Discourse Forum Monitor: New Topics and Replies by Keyword

Monitor any public Discourse forum for new discussions, topics, and replies by keyword or latest feed.

Community managers, developer relations teams, competitive intelligence researchers, and support leads use this actor to track product mentions, technical questions, and community discussions across public Discourse communities (such as Meta Discourse, Mozilla Discourse, Docker Community, and many others).

Turn on monitoring mode (onlyNewSinceLastRun) and run on a schedule to receive and pay only for topics that are new since your previous run. A quiet run with nothing new returns zero charged topics.

How to use

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the forums field is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found.
2. Via the API. Call it directly with a POST request — no Console needed once you have an API token:

   curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~discourse-forum-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"forums":["https://meta.discourse.org"]}'
   

3. On a schedule. Save this actor as an Apify Task with the input you want, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) so it runs on its own — no server of your own required.

Input

{
  "forums": [
    "https://meta.discourse.org"
  ]
}

One Discourse forum URL or domain per line (e.g. https://meta.discourse.org or discourse.mozilla.org). Accepted formats: https://meta.discourse.org, discourse.mozilla.org.

Output

One row per topic returned, for example:

query	found	status	forum	topicCount	monitorStatus	topicId	title	url	sourceUrl	slug	categoryId	postsCount	replyCount	views	likeCount	authorUsername	lastPosterUsername	createdAt	lastPostedAt	bumpedAt	excerpt	isPinned	isClosed	isArchived	tags	isNew	firstSeenAt	scrapedAt
https://meta.discourse.org	true	OK																								<is new topic?>		1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

A miss comes back as a row with "found": false and is never charged. Missing fields use null, never 0 or "". To protect privacy, author usernames are public forum handles only; real names, emails, and private individual details are never extracted.

Limits

• Only public Discourse forums exposing anonymous JSON feeds (/latest.json and /search.json) can be monitored.
• Private forums requiring login or single sign-on (SSO) return HTTP 403 and are recorded as an uncharged miss.
• Rate limits are strictly respected on a per-forum basis; concurrency is intentionally set to 1 request per forum.

Pricing

• Topic returned: $0.6 per 1,000 topics

Plus a $0.00005 start fee per run. Each event above is billed independently, only when it actually returns data — misses (found:false) are never charged.

Example runs

Paste any of these into the Input tab and press Start. All three return rows with no key, no token, and no private account.

1. Latest topics from Meta Discourse (default feed)

{
  "forums": ["https://meta.discourse.org"],
  "maxItems": 20
}

2. Keyword search on Meta Discourse (API discussions)

{
  "forums": ["https://meta.discourse.org"],
  "query": "api",
  "maxItems": 20
}

3. Scheduled monitor alert for new discussions

{
  "forums": ["https://meta.discourse.org"],
  "query": "plugin",
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "deltaName": "meta-plugin-discussions",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent

This actor runs synchronously over plain HTTP — call it directly from a script, a workflow tool, or an AI agent, no Apify Console needed once you have an API token.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~discourse-forum-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"forums":["https://meta.discourse.org"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~discourse-forum-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"forums":["https://meta.discourse.org"]} (swap in an expression from an earlier node for a real value).

Clay. Add an "HTTP API" column: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~discourse-forum-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"forums":["{{topic}}"]}, mapping the row's topic into the forums array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "discourse forum scraper" — the agent will find and run this actor.