Pluralsight Course Catalog Scraper

Scrape Pluralsight's technology course catalog — search by keyword or browse the full library by category, subscription catalog, and skill level. Get titles, ratings, durations, authors, cover images, and publish dates for every matching course. Optionally enrich any course URL with its full description.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (keyword search or full catalog browse with filters) and byUrls (fetch full details for specific course URLs)
• Filters: category, subscription catalog, skill level, minimum rating, author, duration range, exclude retired courses
• Sorting: relevance, highest rated, lowest rated
• Rich metadata: ratings, rating counts, duration (raw + parsed minutes), authors, cover image, publish/update dates
• No login, no cookies, no paid proxy — public data only
• Empty fields are omitted — every record only contains fields that have real data

Output per course

• title — course title
• sourceUrl — canonical pluralsight.com/courses/... URL
• courseSlug — URL slug / product ID
• category — top-level learning category (e.g. Data, Cloud, Security)
• catalog — subscription catalog (e.g. Core Tech, Data, AI)
• level — Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced
• rating — average rating (0–5)
• ratingCount — number of ratings
• duration — human-readable duration (e.g. 1h 28m)
• durationMinutes — duration parsed to total minutes
• authors[] — course author names
• authorIds[] — author UUIDs (mode=byUrls only)
• imageUrl — course cover image
• publishedAt — ISO 8601 UTC publish timestamp
• updatedAt — last-updated date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• isRetired — whether Pluralsight has retired/archived the course
• description — full "What you'll learn" text (mode=byUrls only)
• recordType: "course", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byUrls
searchQuery	string	python	Free-text query (mode=search). Leave empty to browse all courses matching the filters.
courseCategory	select	any	Artificial Intelligence / Business / Cloud / Data / IT Ops / Professional Development / Security / Software Development
courseCatalog	select	any	AI / Cloud / Core Tech / Data / Security
level	select	any	Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced
minRating	number	–	Drop courses rated below this (0–5)
author	string	–	Only keep courses whose author list contains this text
minDurationMinutes / maxDurationMinutes	int	–	Drop courses outside this duration range (minutes)
sortBy	select	relevance	relevance / highestRated / lowestRated
excludeRetired	boolean	true	Skip retired/archived courses
courseUrls	array	–	Course URLs to fetch (mode=byUrls)
maxItems	int	30	Hard cap on emitted records (1–1000)

Example: search with filters

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "kubernetes",
  "courseCategory": "Cloud",
  "level": "Intermediate",
  "minRating": 4,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: browse all Data courses, highest rated first

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "",
  "courseCategory": "Data",
  "sortBy": "highestRated",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: courses by a specific author, 30-90 minutes long

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "",
  "author": "Robert Horvick",
  "minDurationMinutes": 30,
  "maxDurationMinutes": 90,
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: enrich specific course URLs

{
  "mode": "byUrls",
  "courseUrls": [
    "https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/python-data-essentials-python-introduction",
    "https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/authentication-for-python"
  ]
}

Use cases

• Edtech competitive analysis — track Pluralsight's course catalog breadth by category
• Curriculum design — discover top-rated courses for a given skill level
• Content gap analysis — compare Pluralsight's catalog against your own course library
• Learning path research — find recently published or updated courses in a technology area
• Talent development — build custom skill-development reading lists from real course metadata

FAQ

Do I need a Pluralsight account? No. This actor only reads publicly indexed course-catalog metadata — no login, cookies, or paid proxy required.

Can I browse without a search term? Yes — leave searchQuery empty and use courseCategory / courseCatalog / level to browse the catalog.

Why do some courses lack a description? Full descriptions are only fetched in byUrls mode (one HTTP request per course). The search mode returns lightweight catalog records for speed; use byUrls on specific results to enrich them.

What's the difference between category and catalog? category is Pluralsight's top-level learning topic (e.g. Software Development); catalog is the subscription plan tier the course is bundled under (e.g. Core Tech).

How accurate is durationMinutes? Parsed directly from Pluralsight's own Xh Ym duration label — same number shown on the course page.

How fresh is the data? Real-time — every run queries Pluralsight's live course-catalog search index.