes an attribution line to the SUMMARY record. Keep it with the list when you share or sell it. It reads: Overture Maps Foundation, overturemaps.org (places, 2026-10-21.0), CDLA-Permissive-2.0 (https://cdla.dev/permissive-2-0/); includes Foursquare data under Apache-2.0. The Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Overture Maps Foundation.

Pricing is pay per result, and empty or failed runs are free. See the Actor page for current pricing. You can set a maximum cost per run.

Try the Actor

Disclosure: Atesen Software makes this Actor. Start with a small maxItems and check the current pricing on the Actor page.

Open Places Lead Finder on Apify