Creative Commons Scraper - Openverse, $0.0005/Result

Search Creative Commons-licensed images and audio from Openverse by keyword, with license, attribution and source filters, no login and no API key required.

Why use this scraper

Anyone building a blog, a course, a product page or a video needs images and audio they can legally use, with attribution text that will not get them a takedown notice later. Openverse indexes hundreds of millions of openly licensed images and audio tracks from Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, museums, Freesound and dozens of other sources, each tagged with its exact license. This actor turns a keyword search into a clean dataset of results, each one already carrying the license, the license URL and a ready-to-paste attribution string, so there is no manual lookup before using the asset.

Doing this search by hand means visiting each source site separately, reading its specific license terms, and writing the attribution sentence by hand, a process that does not scale past a handful of assets. A content team producing dozens of posts a week, or a developer populating a stock-asset library, needs the same lookup done at bulk, with the license and attribution already attached to each record so nothing gets used without the right credit.

Overview

Give the actor a search query and a media type (images or audio), and optionally a license, license-type or source filter, and it returns one record per result: title, creator, license, attribution text, provider, source, direct file URL and (for images) dimensions, or (for audio) duration. A 50-result run (the default) finishes in a few seconds. Cost is $0.0005 per result returned, a flat rate with no separate actor-start charge: a 1,000-result batch costs $0.50.

Supported inputs

• Search query (query, required) - any keyword or phrase, e.g. "mountain landscape", "piano", "vintage car".
• Media type (mediaType) - images (default) or audio.
• License filter (license) - comma-separated Creative Commons license codes: cc0, pdm, by, by-sa, by-nc, by-nd. Leave empty to return all licenses.
• License type filter (licenseType) - commercial (only licenses that allow commercial use) or modification (only licenses that allow derivative works), or empty for no restriction.
• Source filter (source) - restrict results to one provider, e.g. flickr, wikimedia, rawpixel, freesound.
• Max results (maxResults, 1 to 500, default 50) - total records to return.

Use cases

• Bloggers and content marketers - find free-to-use header images for posts, with the attribution text already generated to paste in the credit line.
• Course and e-learning creators - source openly licensed diagrams, photos and background music without risking a copyright strike on the platform.
• App and game developers - pull CC0 (public domain) sound effects and images that need no attribution at all, by filtering license=cc0.
• Researchers and archivists - search across Flickr, Wikimedia Commons and museum collections in one query instead of visiting each site separately.
• Marketing teams needing commercial-safe assets - filter licenseType=commercial to guarantee every result returned is cleared for commercial use.
• Podcast and video editors - search audio for background music or sound effects by mood keyword, filtering to cc0 when no attribution overhead is wanted in the show notes or video description.

How it works

The actor queries the public Openverse search API (api.openverse.org), the same open-source index that powers openverse.org, and maps each result into a flat record with the license, attribution text and direct file links already resolved. No login or API key is required because Openverse's search is a public, free API; the actor just structures the response into a dataset you can export or pipe elsewhere.

Input configuration

Mode 1: simple image search

{
  "query": "mountain landscape",
  "mediaType": "images",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Mode 2: commercial-safe, CC0-only audio

{
  "query": "piano",
  "mediaType": "audio",
  "license": "cc0",
  "licenseType": "commercial",
  "maxResults": 20
}

Mode 3: filtered by source, modification allowed

{
  "query": "vintage car",
  "mediaType": "images",
  "source": "flickr",
  "licenseType": "modification",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Output sample

Real output from a search for "mountain landscape":

{
  "id": "8c85412a-6d6d-4d42-b0d9-2d04867ab31b",
  "title": "Mountains landscape 1",
  "creator": "Joeri van Veen",
  "creatorUrl": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/47173113@N00",
  "license": "by-nc-nd",
  "licenseVersion": "2.0",
  "licenseUrl": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/",
  "attribution": "\"Mountains landscape 1\" by Joeri van Veen is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/.",
  "provider": "flickr",
  "source": "flickr",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/47173113@N00/9127271170",
  "imageUrl": "https://live.staticflickr.com/5457/9127271170_42c133847e_b.jpg",
  "height": 737,
  "width": 1024,
  "query": "mountain landscape"
}

A real audio result from a search for "piano" with license=cc0:

