Stack Exchange Questions Scraper

Collect public Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange questions by site, tag, keyword, date, score, and answer settings.

Use this Actor when you need repeatable developer Q&A data for SEO, DevRel, product research, support insights, developer content planning, or technical trend monitoring. Results can be downloaded as CSV, JSON, Excel, XML, RSS, or used through the Apify Dataset API.

At a glance

• Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange search: collect questions from Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Ask Ubuntu, Math, Data Science, and other Stack Exchange sites.
• Tag and keyword filters: search by tags, free-text query, date range, score, and sort mode.
• Question metadata: save titles, URLs, tags, owner names, score, views, answer count, accepted answer ID, and dates.
• Optional answer summaries: include answer snippets when your workflow needs more context.
• Developer workflow ready: export to content calendars, SEO tools, support dashboards, RAG systems, or AI analysis.

Ready-to-run examples

Use these saved Store examples as starting points. Open any example to prefill the Actor input, then adjust URLs, keywords, limits, or filters for your own run.

• Stack Exchange Content Gap Research
• Scrape Server Fault DevOps Questions
• Stack Overflow AI Questions With Answers
• Scrape Stack Overflow JavaScript Questions
• Scrape Stack Overflow Python Questions

What can it do?

Stack Exchange Questions Scraper turns public developer Q&A searches into structured question rows.

• Export Stack Overflow question data by site, tag, query, date range, score, and sort mode.
• Collect technical SEO signals such as question titles, tags, views, scores, accepted answers, and activity dates.
• Find product and support language from real developer questions around APIs, SDKs, errors, packages, and tools.
• Monitor technical topics by scheduling recurring searches for specific tags or keywords.
• Use it as a Stack Exchange questions API workflow for CSV, JSON, Excel, or Apify Dataset API exports.

Common workflows

• Developer SEO research: identify high-intent questions and tags for documentation or blog content.
• DevRel planning: learn what developers ask about a platform, API, SDK, or integration.
• Support triage: monitor Stack Overflow for unresolved or high-score questions.
• Competitive tracking: follow public questions about competitor tools and libraries.
• AI/RAG enrichment: feed question rows and optional answers into research or support agents.

What data can you collect?

Each dataset row represents one public Stack Exchange question.

Field	Description
site	Stack Exchange site name used for the question
questionId	Stack Exchange question identifier
title	Question title
url	Public question URL
tags	Question tags
ownerDisplayName	Display name of the question owner when available
ownerUrl	Public profile URL when available
score	Question score
answerCount	Number of answers
viewCount	Number of views
isAnswered	Whether the question is considered answered
acceptedAnswerId	Accepted answer ID when present
creationDate	Question creation date
lastActivityDate	Last activity date
lastEditDate	Last edit date when present
contentLicense	Content license shown by Stack Exchange
answers	Optional answer summaries when enabled

Pricing

This Actor uses Apify pay-per-event pricing. The prices below come from the current Actor pricing configuration. Apify public plans map to Store discount tiers, so the table shows both the user-facing plan context and the pricing tier name. The final price shown in Apify depends on the user account plan and any custom agreement.

Event	What is charged	Price
start	One-time fee charged when a run starts. Covers fixed startup cost.	$0.005

Event	What is charged	Free / no discount	Starter / Bronze	Scale / Silver	Business / Gold	Custom / Platinum	Custom / Diamond
result	Charged per Stack Exchange question saved to the dataset.	$0.03402 / 1,000	$0.02959 / 1,000	$0.02308 / 1,000	$0.01775 / 1,000	$0.01183 / 1,000	$0.01 / 1,000

Apify may also charge platform usage for compute, storage, proxies, or data transfer outside this Actor pricing. Check the Actor run and the Apify Pricing tab for the exact cost shown to your account.

