You need the plumbers in Nantes, the restaurants in a Lyon district or the accounting firms of a French département, in a spreadsheet you can sort, filter and work through line by line. You have no budget to buy a database. The name that comes to mind is Pages Jaunes, the French Yellow Pages, and the next search follows naturally: a Pages Jaunes scraper that drops everything into Excel.
The short answer. Pages Jaunes scrapers come in three forms (browser extension, software or online service, one-off freelance job) and bill per use, per subscription or per delivered file. Their real cost depends less on the price tag than on cleaning the file: duplicates, listings without an email, switchboard numbers, hours spent in Excel. And there is one question their sellers rarely raise: the right French law gives the maker of a directory to prohibit the extraction of its contents. If your list can come from a source whose producer authorises extraction in writing, start there.
What Pages Jaunes does well
Before trying to pull its content out, it is worth saying why it is the first place people think of. Three real strengths explain its place in French habits.
A search built on a service and a place. The search form asks for a type of service and a locality, which are exactly the two criteria of a local list. To find five roofers to call this week, it is often the shortest route, and looking things up is free.
Listings that describe the business. Opening hours, services, contact details, directions, reviews and photos: a listing tells you what the professional actually does day to day, well beyond its legal identity.
Contact built into the listing. Depending on the business, a quote request, an appointment or a message can be sent without leaving the directory. For a one-off need there is nothing to extract: the contact is already there.
Pages Jaunes scraper: three kinds of tools, three ways to pay
A Pages Jaunes scraper reads the result pages of a search (one trade, one town) and turns each listing into a spreadsheet row: name, address, phone, sometimes website and rating. Three kinds of tools share the market.
- The browser extension. You run the search yourself and the extension copies what is on screen. Often free or freemium, it stops at what you scroll through.
- The software or online service. It walks through every result page on its own. It is billed by monthly subscription, by licence, or by credits consumed per extracted row.
- The one-off job. A freelancer delivers the Excel file. You pay for the deliverable, not the tool.
The real cost is not on a pricing page, it is in the file you receive. A business filed under two categories gives you two rows. A directory listing rarely carries an email address, and when it does, nothing tells you it still receives mail. The number shown is often a switchboard. Every row you deduplicate, fix or complete costs time, and that time is what a list really costs, whatever the billing model.
The French law Pages Jaunes scraper sellers rarely quote
Under the French Intellectual Property Code, a directory is a database. Whoever took the initiative and the risk of a substantial investment to build, verify or present it is its maker (article L341-1), and holds a specific right over its contents. Article L342-1, in force since 1 January 1998 (Law no. 98-536 of 1 July 1998, text consulted on Légifrance on 12 October 2026), reads as follows, in our translation:
"The maker of a database has the right to prohibit: 1° extraction, by permanent or temporary transfer of all or a qualitatively or quantitatively substantial part of the contents of a database to another medium, by any means and in any form whatsoever; 2° re-utilisation, by making available to the public all or a qualitatively or quantitatively substantial part of the contents of the database, whatever the form."
"To another medium, by any means": an Excel file is another medium, a scraper is a means. Article L342-2 goes further: the maker may also prohibit the "repeated and systematic" extraction of insubstantial parts when these operations "clearly exceed the conditions of normal use of the database". Splitting one large extraction into dozens of small ones does not change what it is.
The same code also protects the user. Under article L342-3, the maker of a database made available to the public cannot prohibit the extraction or re-utilisation of an insubstantial part of its contents by a person with lawful access to it. Ordinary consultation, where you note down the details of a few tradespeople, therefore remains open to you. The code sets no numeric threshold: between a handful of listings and a whole category for a city, a judge decides, and it is not for a scraper vendor to decide it for you. These articles do not say every scraper is unlawful. They say who holds the right to prohibit, and that right belongs to the maker of the directory.
For readers outside France: Law no. 98-536 was adopted to transpose Directive 96/9/EC of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases, which is why the other EU member states have a comparable database right.
