Stack Overflow Scraper

Search and extract Stack Overflow questions with scores, answers, tags, view counts, and author information. Find the most popular programming questions on any topic.

What does Stack Overflow Scraper do?

Stack Overflow Scraper uses the StackExchange API to search and extract questions from Stack Overflow. For each question, it returns the title, vote score, answer count, view count, tags, creation date, and author details.

Sort results by relevance, votes, creation date, or recent activity. Filter by tags to narrow results to specific technologies.

Why scrape Stack Overflow?

Stack Overflow has 23+ million questions covering every programming topic. Use cases include:

• Developer research — find the most upvoted solutions for any programming problem
• Content analysis — study popular questions, trending topics, and technology adoption
• Documentation gaps — identify frequently asked questions to improve your docs
• Training data — build datasets of programming Q&A for AI models
• Competitive analysis — track questions about your framework or library
• Hiring insights — analyze what technologies developers struggle with most

How to scrape Stack Overflow questions

1. Go to Stack Overflow Scraper on Apify Store
2. Enter one or more search keywords in the searchQueries field (e.g., react hooks, python asyncio)
3. Optionally filter by tags (e.g., javascript;react) and choose a sort order
4. Set the maximum number of results per keyword
5. Click Start and wait for results
6. Download data as JSON, CSV, or Excel

How much does it cost to scrape Stack Overflow?

Stack Overflow Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing:

Event	Price
Run started	$0.001
Question extracted	$0.001 per question

Example costs:

• 20 top React questions: ~$0.021
• 100 Python questions: ~$0.101
• 300 questions across 3 topics: ~$0.301

Platform costs are minimal. The StackExchange API is free (300 requests/day without API key).

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
searchQueries	string[]	Keywords to search on Stack Overflow	Required
tagged	string	Filter by tags (semicolon-separated, e.g. javascript;react)	-
sortBy	string	Sort: relevance, votes, creation, activity	relevance
maxResults	integer	Maximum questions per keyword (1-300)	50

Input example

{
  "searchQueries": ["react hooks", "python asyncio"],
  "sortBy": "votes",
  "maxResults": 20
}

Output example

Each question is returned as a JSON object:

{
  "questionId": 53219858,
  "title": "How to fix missing dependency warning when using useEffect React Hook",
  "score": 890,
  "answerCount": 26,
  "viewCount": 1252100,
  "isAnswered": true,
  "hasAcceptedAnswer": true,
  "tags": ["reactjs", "react-hooks", "eslint"],
  "creationDate": "2018-11-09T08:45:12.000Z",
  "lastActivityDate": "2026-01-15T12:30:00.000Z",
  "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53219858",
  "authorName": "Andru",
  "authorReputation": 5234,
  "authorUrl": "https://stackoverflow.com/users/123456/andru",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-03-03T05:02:00.000Z"
}

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
questionId	number	Stack Overflow question ID
title	string	Question title
score	number	Net vote score (upvotes - downvotes)
answerCount	number	Number of answers
viewCount	number	Total view count
isAnswered	boolean	Whether the question has an upvoted answer
hasAcceptedAnswer	boolean	Whether the author accepted an answer
tags	string[]	Associated technology tags
creationDate	string	When the question was posted
lastActivityDate	string	Last edit or answer activity
url	string	Direct link to the question
authorName	string	Question author's display name
authorReputation	number	Author's reputation score
authorUrl	string	Author's profile URL
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of extraction

How to use the Stack Overflow Scraper API

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("automation-lab/stackoverflow-scraper").call(run_input={
    "searchQueries": ["python machine learning"],
    "sortBy": "votes",
    "maxResults": 50,
})

for q in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    answered = "✓" if q["isAnswered"] else " "
    print(f"{answered} score={q['score']:4d} views={q['viewCount']:7d} {q['title'][:60]}")

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/stackoverflow-scraper').call({
    searchQueries: ['python machine learning'],
    sortBy: 'votes',
    maxResults: 50,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach(q => {
    console.log(`[${q.score}] ${q.title} (${q.viewCount} views)`);
});

Integrations

Connect Stack Overflow Scraper to apps:

• Google Sheets — export Q&A data for analysis
• Slack — notifications for new popular questions in your tech stack
• Zapier / Make — automate workflows with developer Q&A data
• Webhook — send results to your own API

Tips and best practices

1. Sort by votes — use votes sorting to find the most authoritative answers.
2. Tag filtering — use tagged to narrow to specific technologies (e.g., python;pandas).
3. View count — high view counts indicate common problems many developers face.
4. API quota — the free tier allows 300 API requests/day. Each page of results = 1 request.
5. Max 300 results — the API limits unauthenticated search to ~300 results per query.
6. Score interpretation — scores above 100 indicate widely-appreciated questions; above 500 is exceptional.

FAQ

Q: Does it return the answer text? A: This scraper returns question metadata. The question URL links directly to the full page with all answers.

Q: Is an API key required? A: No. The StackExchange API works without authentication (300 requests/day limit).

Q: Can I search other StackExchange sites? A: This scraper is configured for Stack Overflow specifically.

Q: How current is the data? A: Data is real-time from the StackExchange API.

Use Stack Overflow Scraper with Claude AI (MCP)

You can integrate Stack Overflow Scraper as a tool in Claude AI or any MCP-compatible client. This lets you ask Claude to fetch Stack Overflow data in natural language.

Setup

CLI:

$claude mcp add stackoverflow-scraper -- npx -y @anthropic-ai/apify-mcp-server@latest --actors=automation-lab/stackoverflow-scraper

JSON config (Claude Desktop, Cline, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "stackoverflow-scraper": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@anthropic-ai/apify-mcp-server@latest", "--actors=automation-lab/stackoverflow-scraper"]
    }
  }
}

Set your APIFY_TOKEN as an environment variable or pass it via --token.

Example prompts

• "Find top Stack Overflow questions about 'Python async'"
• "Get the most voted answers for 'React hooks'"
• "Search Stack Overflow for questions tagged 'rust' about memory safety"

cURL

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~stackoverflow-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchQueries": ["react hooks"], "sortBy": "votes", "maxResults": 20}'

I'm getting fewer results than maxResults. The StackExchange API may return fewer results if your search query is too specific or if the daily API quota (300 requests) has been reached. Try broader keywords or wait for the quota to reset.

Results seem outdated or missing recent questions. Sort by activity instead of votes to surface recently active questions. The default relevance sorting may favor older, highly-voted questions.

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