BusinessesForSale APIcanada.businessesforsale.com ↗
Search Canadian business listings and franchise opportunities via API. Get asking price, revenue, cash flow, broker name, and full descriptions.
What is the BusinessesForSale API?
This API exposes 3 endpoints for querying businesses for sale and franchise opportunities across Canada from canada.businessesforsale.com. The search_businesses endpoint returns paginated listings with up to 9 fields per result — including asking price, revenue, cash flow, location, and tags — while get_listing_details retrieves the full record for a single listing, and search_franchises covers franchise opportunities with minimum investment data.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/34cac26e-45d4-4ffe-9df6-d1f95836ceb5/search_businesses?page=1&sort=Score&keywords=restaurant&max_price=500000&min_price=10000®ion_id=ON&category_id=55' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
Typed, relational, agent-ready
A generated client with real types, enums, and the links between objects — the structure a flat JSON response can't carry. Autocompletes in your editor and reads cleanly to coding agents.
- Fully typed · autocompletes
- Objects link to objects
- Typed errors & pagination
Typed Python client. Set up the SDK in your uv project, then pull this API’s typed client:
uv add parse-sdk uv run parse init uv run parse add --marketplace canada-businessesforsale-com-api
uv run parse add --marketplace pulls a pinned snapshot of this canonical API — it won’t change underneath you. To customize it, subscribe and swap to your own copy.
"""Walkthrough: Canada BusinessesForSale SDK — search listings, drill into details, explore franchises."""
from parse_apis.canada_businessesforsale_api import BusinessesForSale, Sort, ListingNotFound
client = BusinessesForSale()
# Search for restaurant businesses sorted by price
for listing in client.listingsummaries.search(keywords="restaurant", sort=Sort.PRICE_ASC, limit=3):
print(listing.title, listing.asking_price, listing.location)
# Drill into the first result for full details
summary = client.listingsummaries.search(keywords="pizza", limit=1).first()
if summary:
detail = summary.details()
print(detail.title, detail.asking_price, detail.revenue, detail.cash_flow)
print(detail.description[:120])
# Handle a listing that no longer exists
try:
gone = client.listingdetails.get(url="https://canada.businessesforsale.com/canadian/nonexistent-listing.aspx")
print(gone.title)
except ListingNotFound as exc:
print(f"Listing gone: {exc.url}")
# Search franchise opportunities
for franchise in client.franchises.search(limit=5):
print(franchise.title, franchise.min_investment, franchise.url)
print("exercised: listingsummaries.search / details / listingdetails.get / franchises.search")
Search for business listings in Canada with optional filters. Returns paginated results with basic listing information including title, location, pricing, revenue, cash flow, and tags. Results are ordered by relevance (Score) by default. Each result includes a URL that can be passed to get_listing_details for full information.
| Param | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| page | integer | Page number for pagination |
| sort | string | Sort order for results |
| keywords | string | Keywords to search for (e.g. 'pizza', 'restaurant', 'salon') |
| max_price | integer | Maximum asking price in CAD |
| min_price | integer | Minimum asking price in CAD |
| region_id | string | Region/Province ID to filter by |
| category_id | string | Category ID to filter by |
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"url": "string, the search URL used",
"page": "integer, current page number",
"results": "array of business listing objects with title, url, location, asking_price, revenue, cash_flow, description, tags"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"url": "https://canada.businessesforsale.com/canadian/search/businesses-for-sale?Keywords=restaurant&Page=1&IncludeBusinesses=true&CanonicalCountryCode=CA",
"page": 1,
"results": [
{
"url": "https://canada.businessesforsale.com/canadian/south-indian-restaurant-for-sale-near-square-one.aspx",
"tags": [
"New",
"Business"
],
"title": "South Indian Restaurant For Sale, Near Square One",
"revenue": "$1M - $5M(CAD)",
"location": "Mississauga, Ontario, Canada",
"cash_flow": "On request",
"description": "",
"asking_price": "$500K - $1M(CAD)"
}
]
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the BusinessesForSale API
Searching Business Listings
The search_businesses endpoint accepts keyword, price range (min_price, max_price in CAD), region_id, and category_id filters alongside a sort parameter and page for pagination. Each result in the results array includes title, url, location, asking_price, revenue, cash_flow, description, and tags. The url field from each result is the input for the detail endpoint, so a typical workflow is search first, then fetch details for specific listings.
