Open Collective Finance Scraper

Get any Open Collective's public transactions as clean JSON: amounts, fees, contributions and payees. One click, no required fields, no LLM.

What it does

Open Collective is a transparent finance platform for open-source projects and community groups — every collective's income, expenses and fees are public by design, exposed through an open GraphQL API. This actor reads any collective's public transaction ledger and returns clean JSON: amount, currency, transaction kind (contribution, host fee, payment-processor fee, expense payout...), counterpart accounts and timestamp. Give it a collective's slug (webpack) and get its financial activity — no login, no scraping HTML.

Why this one:

• Official public GraphQL API — no HTML scraping, no auth token needed
• Full transaction kind breakdown (fees separated from contributions and payouts)
• Works on any of the thousands of public collectives
• No LLM anywhere — deterministic output, predictable costs, no hallucinated fields
• Clean by default — canonical URLs (tracking parameters stripped), parsed numbers, merged duplicates

Quick start (no code)

1. Click Try for free / Start — every field has a working default, nothing is required.
2. (Optional) change query to what you need.
3. Open the Dataset tab when the run finishes → export as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Input

Field	Required	Default	Description
query	no	webpack	Open Collective slug, optionally followed by a search term to filter by description (e.g. webpack sponsor). Find it in the collective's URL: opencollective.com/<slug>.
maxResults	no	20	Maximum clean results (capped at 500)
enrich	no	false	Deterministic enrichment per record — see below
monitor	no	false	Compare with the previous run, flag NEW records only

Example input:

{
  "query": "webpack",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Output

Real example record (from a live run):

{
  "id": "75e100f8-8123-4304-af9c-a74183221629",
  "title": "Host Fee",
  "url": "https://opencollective.com/webpack/transactions/12971273",
  "price": -20.0,
  "price_text": "-20",
  "seller": "webpack",
  "description": "HOST_FEE — webpack → Open Source Collective",
  "type": "DEBIT",
  "kind": "HOST_FEE",
  "from_account": "webpack",
  "to_account": "opensource",
  "completeness": 0.67
}

The final _summary row carries run totals (total_clean, deduped, enriched); in monitor mode a _changes row lists keys new since the last run.

Field reference

Field	Meaning
id	Transaction ID (stable, deduplication key)
title	Transaction description
url	Canonical transaction URL on Open Collective
price / price_text	Amount and currency (negative = outgoing, positive = incoming)
seller	Collective slug
type	CREDIT or DEBIT
kind	CONTRIBUTION, HOST_FEE, PAYMENT_PROCESSOR_FEE, EXPENSE, etc.
from_account / to_account	Counterpart account slugs
price / price_text	Parsed numeric value + original text, when the source publishes one
completeness	0–1 filled-fields score (with enrich)

Use cases

• Open-source funding research — see exactly how much a project raises and spends, and on what.
• Sponsor discovery — kind=CONTRIBUTION rows show who is funding a project, at what amount.
• Financial transparency dashboards — build a live funding tracker for a collective or a portfolio of them.
• Due diligence — check a fiscally-sponsored project's actual cash activity before contributing.
• AI agents — live 'how is project X funded?' answers via MCP.

Enrichment (optional, charged only when it produces something)

Set enrich: true and every record additionally gets: e-mail addresses extracted from the description (when present), the canonical domain of the record's URL, and a completeness score (0–1, how many core fields are filled). Deterministic — the same input always yields the same output — and you are only charged for records that actually got enriched. Records where enrichment adds nothing are free.

Monitor mode — change alerts on a schedule

Set monitor: true and the actor compares the current run with the previous one (per-actor named storage) and flags only NEW records. Combine with Apify Schedules for a daily/hourly watch: the _changes summary row lists what appeared since the last run, and the change-alert event is charged per new record only — an unchanged run costs you almost nothing.

Use it from your code

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("EnezLi/opencollective-scraper").call(run_input={  "query": "webpack",  "maxResults": 50 })
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' });
const { defaultDatasetId } = await client.actor('EnezLi/opencollective-scraper').call({  "query": "webpack",  "maxResults": 50 });
const { items } = await client.dataset(defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

curl

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/EnezLi~opencollective-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_API_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{  "query": "webpack",  "maxResults": 50 }'

Use it with AI agents (MCP)

This actor is agent-ready: it appears in Apify's AGENTS / MCP servers catalog, so any MCP-capable assistant (Claude, custom agents, LangGraph tools) can discover and call it with a one-line tool call — zero required fields means an agent can run it safely with defaults. Connect your agent to the Apify MCP server and ask for live data in natural language.

Pricing — Pay-Per-Event, start is free

Event	When charged
Actor start	Free ($0) — try it with one click
result	Per clean result returned
enrichment	Only per record that actually got enriched
change-alert	Monitor mode: per NEW record since the previous run

No subscription, no minimum. Volume discounts apply automatically through Apify account tiers (up to −44% on GOLD). Typical run cost example: 20 results ≈ a few cents total — you can predict your bill from the numbers above before you run.

Is this legal?

This actor collects publicly available data only — the same information any visitor sees in a browser, via public endpoints. It does not bypass logins, collect private personal data, or store credentials. You are responsible for using the output in compliance with the source site's terms and the laws that apply to you (e.g. GDPR when the output contains personal data).

Support & feedback

Found a bug, need another field, or want a variant for a related platform? Open an issue on the Issues tab — issues are monitored and answered, and frequently-requested fields get added to the standard output. The actor is maintained as part of a scraper family built on one shared, tested core (bugs fixed once are fixed everywhere).

Changelog

• 0.1 (2026-07) — initial public release: search, dedup, optional enrichment, monitor mode, PPE pricing.

Limitations (honest ones)

Reads Open Collective's official public GraphQL transaction ledger; collectives with private finances (rare) return zero rows. Expense line-item detail (receipts, categories) is not included yet — transaction-level only.

FAQ

How do I find a collective's slug?

It's the last part of its Open Collective URL: opencollective.com/webpack → slug is webpack.

Why do amounts include negative numbers?

Negative = money leaving the collective (fees, expense payouts); positive = money coming in (contributions). This mirrors the platform's own ledger.

A collective returned zero transactions — why?

Either the slug is misspelled, or the collective has no public financial activity yet. The run ends cleanly either way — nothing charged for results.

Do I need an API key or account on the source platform?

No. The actor uses public endpoints — you only need your Apify account.

Does it use AI / an LLM?

No. The core is fully deterministic: same input, same output, no hallucinations, no per-token costs.

Can I run it on a schedule?

Yes — use Apify Schedules; combine with monitor mode to pay only for what's new.

What's the maximum number of results?

500 per run (memory-safe cap). Run multiple queries or schedule runs for more.

How is my bill calculated?

Only from the events in the Pricing table — start is free, and there is no subscription.