ConanCenter Scraper

Scrape ConanCenter — the official public package index for Conan, the open-source C and C++ package manager. Search or browse packages by name, fetch exact recipes with full version history, or pull curated trending lists (most popular, recently updated, newly added). Pure HTTP against ConanCenter's own package-index API and its server-rendered recipe pages — no auth, no proxy, no cookies.

What this actor does

• Three modes: search (substring name search), byName (exact recipe + version lookup), trending (curated lists)
• Filters: supported OS, supported CPU architecture, supported compiler, license substring, topic substring, exclude deprecated packages
• Sorting: name or most-recently-updated
• Empty fields are omitted — you only ever see fields with real data

Output per package

• name, version, conanReference (name/version)
• description, homepage
• status — recipe status as reported by ConanCenter (normally ok)
• deprecated — true/false, when ConanCenter has flagged this recipe
• licenses[] — SPDX identifier(s)
• topics[]
• recipeRevision, lastUpdatedDate
• supportedOS[], supportedArch[], supportedCompilers[], supportedLinkage[] (shared/static), binaryConfigCount
• dependencies[] — other Conan packages this recipe requires (union across all binary configs)
• allVersions[], versionCount — every published version of this recipe (mode=search/byName)
• conanCenterUrl, sourceUrl
• recipeSourceUrl — link to this version's conanfile.py in the conan-center-index GitHub repo, when resolvable
• mode=trending only: totalDownloads (category=popular). Every trending record is enriched with the same full recipe-detail fields listed above (license, topics, binary support, etc.) via an extra per-item fetch — not just the thin name/version the ConanCenter homepage exposes.
• recordType: "package", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byName / trending
searchQuery	string	–	Substring match on package name (mode=search)
names	array	–	Exact names, name/version, or name@version (mode=byName)
category	string	popular	popular / updated / new (mode=trending)
os	string	–	Filter to packages supporting this OS
arch	string	–	Filter to packages supporting this architecture
compiler	string	–	Filter to packages with a binary config built with this compiler (gcc/clang/apple-clang/msvc/Visual Studio)
linkage	string	–	Filter to packages with a binary config built as shared or static
license	string	–	Substring match on license identifier
topic	string	–	Substring match on topic tags
excludeDeprecated	bool	false	Drop packages ConanCenter has marked deprecated
sortBy	string	name	name / lastUpdated
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap (1–200) — each record needs its own recipe-page fetch

Example: JSON libraries for Linux

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "json",
  "os": "Linux",
  "sortBy": "name",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Example: exact recipes by name/version

{
  "mode": "byName",
  "names": ["zlib", "openssl/3.0.0", "fmt"]
}

Use cases

• Audit which C/C++ libraries support a target OS/architecture before adopting them
• Track a dependency tree across ConanCenter recipes
• Monitor newly-added or trending packages in the C/C++ ecosystem
• Build a license-compliance report across your project's Conan dependencies

FAQ

Does this require a Conan account or API key? No — ConanCenter's package index and recipe pages are fully public.

Why does mode=byName accept name/version? ConanCenter recipes can have many published versions; without a version you get the latest, and each recipe page lists every version it has ever published (see allVersions).

Are all binary configurations listed individually? No — supportedOS/supportedArch/supportedCompilers are deduplicated summaries; binaryConfigCount tells you how many distinct prebuilt binary configurations ConanCenter has for that version.

Why is recipeSourceUrl missing on some records? ConanCenter only tracks a version-to-source-folder mapping for a subset of a recipe's published versions (typically the more recent ones). When the resolved version isn't in that mapping, the field is omitted rather than guessing the wrong GitHub folder.