CLFinder — Craigslist Search Tool

What is CLFinder?

CLFinder is a simple program to search Craigslist for-sale and want ads looking for bargains. The advantage it has over searching by hand are two-fold.

  1. First, CLFinder can be run in the background on your PC. Rather than having to click "reload" over and overa again to see things as they pop up, CLFinder will do that for you automatically.
  2. Second, CLFinder can be set up to email you what it finds. This means that you can run CLFinder on your home PC, say, minimized for as long as you want, and whenever it finds something that meets your criteria, it will send you the link via email.
Basically, CLFinder searches on Craigslist for you, even when you're not thinking about it.

What does CLFinder look like?

Does it really work?

So far, so good. CLFinder relies on some reverse-engineering of Craigslist in order to work, so if they change Craigslist, CLFinder may stop working correctly. Notify me and I'll update the program.

Also, CLFinder only supports the San Francisco Bay Area and its surroundings. Other cities require more work from me.

Do you have any Documentation?

Other than this, no.

Here is the short, short version:

  1. Download CLFinder and unzip it.
  2. Run the ClFinder.exe executable.
  3. Now, enter in what you want to search for. If you want to search to a specific neighborhood, make sure that "sub area" is set to the region that encompasses that neighborhood. If you do not want to be restricted to a specific neighborhood or sub-area, then make sure those drop-downs are set to the blank value.
  4. The query terms should not be blank. You have to be looking for something in particular.
  5. You do not have to include min and max bid prices.
  6. If you want CLFinder to email you, then you also need to edit the fields under the "Mail Configuration" under the "Mail" menu. Because CLFinder sends emails, just like Outlook or whatever, it needs to know your mail server and password.
  7. If you want to be able to click on the links in the CLFinder window and have your web browser open them, be sure to set the correct path to your web browser as well.
  8. You can save your search terms under the File menu.
  9. Your search, email, and web browser settings are all saved together in one file.
  10. Don't worry about saving databases -- it's not an important feature.

Will it run on a Mac/PC/Linux?

It has only been tested on a PC.

How can I get it?

Download it here:

If you're curious, you can also get the source code here.

I found a bug / it crashed / I would like to see X feature...

Contact me at djacobow@berkeley.edu.