# Rate My Professors & Schools Scraper (`parseforge/rate-my-professors-scraper`) Actor

Scrapes professor and school profiles from Rate My Professors by search query or direct URL. Returns ratings, difficulty, reviews, and school metrics as flat rows.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/parseforge/rate-my-professors-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [ParseForge](https://apify.com/parseforge) (community)
- **Categories:** Automation, Developer tools, Other
- **Stats:** 42 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: 1.21 out of 5 stars

## Pricing

from $23.00 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

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

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
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.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## 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.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

[![ParseForge](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ParseForge/apify-assets/main/banner.jpg)](https://apify.com/parseforge?fpr=vmoqkp)

### Rate My Professors & Schools Scraper

**Scrape professor and school data from Rate My Professors, up to a million per run.** Get ratings, reviews, difficulty scores, tags, and school quality metrics. No login or API key. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Rate My Professors doesn't offer a public API, so collecting professor ratings and school data at scale means manual copying or building your own scraper. This Actor reads the public search pages directly, letting you search by professor name, school name, or a direct URL, and returns every match in one consistent schema.

| Who uses it | What they scrape Rate My Professors for |
|---|---|
| Students | Compare professor ratings and difficulty before registering for classes. |
| Academic researchers | Analyze teaching quality trends across departments or institutions. |
| University administrators | Monitor faculty feedback and school quality metrics at scale. |
| App developers | Build a course selection tool with real professor review data. |

### What it does

This Actor collects professor and school profiles from Rate My Professors by search query or direct URL and returns each one as a flat row.

- 👨‍🏫 **Professor search:** find professors by name, optionally filtered to a specific school.
- 🏫 **School search:** find schools by name and get their quality metrics.
- 🔗 **Direct URL input:** paste any Rate My Professors search URL to scrape exactly what you see.
- 📊 **Structured output:** every row includes ratings, difficulty, review counts, tags, and more in a fixed schema.

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

### What you can do with Rate My Professors data

**📋 Build a course registration helper.**

A student scrapes all professors in their department to compare ratings and difficulty scores before enrollment.

**📈 Track teaching quality over time.**

A researcher collects professor data each semester to analyze rating trends across a university.

**🏫 Audit school quality metrics.**

An administrator scrapes school profiles to benchmark their institution against peer schools.

**📱 Populate a professor review app.**

A developer scrapes professor data for multiple schools to seed a mobile course-picking application.

### Why choose this scraper

|  | What you get |
|---|---|
| **No API needed** | Scrapes public search pages directly, no registration or tokens. |
| **Flexible input** | Search by professor, school, or paste a URL. |
| **Scalable** | Collect up to 1,000,000 professors or schools in a single run. |
| **Clean data** | Returns ratings, difficulty, tags, and school metrics in one flat schema. |

### How it compares

This Actor focuses on Rate My Professors search pages, while the other listed competitor scrapes the same source with a different feature set.

| Feature | ParseForge | RateMyProfessors Data Scraper for Schools & Professors |
|---|---|---|
| Professor search by name | Yes | Yes |
| School search by name | Yes | Yes |
| Direct URL input | Yes | Not listed |
| Professor search within a specific school | Yes | Not listed |
| Up to 1,000,000 results per run | Yes | Not listed |

### Configure the run

Drive the Actor from a professor name, a school name, or a direct URL, and set the maximum number of results to collect per run. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

```json
{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "startUrl": "https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search/professors/?q=smith"
}
```

A larger pull:

```json
{
  "maxItems": 200,
  "startUrl": "https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search/professors/?q=smith"
}
```

### Pricing

Pay-per-result: **$0.034 per result** collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

| Results collected | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| 100 results | $3.40 |
| 1,000 results | $34.00 |
| 10,000 results | $340.00 |

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](https://console.apify.com/sign-up?fpr=vmoqkp) to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

### Run it

1. [Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit](https://console.apify.com/sign-up?fpr=vmoqkp).
2. Open the [Rate My Professors & Schools Scraper](https://apify.com/parseforge/rate-my-professors-scraper?fpr=vmoqkp).
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](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2) (`run-sync-get-dataset-items`) or the [ApifyClient](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js) for JavaScript and Python.

