DaFont Scraper

Scrape DaFont.com — a directory of 100,000+ free and freemium fonts. Search by keyword, browse Top downloads (daily or all-time), New releases, any of 80 categories/themes (Script, Gothic, Techno, Dingbats, Holiday, Bitmap, and more), or list every font from a specific author/foundry — including that author's lifetime stats. No login, no cookies, no paid proxy required.

What this actor does

• Five modes: search, top, new, byCategory, byAuthor
• 80 categories/themes: every main theme (Fancy, Foreign look, Techno, Gothic, Basic, Script, Dingbats, Holiday, Bitmap) plus every one of its subcategories, exposed as a dropdown — no need to know DaFont's internal category codes
• Rich per-font detail: license type, download counts, glyph count, all style-variant previews, illustration image, first-seen/updated dates, author info
• Author lifetime stats (mode=byAuthor): profile URL, avatar, total font count, lifetime/yesterday download totals, forum matching-requests count — parsed from the same author page already fetched for pagination, at no extra request cost
• Filters: license type (including "Unknown / unspecified"), min/max total downloads, accented-characters support, Euro-symbol support
• Direct, hotlink-friendly preview images — no login or referer header needed to view them
• Empty fields are omitted — every record only contains the data actually available for that font

Output per font

• fontName, fontSlug, fontUrl, fontId
• authorName, authorSlug, authorUrl, authorWebsite
• authorProfileUrl, authorUserId, authorAvatarUrl, authorFontsCount, authorDownloadsTotal, authorDownloadsYesterday, authorForumRequestsCount — author lifetime stats (mode=byAuthor only, parsed from the author page's own header)
• themeMain, themeMainUrl, themeSub, themeSubUrl — DaFont's category taxonomy
• licenseType — e.g. Free for personal use, 100% Free, Donationware, Shareware, Demo, Public domain / GPL / OFL (omitted entirely, not guessed, when DaFont itself marks the license "Unknown" — filter for these with license: "unknown")
• downloadsTotal, downloadsYesterday, commentsCount, commentsUrl
• fontFilesCount, fileSize, pixelSize (bitmap fonts only)
• hasAccents, hasEuro — character-set support flags
• previewImageUrl — the default rendered preview image
• downloadUrl — direct .zip download link
• styles[] — every style/weight variant with its own filename and preview image (when includeFullDetails is on)
• illustrationImageUrl, charmapImageUrl, glyphCount (when includeFullDetails is on)
• firstSeenDate, updatedDate, oldVersionUrl (when includeFullDetails is on)
• authorNote — the author's own description of the font, if provided
• forumRequestsCount — matching font-identification requests on DaFont's forum
• sourceUrl, recordType: "font", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / top / new / byCategory / byAuthor
searchQuery	string	script	Keyword (mode=search)
category	string	Script > Calligraphy	Category/theme dropdown, 80 values (mode=byCategory)
authorUrls	array	–	Author slugs or URLs (mode=byAuthor)
topPeriod	string	daily	daily (yesterday) / allTime (mode=top)
sortBy	string	popularity	popularity / newest / name
license	string	all	Filter to one license type, including unknown (no license link on DaFont)
minDownloads / maxDownloads	int	–	Total-download range filter
accentsOnly	bool	false	Only fonts with accented-character support
euroOnly	bool	false	Only fonts with the Euro glyph
includeFullDetails	bool	true	Fetch each font's detail page for the richer field set above
maxItems	int	30	Hard cap (1–500)

Example: search fonts by keyword

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "handwritten",
  "license": "hundredPercentFree",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: today's most-downloaded fonts

{
  "mode": "top",
  "topPeriod": "daily",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Example: browse a category

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "category": "603",
  "sortBy": "newest",
  "maxItems": 40
}

Example: every font by an author

{
  "mode": "byAuthor",
  "authorUrls": ["mans-greback.d2878"],
  "maxItems": 100
}

Every record in this mode also carries that author's lifetime stats (authorFontsCount, authorDownloadsTotal, authorDownloadsYesterday, authorProfileUrl, authorAvatarUrl, authorForumRequestsCount), so you can profile the foundry without a second call.

Example: browse Bitmap (pixel) fonts

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "category": "m9",
  "maxItems": 40
}

Example: fonts with an unclear/unspecified license

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "category": "601",
  "license": "unknown",
  "maxItems": 40
}

Use cases

• Design tooling — build a font-picker or mood-board feature backed by real DaFont metadata
• License auditing — bulk-check which fonts in a category are safe for commercial use
• Trend tracking — snapshot daily/all-time Top downloads to see what's rising
• Font discovery pipelines — feed category/theme browsing into a recommendation engine
• Foundry research — pull an author's full catalog in one call
• Digital asset archiving — collect preview images and metadata for a design library

FAQ

Do I need a DaFont account or cookies? No. Every mode works on fully public pages.

Are the preview images real, hotlinkable URLs? Yes — they're static PNGs served directly by DaFont with no login or referer header required, so they display normally in any app or spreadsheet.

What does includeFullDetails change? When on (default), the actor visits each font's own page to add glyph counts, every style-variant preview, the illustration image, and first-seen/updated dates. Turning it off skips that extra request per font for a faster, listing-only scrape.

What license values can I filter on? Public domain / GPL / OFL, 100% Free, Free for personal use, Donationware, Shareware, Demo, plus unknown for fonts DaFont itself flags as having no license link at all (its own "Unknown" checkbox). A font with no license link is left with no licenseType field rather than a guessed value — always double-check the license on the font's own page before commercial use, as DaFont itself notes the license shown is only an indication.

Why only two topPeriod options? DaFont's own Top listing only supports "yesterday" and "all-time" — there's no weekly/monthly window on the site itself.

How many categories are there? 80 — 8 main themes with subcategories (Fancy, Foreign look, Techno, Gothic, Basic, Script, Dingbats, Holiday) totaling 71 subcategories, plus Bitmap (m9), which DaFont lists as its own top-level theme with no further subcategories. Pick a main theme to get everything in it, or a subcategory for a narrower browse.

What author-level fields does byAuthor add? authorProfileUrl, authorUserId, authorAvatarUrl, authorFontsCount, authorDownloadsTotal, authorDownloadsYesterday, and authorForumRequestsCount — all parsed from the header block of the author page itself (the same page already fetched to list that author's fonts), so there's no extra request per author.

Limitations

• Search and alphabetical browsing are excluded from DaFont's own crawler policy (robots.txt disallows /search.php and /alpha.php for automated crawlers). The search mode is kept because it is fully public, returns no personal data, and is core to font discovery — but be mindful of DaFont's crawl policy if you run this at high volume. Alphabetical (A–Z) browsing was left out of scope for this reason, since category, search, top, new, and author browsing already cover the same ground.
• Custom preview text (typing your own sample text on DaFont's site) is rendered client-side and has no stable image URL, so it isn't available as an output field — only the site's own default preview images are returned.
• Author browsing by country (DaFont's author-directory-by-country listing) returns author profiles, not font records, and is out of scope for this font-focused actor.