RubyGems Scraper

Scrape RubyGems.org — the Ruby community's official gem hosting service with 170,000+ published gems. Search by keyword, fetch a specific gem, retrieve all gems by a user/owner, or browse recently published or updated gems.

No API key, login, or proxy required. Uses the free public RubyGems REST API.

Features

• Search gems by keyword with pagination
• Fetch a specific gem by exact name
• List all gems by a user or organization owner
• Browse recent activity — 20 most recently published or updated gems

Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	select	search / byGem / byUser / recentActivity
query	string	Search keyword (mode=search)
gemName	string	Exact gem name (mode=byGem)
username	string	RubyGems username or owner handle (mode=byUser)
activityType	select	latest or justUpdated (mode=recentActivity)
maxItems	integer	Max records to emit (1–5000, default 50)

Example inputs

Search gems:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "rails",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Fetch a specific gem:

{
  "mode": "byGem",
  "gemName": "sidekiq"
}

Get all gems by a user:

{
  "mode": "byUser",
  "username": "matz"
}

Browse recent activity:

{
  "mode": "recentActivity",
  "activityType": "justUpdated"
}

Output

Each record contains:

Field	Type	Description
name	string	Gem name
version	string	Latest version number
authors	string[]	List of author names
description	string	Gem description / info
downloads	integer	Total all-time downloads
versionDownloads	integer	Downloads for this version
licenses	string[]	SPDX license identifiers
platform	string	Target platform (usually ruby)
createdAt	string	ISO timestamp of this version release
projectUri	string	RubyGems.org gem page URL
gemUri	string	Direct .gem download URL
homepageUri	string	Project homepage URL
sourceCodeUri	string	Source code repository URL
documentationUri	string	Documentation site URL
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp when record was scraped

Example record

{
  "name": "rails",
  "version": "7.1.3",
  "authors": ["David Heinemeier Hansson"],
  "description": "Ruby on Rails is a full-stack web framework optimized for programmer happiness.",
  "downloads": 500000000,
  "versionDownloads": 1000000,
  "licenses": ["MIT"],
  "platform": "ruby",
  "createdAt": "2024-01-16T00:00:00.000Z",
  "projectUri": "https://rubygems.org/gems/rails",
  "homepageUri": "https://rubyonrails.org",
  "sourceCodeUri": "https://github.com/rails/rails",
  "documentationUri": "https://api.rubyonrails.org",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-25T10:00:00+00:00"
}

FAQs

Does this require an API key or login? No. The RubyGems public API is freely accessible without authentication.

Is there a rate limit? RubyGems enforces approximately 300 requests per 5 minutes. This actor automatically paginates with a 1-second delay between pages to stay within limits.

How many results can I get?

• Search mode: up to 5000 results (paginated at 30 per page)
• byUser mode: all gems owned by the user (no pagination needed)
• recentActivity mode: always returns 20 gems (API limit)

What is the difference between latest and justUpdated?

• latest — gems that were published for the first time most recently
• justUpdated — gems that had a new version release most recently

Can I get all versions of a gem? The scraper returns the latest version metadata. For full version history, use mode=byGem which fetches the latest gem info including version.

Which fields are always present? name and scrapedAt are always populated. All other fields are omitted if not available for a gem.