GitHub Trending Scraper

---

🎯 What this scrapes

GitHub publishes a Trending page (https://github.com/trending) that's separate from the REST API. This Actor parses the page (and its language- and date-filtered variants) and emits one structured row per trending repo — rank, full_name, description, language, total stars, stars-in-window, forks, and the contributor avatars shown on the page.

🔥 What we handle for you

• 🛡️ Browser fingerprint rotation — curl-cffi impersonates real Chrome / Firefox / Safari TLS handshakes so the target sees a browser, not Python.
• 🌐 Residential proxy rotation via Apify Proxy — fresh session and exit IP on every block.
• 🔁 Retries with exponential backoff on 408 / 429 / 5xx — up to 5 attempts per page, Retry-After honoured.
• 🧱 Rate-limit-aware pacing — when the target pushes back, we slow down instead of getting banned.
• 🧊 Clean, typed dataset rows — Pydantic-validated, ISO-8601 timestamps, stable IDs, JSON / CSV / Excel export straight from the Apify Console.
• 💰 Pay-Per-Event pricing — you only pay for results that hit your dataset. No data, no charge.

💡 Use cases

• Tech-trend dashboards — chart which languages are surging week-over-week.
• Newsletter automation — pull the top 10 Python trending repos every Friday into your newsletter.
• Investor scouting — surface early-stage open-source projects gaining stars before they hit Hacker News.
• Competitive intel — alert when a competitor's repo lands on Trending.

⚙️ How to use it

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

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
since	string	no	'daily'	Which trending bucket to scrape — today (daily), this week (weekly), or this month (monthly).
language	string	no	''	Programming language slug exactly as GitHub uses it (e.g. python, typescript, rust</code
spokenLanguage	string	no	''	Spoken language code (e.g. en, zh). Leave empty for all.
maxResults	integer	no	25	GitHub Trending pages typically show 25 repos. Set to 0 for the whole page.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{'useApifyProxy': True}	Apify Proxy is helpful here — GitHub may throttle aggressive scraping. Datacenter is fine.

Example input

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

📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item.

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 Trending).
language	['string', 'null']	Primary language label shown on the page.
stars_total	integer	Total stars at scrape time.
stars_in_window	integer	Stars gained in the selected window (today / this week / this month).
forks	integer	Fork count.
built_by	array	List of contributor avatar URLs shown next to the repo card.
scraped_at	string	ISO-8601 UTC scrape timestamp.
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": [],
  "window": "daily"
}

💰 Pricing

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

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.005	One-off warm-up charge per run
result	$0.002	Per dataset item

Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ $2.00. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

🚧 Limitations

GitHub may change the Trending page HTML — if you see empty rows, file an issue and we'll ship a parser patch within 24h. We do not scrape developer-trending (only repo-trending) in this Actor.

❓ FAQ

How current is the data?

GitHub recalculates Trending throughout the day. A run reflects the page exactly as a logged-out browser sees it at request time.

Why are some built_by lists empty?

GitHub only shows contributor avatars for some cards; we surface them where present.

Can I filter by topic?

Not in this Actor — the Trending page doesn't expose topic filters. Use the GitHub Repository Scraper for topic queries.

💬 Your feedback

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

---