Stack Exchange Questions API

**Stack Exchange Questions API** searches Stack Exchange sites and returns clean, structured question records from the public Stack Exchange API. Use it to track technical discussions, monitor community trends, and power research or support intelligence workflows.

## Why use this Stack Exchange questions API?

Stack Exchange questions can surface emerging bugs, product feedback, integration issues, and recurring support themes. This actor gives you a simple way to query multiple sites and normalize the results into a dataset-friendly format.

## Features

- Search one or more Stack Exchange sites in a single run
- Filter by query, tags, date range, sort mode, and order
- Return one clean record per question
- Capture score, answer count, owner details, and timestamps
- Pay-per-event pricing tied to each returned question record

## Input

### Example: search Stack Overflow for API questions

```json
{

"sites": "stackoverflow", "query": "apify api", "tags": "python,api", "sort": "relevance", "order": "desc", "pageSize": 50, "maxResults": 100 } ```

### Example: monitor multiple sites for support trends

```json
{

"sites": "stackoverflow,superuser,serverfault", "query": "docker timeout", "sort": "activity", "order": "desc", "pageSize": 25, "maxResults": 75 } ```

### Input fields

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `sites` | string | Comma-separated Stack Exchange site names to search, such as `stackoverflow,serverfault,superuser`. |
| `query` | string | Optional free-text query to search for questions. |
| `tags` | string | Optional comma-separated tags to filter by, such as `python,api,apify`. |
| `sort` | string | Sort mode. Allowed values: `activity`, `votes`, `creation`, `relevance`, `hot`, `week`, `month`. |
| `order` | string | Result order. Allowed values: `desc` or `asc`. |
| `fromDate` | string | Optional ISO date or datetime. Only questions created on or after this time are returned. |
| `toDate` | string | Optional ISO date or datetime. Only questions created on or before this time are returned. |
| `pageSize` | integer | Number of questions fetched per API request. Values above 100 are clamped. |
| `maxResults` | integer | Maximum number of question records to return. Values above 1000 are clamped. |

## Output

### Example record

```json
{

"site": "stackoverflow", "questionId": 12345678, "title": "How do I retry HTTP requests in Python?", "tags": [ "python", "requests", "retry" ], "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12345678", "score": 42, "answerCount": 3, "isAnswered": true, "viewCount": 12034, "creationDate": "2026-05-24T12:00:00Z", "lastActivityDate": "2026-05-25T08:45:00Z", "lastEditDate": "2026-05-25T08:00:00Z", "closedDate": null, "ownerDisplayName": "Jane Doe", "ownerReputation": 5123, "query": "retry HTTP requests in Python", "sort": "relevance", "order": "desc", "recordType": "question" } ```

## Limits and caveats

- Search quality depends on the chosen site, query, and tags.
- Some questions may not have owner reputation or edit timestamps.
- The actor respects API throttling and backoff hints, so very large searches may take longer.
- The actor is optimized for search and monitoring, not full historic mirroring of a site.

## Pricing

This actor uses **Pay-Per-Event** pricing.

| Event | Price | Charged when |
|---|---:|---|
| `question-record-produced` | $1.00 / 1k | A question record is successfully produced |

## FAQ

**Do I need a Stack Exchange API key?**  
No. The actor works with the public Stack Exchange API.

**Can I monitor more than one site at a time?**  
Yes. Provide multiple site names separated by commas.

**What happens if there are no matching questions?**  
The actor simply returns no records for that site/query combination.

**Is this useful for AI or support workflows?**  
Yes. It works well for trend monitoring, support intelligence, and research pipelines.