Input configuration

Setting	JSON key	Use it for	Example
Stack Exchange sites	sites	Stack Exchange API site names.	["stackoverflow"]
Tags	tags	Tags to match; multiple tags are combined as an intersection.	["python","pandas"]
Keyword query	query	Optional free-text search query.	web scraping proxy
Sort questions by	sort	Stack Exchange sort mode.	activity
Maximum questions	maxItems	Maximum saved rows across all sites.	50
From date	fromDate	Optional ISO date lower bound.	2026-07-01
To date	toDate	Optional ISO date upper bound.	2026-07-31
Minimum score	minScore	Keep questions with at least this score.	0
Include answer summaries	includeAnswers	Fetch answer summaries for each saved question.	false

Example input

{
  "sites": ["stackoverflow"],
  "tags": ["python", "pandas"],
  "query": "filter dataframe",
  "sort": "relevance",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "minScore": 0,
  "includeAnswers": false
}

Example output

{
  "site": "stackoverflow",
  "questionId": 123456,
  "title": "How do I filter rows in a pandas DataFrame?",
  "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/123456/example",
  "tags": ["python", "pandas", "dataframe"],
  "ownerDisplayName": "developer123",
  "ownerUrl": "https://stackoverflow.com/users/123/developer123",
  "score": 42,
  "answerCount": 3,
  "viewCount": 10000,
  "isAnswered": true,
  "acceptedAnswerId": 123457,
  "creationDate": "2026-01-01T12:00:00.000Z",
  "lastActivityDate": "2026-01-03T09:30:00.000Z",
  "contentLicense": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
}

Tips for best results

• Use exact site names: stackoverflow, serverfault, superuser, askubuntu, math, and similar Stack Exchange API names.
• Combine tags carefully: multiple tags narrow results because Stack Exchange treats them as an intersection.
• Use query for phrase discovery: tags are cleaner; query is better for natural-language product or error terms.
• Enable answers only when needed: answer summaries require extra requests and can increase run time.
• Schedule topic monitors: recurring runs are useful for support, DevRel, and content gap workflows.

Limits and caveats

• The Actor extracts public Stack Exchange data only.
• It does not access private Teams, deleted posts, private user data, or moderator-only content.
• Results depend on Stack Exchange public API availability, quotas, filters, and sorting behavior.
• Answer summaries are optional and may not include full answer bodies.

API usage

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetch_cat~stack-exchange-questions-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"sites":["stackoverflow"],"tags":["python"],"maxItems":50}'

MCP and AI agents

This Actor can be used through the official Apify MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com.

For a focused single-Actor tool setup, use:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/stack-exchange-questions-scraper

Use the same JSON keys shown in the input configuration table, such as sites, tags, query, sort, maxItems, minScore, and includeAnswers.

FAQ

Can this scrape Stack Overflow questions?

Yes. Use sites=["stackoverflow"] and optionally add tags, query, date, or score filters.

Does it collect answers too?

It can include answer summaries when includeAnswers=true, but the primary output is question rows.

Can I export to CSV or Excel?

Yes. Apify datasets can be downloaded as CSV, JSON, Excel, XML, RSS, HTML, or accessed through the API.

Related actors

• GitHub Repositories Search Scraper
• Hacker News Search Scraper
• Reddit Scraper
• Google Autocomplete Scraper
• Website Contact Finder

Changelog

0.1

• Initial public release with Stack Exchange site, tag, query, date, score, answer summary, and API export controls.

Support

If a run fails, returns no data, or a field looks wrong, open an issue from the Actor page.

Please include the Apify run ID or run URL, input JSON, one example public URL, query, or input item, what you expected, and what the dataset returned. Small reproducible inputs make parsing or site-layout issues much faster to fix.

Privacy and data handling

This Actor runs with Apify limited permissions and only processes data needed for the documented run. It uses content lookup inputs and public posts, profiles, videos, comments, or channel metadata needed for the requested output to produce the output dataset and sends requests to public Stack Exchange Questions pages/endpoints; results are stored in Apify run storage for your account. FetchCat does not use your inputs or outputs for advertising, does not use them for model training, and does not retain them outside the Apify run except for transient support debugging when you explicitly share run details. You are responsible for using the Actor lawfully, respecting the target site's terms, and avoiding unnecessary personal or sensitive data in inputs.