GitHub Trending Scraper

GitHub Trending Scraper extracts the trending repositories from github.com/trending (today, this week or this month) for any programming language and spoken language, and returns one clean JSON record per repository: trending rank, owner and name, description, main language, total stars, forks and the stars gained in the period. Turn on the optional GitHub API step to add topics, license, homepage, creation and last-push dates, open issues and watchers, or run GitHub repository searches in the same run. Plain HTTP, no browser, no login, no proxy needed for the default input.

What you get

Field	Example (LadybirdBrowser/ladybird, C++ list, today)
rank, period, listLanguage, listSpokenLanguage	1, daily, C++, null
fullName, owner, name, url, repoId	LadybirdBrowser/ladybird, LadybirdBrowser, ladybird, https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird, 808045485
description	Truly independent web browser
language, languageColor	C++, #f34b7d
stars, forks, starsInPeriod	66664, 3173, 26 (stars gained today)
topics, license, licenseName, homepage	["browser", "browser-engine"], BSD-2-Clause, BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License, https://ladybird.org
createdAt, updatedAt, pushedAt	ISO 8601 timestamps
openIssues, watchers, defaultBranch, sizeKb	566, 303, master, 548132
ownerType, archived, isFork, isTemplate, hasDiscussions	Organization, false, false, false, false
source, trendingUrl, searchQuery, detailsStatus, scrapedAt	where the record came from and whether API details were added

The fields from topics to hasDiscussions are filled when Add GitHub API details is on (and always for search results). Developer rankings and the "Built by" contributor avatars are not collected: the dataset describes repositories, not people.

Use cases

• Tech trend monitoring: schedule a daily run and keep a history of what developers star each day, per language, to spot new frameworks, AI tools or libraries before they reach the news.
• Newsletters and social posts: "top 10 trending Rust repos this week" with stars gained, description and license, ready for a template.
• Developer marketing and DevRel: watch which projects in your niche (vector databases, MCP servers, front-end tooling) are gaining stars and how fast.
• Investors and analysts: open-source traction as a signal; combine starsInPeriod with createdAt to find young projects growing quickly.
• AI agents and RAG: give an agent a fresh, structured list of what is trending instead of letting it guess from stale training data.

Input

{
    "periods": ["daily", "weekly"],
    "languages": ["all", "Python", "TypeScript", "Rust"],
    "spokenLanguage": "any",
    "maxItems": 100,
    "includeRepoDetails": true,
    "githubToken": "github_pat_...",
    "searchQueries": ["topic:llm stars:>200"],
    "searchSort": "stars",
    "searchCreatedWithinDays": 30,
    "maxResultsPerQuery": 50
}

• periods: daily, weekly and/or monthly. Each period × language pair is one trending list of up to 25 repositories (GitHub sometimes shows fewer).
• languages: GitHub's language names (Python, C++, C#, Jupyter Notebook...) or github.com/trending/<language> URLs. Empty = the all-languages list; all adds it next to specific languages. Unknown names are skipped with a warning and close matches are suggested.
• spokenLanguage: GitHub's own filter by the language of the README / description (en, zh, es, ja...). It is strict: a narrow combination can be empty.
• maxItems is exact across all lists and searches. Within one period a repository is saved once even if it shows up in several language lists.
• includeRepoDetails: one GitHub API request per repository. Without a token GitHub allows 60 per hour per IP; beyond that the repositories are still saved, with detailsStatus: "rate-limited".
• githubToken (optional, secret): raises the API limits to 5,000 requests per hour and 30 searches per minute. A fine-grained token with no extra permissions works. It is only sent to api.github.com.
• searchQueries: GitHub repository search syntax (topic:, language:, stars:>, created:>=, in:name...). searchCreatedWithinDays adds a creation-date window to every query.

