GitHub Star Gazer - Scrape GitHub Stargazers and Extract Contact Info

GitHub Star Gazer is an Apify Actor that collects every user who starred a GitHub repository and enriches their profile with contact information: email addresses, phone numbers, and social media profiles scraped from their personal websites.

Use it for developer lead generation, open-source community outreach, sales prospecting, and competitive intelligence on GitHub repositories.

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What It Does

1. Fetches all stargazers of any public GitHub repository with full pagination support
2. Enriches each profile via the GitHub API - name, bio, location, company, follower count, public repos
3. Scrapes the personal website listed on the GitHub profile to extract:
   • Email address (mailto links + regex fallback)
   • Phone number (tel links + regex fallback)
   • LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, TikTok profile URLs

The result is a ready-to-use contact list of developers who expressed interest in a specific technology or project.

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Key Features

Feature	Details
Full stargazer pagination	Collects every star, no artificial cap
GitHub profile enrichment	Name, bio, company, location, followers, public repos
Email extraction	From GitHub profile and personal website
Phone extraction	From personal website (tel links and regex)
Social media discovery	LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, TikTok
GitHub token support	Increases rate limit from 60 to 5,000 requests/hour
Max results limit	Set a cap for quick tests or cost control
Configurable enrichment	Toggle profile enrichment and website scraping independently

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Use Cases

• Sales prospecting: Build a contact list of developers who starred a competitor repo and reach out directly
• Developer outreach: Contact contributors or early adopters of an open-source project
• Community growth: Find active GitHub users in your niche who have public contact info
• Market research: Analyze who is watching a repository - company, location, follower count
• Talent sourcing: Identify developers interested in a specific technology stack

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Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
owner	string	Yes	-	GitHub username or organization (e.g. vercel)
repo	string	Yes	-	Repository name (e.g. next.js)
github_token	string	No	-	Personal Access Token - raises rate limit from 60 to 5,000 req/h
max_results	integer	No	0	Max stargazers to collect. 0 = unlimited
enrich_profiles	boolean	No	true	Fetch full profile data for each user via GitHub API
scrape_websites	boolean	No	true	Visit each personal website to extract contact info and social links

Getting a GitHub Token

1. Go to github.com/settings/tokens
2. Click Generate new token (classic)
3. Select the public_repo scope (read-only access is sufficient)
4. Copy the token and paste it into the github_token field

Without a token the actor is limited to 60 API requests/hour. For repositories with hundreds or thousands of stars, a GitHub token is strongly recommended.

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Output Data

Each record in the dataset represents one stargazer. Example output:

{
  ""repo_owner"": ""vercel"",
  ""repo_name"": ""next.js"",
  ""username"": ""johndoe"",
  ""github_id"": 1234567,
  ""name"": ""John Doe"",
  ""company"": ""Acme Corp"",
  ""location"": ""San Francisco, CA"",
  ""bio"": ""Full-stack developer. Open source enthusiast."",
  ""followers"": 342,
  ""following"": 120,
  ""public_repos"": 47,
  ""profile_url"": ""https://github.com/johndoe"",
  ""avatar_url"": ""https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/1234567"",
  ""blog"": ""https://johndoe.dev"",
  ""email"": ""john@example.com"",
  ""email_from_website"": ""contact@johndoe.dev"",
  ""phone_from_website"": ""415-555-0123"",
  ""linkedin"": ""https://www.linkedin.com/in/johndoe"",
  ""twitter"": ""https://twitter.com/johndoe"",
  ""instagram"": ""https://www.instagram.com/johndoe"",
  ""youtube"": null,
  ""reddit"": null,
  ""facebook"": null,
  ""tiktok"": null,
  ""starred_at"": ""2024-03-15T10:22:00Z""
}

Output Fields Reference

Field	Source	Description
username	GitHub API	GitHub login handle
github_id	GitHub API	Unique numeric GitHub user ID
name	GitHub API	Display name
company	GitHub API	Company field from GitHub profile
location	GitHub API	Location field from GitHub profile
bio	GitHub API	Profile bio text
followers / following	GitHub API	Follower and following counts
public_repos	GitHub API	Number of public repositories
profile_url	GitHub API	Link to the GitHub profile
blog	GitHub API	Personal website URL as listed on GitHub
email	GitHub API	Email if made public on the GitHub profile
email_from_website	Website scrape	Email address found on personal website
phone_from_website	Website scrape	Phone number found on personal website
linkedin	Website scrape	LinkedIn profile URL
twitter	Website scrape	Twitter / X profile URL
instagram	Website scrape	Instagram profile URL
youtube	Website scrape	YouTube channel URL
reddit	Website scrape	Reddit profile URL
facebook	Website scrape	Facebook profile URL
tiktok	Website scrape	TikTok profile URL
starred_at	GitHub API	ISO 8601 timestamp when the star was added

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How Website Scraping Works

When scrape_websites is enabled, the actor visits the URL in each user GitHub blog field and:

1. Parses the HTML with BeautifulSoup
2. Looks for mailto: anchor tags first, then falls back to regex scanning the full page text
3. Looks for tel: anchor tags first, then falls back to regex for phone numbers
4. Searches all anchor tags for known social media domain patterns (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, TikTok)

Only the first match per field is returned. The scraping step is skipped if the user has no personal website listed.

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Rate Limits and Performance

Condition	GitHub API Rate Limit
No token (unauthenticated)	60 requests / hour
With Personal Access Token	5,000 requests / hour

With enrich_profiles enabled, each stargazer costs 1 API call. A repo with 1,000 stars requires approximately 1,010 requests total (10 paginated stargazer pages + 1,000 profile lookups). A GitHub token is essential for repos with more than ~50 stars.

The actor automatically waits when a rate limit is hit and resumes when the reset window opens (up to 10 minutes). If the wait would exceed 10 minutes, the actor stops early and logs a warning with instructions to add a GitHub token.

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Tips

• Test with max_results set to 10 before running a full collection
• Set enrich_profiles: false and scrape_websites: false for a lightweight list of usernames only
• Export to CSV directly from the Apify Console for use in CRMs or email outreach tools
• Schedule the actor to run on a recurring basis to capture new stargazers as they appear

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