Retrieving Full Listing Details
get_listing_details takes a single required url parameter (sourced from search_businesses results) and returns the complete listing record: listing_id, title, location, asking_price, revenue, cash_flow, broker_name, and a full description. Financial fields such as revenue and cash flow return the string 'Undisclosed' when the seller has not published that information, which is common for privately held businesses.
Searching Franchise Opportunities
search_franchises operates independently of the business search and returns franchise records with title, url, description, and min_investment. It accepts keywords to narrow results and page for pagination. Without keywords it returns all available franchise listings on the site, making it straightforward to build a full franchise index. Note that franchise results do not include revenue or cash flow fields — only minimum investment is exposed.
The BusinessesForSale API is a managed, monitored endpoint for canada.businessesforsale.com — not a raw scraper you maintain. Every endpoint is automatically health-checked on a schedule, and when canada.businessesforsale.com changes and a check fails, the API is automatically queued for repair and re-verified. It is built to keep working as the site underneath it changes.
This isn't an official canada.businessesforsale.com API — it's an independent, maintained REST wrapper over public data. Where the source has no official API (or only a limited one), Parse gives you a stable contract over a source that never promised one, and keeps it current. Need a new endpoint or field? You can revise it yourself in plain English and the agent rebuilds it against the live site in minutes — contributing the change back to the shared API is free.
Will this API break when the source site changes?+
Is this an official API from the source site?+
Can I fix or extend this API myself if I need a new endpoint or field?+
What happens if I call an endpoint that has an issue?+
- Build a deal-sourcing dashboard that filters Canadian businesses by
max_priceandcategory_idto surface acquisition targets in specific sectors. - Monitor asking price trends for a given
region_idby periodically runningsearch_businessesand storingasking_priceover time. - Aggregate broker activity by extracting
broker_namefrom multipleget_listing_detailscalls to identify the most active brokers in a province. - Create a franchise discovery tool that surfaces
min_investmentanddescriptionfromsearch_franchisesto help prospective franchisees compare entry costs. - Cross-reference
revenueandcash_flowfields fromget_listing_detailsto calculate rough valuation multiples across listings in a category. - Feed listing data into an investment screening tool that flags listings where both
revenueandcash_floware not'Undisclosed'for deeper analysis. - Pipe
tagsandlocationfields fromsearch_businessesinto a mapping or BI tool to visualise business-for-sale density by region and sector.
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 100 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 100 req/min |
One credit = one API call regardless of which marketplace API you call. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does canada.businessesforsale.com have an official developer API?+
What does get_listing_details return that search_businesses does not?+
get_listing_details adds listing_id and broker_name fields and returns the full description text, which is truncated in search results. Both endpoints return asking_price, revenue, cash_flow, and location, but the detail endpoint is the only way to retrieve the broker contact name and the complete listing narrative.How are undisclosed financials handled in the response?+
'Undisclosed' rather than null or an empty string. Your code should check for this value before attempting numeric comparisons or calculations on those fields.Does the API support filtering by city or postal code rather than just region/province?+
search_businesses filters by region_id (province-level) and keywords; there is no city or postal code parameter. The location string in results does include city-level text. You can fork this API on Parse and revise it to add a city-level filter endpoint if finer geographic filtering is needed.Can I retrieve contact details such as seller phone number or email through the API?+
broker_name from get_listing_details but does not expose phone numbers, email addresses, or any direct contact information, as those are gated behind inquiry forms on the site. You can fork this API on Parse and revise it to add an endpoint that captures any publicly visible contact fields.