Output example

{
    "source": "trending",
    "rank": 1,
    "fullName": "LadybirdBrowser/ladybird",
    "owner": "LadybirdBrowser",
    "name": "ladybird",
    "url": "https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird",
    "description": "Truly independent web browser",
    "language": "C++",
    "languageColor": "#f34b7d",
    "stars": 66664,
    "forks": 3173,
    "starsInPeriod": 26,
    "period": "daily",
    "listLanguage": "C++",
    "listSpokenLanguage": null,
    "trendingUrl": "https://github.com/trending/c++?since=daily",
    "searchQuery": null,
    "repoId": 808045485,
    "detailsStatus": "ok",
    "ownerType": "Organization",
    "topics": ["browser", "browser-engine"],
    "license": "BSD-2-Clause",
    "licenseName": "BSD 2-Clause \"Simplified\" License",
    "homepage": "https://ladybird.org",
    "createdAt": "2024-05-30T09:18:10Z",
    "updatedAt": "2026-10-25T04:23:40Z",
    "pushedAt": "2026-10-25T04:25:28Z",
    "openIssues": 566,
    "watchers": 303,
    "defaultBranch": "master",
    "sizeKb": 548132,
    "archived": false,
    "isFork": false,
    "isTemplate": false,
    "hasDiscussions": false,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-25T05:19:15.992Z"
}

A SUMMARY record in the key-value store lists every trending list and search with how many repositories were found and saved, the API rate-limit state, warnings and errors.

Pricing

Pay per event: US$0.80 per 1,000 repositories (US$0.0008 each), API details included, plus Apify's small start fee per run.

• Today's all-languages list (up to 25 repositories): about US$0.02.
• Daily + weekly + monthly for 10 languages (up to 750 repositories): about US$0.60.
• 1,000 repositories from searches: US$0.80.

You can cap spending with the maximum charge per run in Apify; the Actor stops cleanly at that limit.

How it compares

• GitHub's REST API has no trending endpoint. Stars gained "today / this week / this month" exist only on the trending page, which this Actor reads, and its API step fills in what the page does not show.
• Other GitHub trending Actors in the Store: the most used one charged US$1.15 per 1,000 results when we checked (October 2026). This one costs US$0.80 and puts several periods, languages, the spoken-language filter and repository search into one dataset with one schema.

Related Actors

• OpenAlex Scraper: the Actor this one is built on (same HTTP client pattern), for scholarly papers with citations and abstracts.
• Hacker News Scraper: the other place developers talk about new projects; pair the two for a daily tech-trends digest.

Integrations

Use it from the Apify API (/v2/datasets/{id}/items?format=json, CSV or Excel), schedule it daily, or connect it to n8n, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets, Slack or Airbyte. AI agents can call it as a tool through the Apify MCP server, and LangChain / LlamaIndex can load the dataset directly.

FAQ

Is this legal? The Actor reads public pages and the public GitHub API, the same data any visitor sees without logging in. It collects repository facts only; contributor avatars and developer rankings are left out and e-mail addresses are removed from descriptions. Follow GitHub's terms and each repository's license when you reuse the data.

Do I need a proxy? No. The trending pages load directly. If GitHub ever refuses them on the Apify platform, the Actor switches by itself to Apify datacenter and then residential proxy for those pages only. API requests always go out directly and are never rotated to get around GitHub's limits.

What are the limits? Each trending list has at most 25 repositories (that is GitHub's page). Without a token the API gives 60 detail requests per hour per IP, and on Apify's shared IPs that budget may already be used by others, so add a free token if you need details for every repository. Searches return at most 1,000 repositories per query.

Why do I get fewer than 25 repositories? GitHub decides the list length; spoken-language filters and rare languages often return short or empty lists. The run log and the status message say so when a list is empty.

Is my token safe? It is a secret input: encrypted by Apify, sent only to api.github.com, never written to the dataset or the logs. A fine-grained token with no permissions is enough.

Changelog

• 0.1 (October 2026): first release. Trending lists by period, language and spoken language; optional GitHub API details; repository search with sort and creation-date window; exact maxItems, per-period dedupe and pay-per-event charge limit.

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En español

GitHub Trending Scraper extrae los repositorios en tendencia de github.com/trending (hoy, esta semana o este mes) por lenguaje de programación e idioma, con ranking, estrellas, forks, estrellas ganadas en el período, lenguaje y descripción. Opcionalmente agrega datos de la API de GitHub (temas, licencia, fechas, issues abiertos) y búsquedas de repositorios. Sin navegador ni proxy; token de GitHub opcional para más consultas por hora. No recopila perfiles de personas. Precio: US$0,80 por cada 1.000 repositorios.