Quora Question, Answer & Profile Search Scraper

Find Quora questions by keyword, then export full answers, author profiles, and engagement data. You can also paste question, answer, profile, or topic URLs for a deterministic export that does not depend on search.

How discovery works

Quora's own keyword search is login-gated, so this actor uses a public search index in front of Quora:

1. Index discovery finds Quora question or profile pages for your keywords.
2. A relevance check drops index hits whose title does not share a meaningful word with your query.
3. Related-question expansion opens the related questions Quora links from each question page. Quora exposes up to 70 per question, which is how one index result becomes a useful set.
4. Page hydration reads the public question, answer, profile, or topic page and builds the rows.

Search is best-effort: some narrow or unusual queries return no usable Quora question, and the run says so with a status row. A run that produces no real rows fails with a clear message instead of reporting success. Direct URLs and usernames always work without search.

Modes

• Search by keyword — one or more phrases; questions, answers, and optional profile/author rows.
• Scrape direct URLs — question, answer, profile, or topic URLs, including language subdomains.
• Discover authors — collect answer authors from URLs or search results and enrich their public profiles.

What each row contains

• Question — title, URL, question ID, topics, follower count, answer count, related questions, discovery query, and parent question when reached through expansion.
• Answer — full text (and optional HTML), answer URL and ID, upvotes, views, comments count, shares count, exact ISO creation time, AI label, related-answer provenance, and author details.
• Profile / author — name, profile URL, bio, credential, verified flag, followers, following, answer and question counts, content views, join date, location, employment, education, topics, and answer evidence.
• Topic — name, URL, topic ID, and follower count.
• Search result — an index card that matched the query: title, snippet when meaningful, URL, rank, type, and source.
• Status — a typed row when a page is blocked, removed, not found, or a query has no usable result.
• Run manifest — counts, discovery sources, proxy path, and per-input accounting.

Empty fields are omitted, never filled with null or placeholder values.

Input reference

Field	Type	Default	What it does
mode	select	search	Search, direct URLs, or author discovery.
searchQueries	array	[]	Keyword phrases used by search and author modes.
searchTarget	select	questions	Look for questions, profiles, or both.
directUrls	array	[]	Question, answer, profile, or topic URLs.
usernames	array	[]	Profile usernames or slugs.
resultTypes	array	["question","answer","search_result"]	Rows to save.
includeAnswers	boolean	true	Expand questions into answer rows.
maxAnswersPerQuestion	integer	20	Answers per question, including visible ones.
expandRelatedQuestions	boolean	true	Open related questions from each question page.
maxRelatedQuestionsPerSeed	integer	20	Related questions to open per seed.
maxQuestionsPerQuery	integer	50	Question-row cap per search query.
includeAuthorProfiles	boolean	true	Enrich author rows with profile statistics.
maxAuthors	integer	100	Maximum author rows.
minAnswerUpvotes	integer	0	Minimum explicit upvote count.
filterAiAnswers	select	include	Include, exclude, or keep only AI-labelled answers.
answerSortOrder	select	observed	Quora order, most upvoted, or newest.
onlyUnanswered	boolean	false	Keep only questions with an explicit zero answer count.
includeProfileSensitiveFields	boolean	true	Include location, employment, education, and join date.
includeSocialLinks	boolean	true	Include website and social links.
includeAnswerHtml	boolean	true	Add rendered answer HTML beside plain text.
maxItems	integer	200	Maximum real rows; status and manifest do not count.
includeFieldEvidence	boolean	true	Include field provenance maps.

Example inputs

Search questions and answers:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQueries": ["best productivity apps", "healthy meal prep"],
  "searchTarget": "questions",
  "expandRelatedQuestions": true,
  "maxRelatedQuestionsPerSeed": 20,
  "maxQuestionsPerQuery": 30,
  "maxAnswersPerQuestion": 5,
  "maxItems": 100
}

Scrape a specific question:

{
  "mode": "urls",
  "directUrls": ["https://www.quora.com/What-is-Python-primarily-used-for"],
  "resultTypes": ["question", "answer"],
  "maxAnswersPerQuestion": 20
}

Find profiles by keyword:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQueries": ["Naval Ravikant", "Sam Altman"],
  "searchTarget": "profiles",
  "resultTypes": ["profile", "author"],
  "maxItems": 20
}

Use cases

• Content and market research on public discussions
• Building a question/answer corpus for analysis
• Finding subject-matter authors and their public statistics
• Monitoring how a topic's questions and answers change over time

FAQ

Do I need to log in or provide cookies? No. The actor never asks for cookies and only reads public pages.

Why does a keyword search sometimes return a status row instead of questions? The public index may have no relevant Quora question for that phrase, or its first hit may be unrelated. The actor refuses to hydrate an off-topic seed and reports the query instead of returning random questions.

Why is native Quora search not used? Quora's /search?q= page is login-gated for anonymous visitors and is disallowed by Quora's robots rules. The actor uses a public index and related questions instead.

How many questions can one keyword produce? One index hit can expand to up to 70 related questions, bounded by Maximum Questions per Query. A query with no usable index hit produces none.

Why is profile search less complete than question search? Search engines index far fewer Quora profiles than questions. Direct usernames and profile URLs are exact; keyword profile search is best-effort.

Why are some profile fields missing? Quora only shows location, employment, education, and credentials on some profiles. Missing values are omitted rather than guessed.

Can I get comments? Comment bodies are not part of the public server-rendered page. Answer rows include the comment count, not the comment text.

Can I get a question's creation date or exact view count? Those values appear only on a Quora log page that its robots rules disallow, so the actor does not fetch it. Answer creation times are exact.

Does the actor use a proxy? It connects automatically and falls back to Apify Proxy only when Quora blocks the direct connection. There is no proxy field to configure.

Is this affiliated with Quora? No. This is an independent, third-party actor that reads publicly visible pages. Users are responsible for how they use the data.