{
  "id": "0eb636a7-2bc4-483e-8ae6-52a97374cfc1",
  "title": "Piano C.wav",
  "creator": "pinkyfinger",
  "creatorUrl": "https://freesound.org/people/pinkyfinger",
  "license": "cc0",
  "licenseVersion": "1.0",
  "licenseUrl": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/",
  "attribution": "\"Piano C.wav\" by pinkyfinger is marked with CC0 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/.",
  "provider": "freesound",
  "source": "freesound",
  "fileType": "mp3",
  "audioUrl": "https://cdn.freesound.org/previews/68/68441_871124-hq.mp3",
  "duration": 1540,
  "query": "piano"
}

Key output fields

Field	Type	Description
id	String	Openverse's unique identifier for the asset
title	String	Asset title as catalogued
creator / creatorUrl	String	Original creator's name and profile link, when known
license / licenseVersion	String	Creative Commons license code and version
licenseUrl	String	Direct link to the license text
attribution	String	Ready-to-paste attribution sentence
provider / source	String	Which platform hosts the original (Flickr, Wikimedia, Freesound, etc.)
sourceUrl	String	Link back to the original listing
imageUrl (images)	String	Direct file URL
height / width (images)	Number	Dimensions in pixels
audioUrl (audio)	String	Direct file URL
duration (audio)	Number	Length in milliseconds
query	String	The search query that produced this record

Pricing

Event	Price
Result returned	$0.0005

Pay-per-result, no separate actor-start charge. A 1,000-result batch costs $0.50; the default 50-result run costs $0.025.

What makes this richer than the competition

Several other publishers wrap the same Openverse API:

• crawlerbros/pixabay-scraper charges $0.005 per actor start plus $0.005 per result on the Free tier, 10x this actor's per-result price.
• fortuitous_pirate/openverse-scraper charges $0.0125 per result plus a $0.001 start fee, 25x this actor's price.
• scrapers_lat/openverse-cc-media-scraper charges $0.0088 per result across every subscription tier, about 17x this actor's price.

This actor charges a flat $0.0005 per result with no separate start fee, by a wide margin the cheapest Openverse wrapper in the Store, while still returning full license, attribution and provider detail plus the same license, license-type and source filters the pricier competitors offer.

Notes & limitations

• Results depend entirely on what Openverse itself has indexed; this actor does not search any site Openverse does not already cover.
• creator, creatorUrl and some dimension fields come back empty when the original source did not supply them to Openverse; the actor never fills in a guess.
• The license and source filters only narrow results to values Openverse itself recognizes; an unsupported code returns zero results rather than an error.
• Always use the attribution field as provided rather than writing your own credit line: some licenses (by-nc, by-nd, by-sa) carry restrictions beyond plain attribution, and copying the generated text keeps the usage compliant.

FAQ

Do I need an Openverse or API key account? No, Openverse's search is public and free; the actor needs no credential from you.

Can I get only assets that allow commercial use? Yes, set licenseType to "commercial".

Can I get only public-domain assets with no attribution required? Yes, set license to "cc0" (public domain) or "pdm" (public domain mark).

Why are some results missing a thumbnail or dimensions? Because the original source did not provide that field to Openverse. The actor never invents a value for a missing field.

Can I restrict results to one provider, like just Wikimedia? Yes, set source to the provider name, e.g. "wikimedia".

Is the attribution text legally sufficient on its own? For most CC licenses, yes, pasting the attribution field as given meets the attribution requirement; always check the specific license (via licenseUrl) if you plan heavy commercial use.

For AI Agents & LLM Apps

This actor is callable from any MCP-compatible AI assistant through the Apify MCP server, and directly from code through the Apify API.

Via MCP (mcp.apify.com): add the Apify MCP server to your AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP client) and call the gio21/creative-commons-scraper actor by name with a query. The assistant gets back structured JSON, including ready-to-use attribution text, it can reason over directly.

Via API (run-sync-get-dataset-items), for a synchronous call that returns the dataset items in the same request:

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/gio21~creative-commons-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "mountain landscape", "mediaType": "images", "maxResults": 50}'

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Openverse, Creative Commons, or any of the content sources it indexes (Flickr, Wikimedia, Freesound, etc.). All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

SEO Keywords

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