GitHub Trending Scraper

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🎯 What this scrapes

GitHub publishes a Trending page (github.com/trending) separate from the REST API. Because there is no official github trending API, the only reliable way to pull structured trending-repo data is page parsing. This Actor fetches the page — and its language- and date-filtered variants — and emits one structured row per trending repository. Supported windows: daily, weekly, monthly. Supported filters: programming language, spoken language.

Fields returned per row: rank, owner/name slug, canonical URL, description, primary language, total star count, stars gained in the selected window, fork count, contributor avatar URLs, scrape timestamp, and window label.

🔥 What we handle for you

• 🛡️ Browser fingerprint rotation — curl-cffi replays real Chrome, Firefox, and Safari TLS handshakes so the target sees a browser, not a Python script. We rotate impersonation profiles across requests.
• 🌐 Residential proxy rotation via Apify Proxy — fresh session and exit IP on every block or rate-limit response.
• 🔁 Retries with exponential backoff on 408 / 429 / 5xx — up to 5 attempts per page, Retry-After header honoured.
• 🧱 Rate-limit-aware pacing — we back off and slow down instead of hammering through a block and getting the IP burned.
• 🧊 Clean, typed dataset rows — Pydantic-validated, ISO-8601 timestamps, stable field names, ready for JSON / CSV / Excel export from Apify Console or via the API.
• 💰 Pay-Per-Event pricing — you pay only for rows that land in your dataset. No data, no charge.

💡 Use cases

• Tech-trend dashboards — chart which languages or ecosystems are surging week-over-week; visualize star velocity over time.
• Newsletter automation — pull the top 10 Python trending repos every Friday and pipe them directly into your newsletter or Slack digest.
• Investor and analyst scouting — surface early-stage open-source projects gaining stars before they hit Hacker News or the tech press.
• Competitive intelligence — set up an alert when a competitor's repository lands on Trending; track star-gain velocity relative to your own projects.
• AI agent data feeds — give your briefing bot a live "what's hot in OSS" signal without building your own scraper or worrying about selector drift.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the Apify Store page.
2. Fill in the input form — since, language, and maxResults all have sensible defaults.
3. Click Start. Output streams into the run's dataset in real time.
4. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the Apify dataset API.

To schedule recurring runs (e.g., daily OSS digest), use Schedules in the Apify Console and point it at this Actor with your preferred inputs.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
since	string	no	"daily"	Which trending window to scrape — daily (today), weekly (this week), or monthly (this month).
language	string	no	""	Programming language slug as GitHub uses it — e.g. python, typescript, rust, cpp. Leave blank for all languages.
spokenLanguage	string	no	""	Spoken-language code, e.g. en, zh. Leave blank for all.
maxResults	integer	no	25	GitHub Trending pages typically list 25 repos. Set to 0 to return the full page.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Apify Proxy settings. Datacenter proxies are sufficient for most runs; residential may be needed under heavy throttling.

Example input — top 5 trending Python repos today

{
  "since": "daily",
  "language": "python",
  "maxResults": 5,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

📤 Output

One dataset item per trending repository.

Field	Type	Notes
rank	integer	Position on the Trending page (1-indexed).
full_name	string	Full repo slug — owner/name.
owner	string	Repository owner login.
name	string	Repository name.
html_url	string	Canonical GitHub URL.
description	string | null	Repository tagline as shown on the Trending page.
language	string | null	Primary language label shown on the card.
stars_total	integer	Total stars at scrape time.
stars_in_window	integer	Stars gained in the selected window (daily / weekly / monthly).
forks	integer	Fork count.
built_by	array	Contributor avatar URLs shown next to the repo card (may be empty).
scraped_at	string	ISO-8601 UTC timestamp of the scrape.
window	string	The selected window — daily, weekly, or monthly.

Example output

{
  "rank": 1,
  "full_name": "psf/requests",
  "owner": "psf",
  "name": "requests",
  "html_url": "https://github.com/psf/requests",
  "description": "Python HTTP for Humans.",
  "language": "Python",
  "stars_total": 51800,
  "stars_in_window": 142,
  "forks": 9300,
  "built_by": [],
  "scraped_at": "2026-06-01T08:00:00Z",
  "window": "daily"
}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.20	One-off warm-up charge per run
result	$0.002	Per dataset item written

1 000 results ≈ $2.20. No subscription, no minimum spend, no card required to start — every new Apify account gets $5 of free credit.

🚧 Limitations

• GitHub may change Trending page HTML at any time. If you see empty rows or missing fields, open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab and we'll ship a parser patch within 24 hours.
• This Actor scrapes repo-trending only. Developer-trending (the "trending developers" tab) is not included.
• Trending updates approximately every 6 hours on GitHub's side; a run reflects the page as a logged-out browser sees it at that moment — not a real-time feed.
• GitHub Trending shows roughly 25 repositories per language/window combination. Running multiple language passes in separate runs is the intended pattern for broad market-scan use cases.

❓ FAQ

Is there an official GitHub Trending API?

No. GitHub deprecated any unofficial trending endpoint years ago and has never shipped a public github trending API. The only reliable source is the HTML page at github.com/trending. That is exactly what this Actor parses — so our output is the closest thing to a github trending API available today.

How current is the data?

GitHub recalculates Trending roughly every 6 hours. A run reflects the page exactly as a logged-out browser sees it at request time — typically within 6 hours of the last GitHub recalculation.

Can I get github trending Python repos specifically?

Yes — set language to python (or any other language slug GitHub uses). You can combine it with any since window. The same approach works for TypeScript, Rust, Go, C++, and every other language listed on GitHub.

Can I get an RSS feed or subscribe to updates?

Not natively from this Actor, but you can schedule it on a Apify Cron schedule and use the Apify API to fetch the latest dataset. If github trending rss is your goal, a simple scheduled run + webhook to a feed-builder service is the recommended pattern.

Why are some built_by arrays empty?

GitHub only shows contributor avatars on some repo cards. We return what the page surfaces; if GitHub doesn't include them, neither do we.

Can I filter by topic?

Not in this Actor — the GitHub Trending page does not expose topic filters. For topic-based queries, use a GitHub REST API wrapper instead.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a parsing bug, hit a selector-drift issue, or need a new field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab in Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and read every report.

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