Building the Excel list from a source that authorises extraction
France has a business database whose producer does more than tolerate extraction: it authorises it in writing. Insee's Sirene register is published on data.gouv.fr under the Licence Ouverte 2.0. This licence lets the re-user copy the information, "extract and transform" it and exploit it "commercially", provided the source and the date of its last update are credited. The latest establishments stock file there is dated 1 October 2026 (consulted on 12 October 2026).
If you would rather not handle a national file, Insee states (page updated 17 October 2024) that the Annuaire des Entreprises, the official French business directory, lets you build a list of establishments online by location, activity, legal category, headcount band or creation date, up to 200,000 units.
Two limits, stated plainly. The licence settles the producer's right, not the rights of individuals: it states itself that personal data may only be re-used within the legal framework that protects it, and a row that names a sole trader names a person, which brings the GDPR into play. Second, an official register identifies a business without saying how to reach it: no phone, no email, no website. No source, open or not, spares you the question of what you do with the list.
Completing the list: phones, websites, emails
This is the step where a tool genuinely saves time, and where Outsend fits in, as one option among others. It builds the list from two sources. The first is the Sirene register, read by activity and area, which returns name, address, SIREN, SIRET, NAF activity code, headcount band and creation date. The second is the set of business listings on Google Maps, which the Google Maps extraction to CSV or Excel collects by query and area, with phone, website, reviews and opening hours. The file comes out as CSV, JSON or XLSX and opens straight in Excel.
From there, the list is completed in the same tool: matching with SIRET, SIREN and VAT numbers, finding the work emails businesses publish, then a deliverability check before the first send. This is where the real cost described above is decided: a merged duplicate or an invalid address removed before sending is a row that no longer costs you anything. Outsend is in alpha, and creating an account is open and free.
Which tool for which need?
The right tool depends on the size of the list and what you need in it. In some cases, the directory itself remains the best answer.
| Your need | Best fit | What drives the real cost |
|---|---|---|
| Five to ten tradespeople to contact this week | A Pages Jaunes search, no scraper | Time spent reading listings |
| Every business in one trade across a département, with its SIRET | The Sirene register (Annuaire des Entreprises or stock file) | Filtering, then adding contact details |
| A local list with phones and websites, in Excel | A Google Maps listings extraction (Outsend or another tool on the market) | Duplicates and switchboard numbers |
| A list with emails that actually arrive | Register or listings, then email finding and verification | Invalid addresses, to remove before sending |
| Being found by your own customers | A paid directory listing | The subscription, against the enquiries received |
The last row is a different question, inbound visibility, which we cover separately with the professional Pages Jaunes offer. For other tools that help you build a list, our prospecting tool comparisons sort them by use case.
Questions about extracting Pages Jaunes
Is there a free Pages Jaunes scraper?
Yes, mostly browser extensions that copy the page on screen. Being free changes nothing about the maker's right: article L342-1 targets extraction, not its price.
How do I get Pages Jaunes data into Excel?
For a few listings, by copying the details into a spreadsheet: that is the ordinary use article L342-3 protects. For a whole category, the article L342-1 question comes first. If what you need is a list by trade and town, starting from the Sirene register, published under an open licence, avoids that question for the identity part of the list.
Is a Pages Jaunes extractor legal?
The French Intellectual Property Code does not mention extractors as tools, it speaks of extraction. It gives the directory's maker the right to prohibit the extraction of a substantial part of its contents (article L342-1) and the repeated and systematic extraction of small parts (article L342-2). For a specific project, only a lawyer can answer.
Is scraping Pages Jaunes different from extracting it?
Not in law. Scraping names a technique; extraction names the act the law targets, "by any means and in any form whatsoever".
Does the Sirene register include phone numbers?
No. It identifies businesses and their establishments (Insee counts 36 million establishments recorded since 1973, according to its page updated 17 October 2024), without contact details. Phones, websites and emails are found afterwards, on business listings and on company websites.
Can I use the Sirene register for prospecting?
The Licence Ouverte 2.0 allows re-use, commercial re-use included, provided you credit the source and the update date. It does not lift the rules protecting personal data, which apply as soon as a row names a sole trader.