### Use with AI agents (MCP)

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

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=parseforge/rate-my-professors-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 your search query is spelled correctly and that the professor or school exists on Rate My Professors. Try a broader search term or use a direct URL from the website to verify.

**The scraper returns fewer results than expected.**

The Actor respects the Maximum professors or schools limit you set. Increase this number if you want more results. It pages through Rate My Professors' own search API until your limit is met or the search runs out, and tells you in the log when it delivers fewer results than you asked for, and why. Note that a Rate My Professors search page only publishes a handful of results in its HTML, so the search API is what makes larger runs possible — keep the proxy enabled.

**I get an error when using a direct URL.**

Make sure the URL is a valid Rate My Professors search page, such as a professor or school search. The URL should start with https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search/.

**The scraper is running slowly.**

The Actor makes polite requests to avoid overloading the website. If you need faster collection, consider running multiple instances with different search queries.

**Some fields are empty in the output.**

Not all professors or schools have every field populated on Rate My Professors. Empty fields mean the data was not available on the website for that entry.

### FAQ

| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can I scrape both professors and schools in one run? | No, each run targets either professors or schools. Use the professor search or school search input separately. |
| How do I search for a professor within a specific school? | Enter the professor's name in the Professor name field and the school name in the School name field. The Actor will search for that professor only within that school. |
| What if I already have a Rate My Professors URL? | Paste it into the Direct URL field. The Actor will scrape the results from that exact search page. |
| Does this scraper require a login? | No. It reads the public search pages, so no account, cookies, or API key is needed. |
| What data fields does the scraper return? | It returns all available fields from the search results, including ratings, difficulty, review count, tags, and school quality metrics. The exact fields are shown in the sample output on the Actor's page. |
| Can I limit how many results I get? | Yes, set the Maximum professors or schools field to any number between 1 and 1,000,000. |
| Is it legal to scrape Rate My Professors? | This Actor scrapes publicly available data. You are responsible for complying with the website's terms of service and applicable laws in your jurisdiction. |
| How do I export the scraped data? | After the run finishes, you can download the dataset in CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML format from the Storage tab. |
| Can I schedule this scraper to run automatically? | Yes, Apify supports scheduled runs. You can set it to run daily, weekly, or on any custom cron schedule. |

### Related actors

Browse the full [ParseForge collection](https://apify.com/parseforge?fpr=vmoqkp) for more scrapers.

🆘 **Need help?** Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ **Disclaimer.** This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Rate My Professors, 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.

# Actor input Schema

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

How many professors or schools to collect per run.

## `startUrl` (type: `string`):

Direct URL to scrape from Rate My Professors. Use this OR search filters below, not both. Examples: https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search/professors/580?q=smith (professors) or https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search/schools?q=sa (schools)

## `professorSearchQuery` (type: `string`):

Search term for professor name. Use this to search for professors. Example: 'smith', 'johnson'. Optionally combine with school name below to search within a specific school.

## `professorSchoolQuery` (type: `string`):

Optional. School name when searching for professors. If provided, searches for professors only within this school. Example: 'MIT', 'Harvard'. Use with professor name above.

## `schoolSearchQuery` (type: `string`):

Search term for school name. Use this to search for schools instead of professors. Example: 'sa', 'MIT', 'Harvard'. Mutually exclusive with professor search filters.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Proxy used to reach Rate My Professors. The shared datacenter pool is the default and is enough today. Switch to residential if the site starts refusing the search API — the run log says so when that happens.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "startUrl": "https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search/professors/?q=smith",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `professors` (type: `string`):

Professors view with all professor-specific fields including ratings, reviews, department information, and more

## `schools` (type: `string`):

Schools view with all school-specific fields including location, ratings, reviews, and more

# 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 = {
    "maxItems": 10,
    "startUrl": "https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search/professors/?q=smith",
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("parseforge/rate-my-professors-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 = {
    "maxItems": 10,
    "startUrl": "https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search/professors/?q=smith",
    "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": True },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("parseforge/rate-my-professors-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 '{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "startUrl": "https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search/professors/?q=smith",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}' |
apify call parseforge/rate-my-professors-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,parseforge/rate-my-professors-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/dQQkaOKQeK7Kz6KMy/builds/6R5dlK5pOpJQrMtDf/openapi.json