GitHub Issues & PR Tracker

What does GitHub Issues Tracker do?

GitHub Issues Tracker is an Apify Actor that monitors open and closed issues and pull requests across any public GitHub repository using the official GitHub REST API. It works as a repo bug tracker API, returning structured data on issue state, labels, assignees, reaction counts, and comment activity. Run it once to export a snapshot or schedule it to power a live GitHub open issues monitor for your team or portfolio.

No GitHub account is required for public repositories — an optional personal access token raises the rate limit from 60 to 5,000 requests per hour.

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Why use GitHub Issues Tracker?

• Developer tooling dashboards — aggregate open bugs, feature requests, and PR queues across an entire organization's repositories in one structured dataset.
• Open-source contribution tracking — find all good first issue or help wanted labels across multiple repos to route contributors automatically.
• Engineering KPI reporting — measure bug backlog size, average time-to-close, and comment engagement without manually querying GitHub's UI.
• Competitive and ecosystem intelligence — monitor issues in popular open-source libraries (React, VS Code, Kubernetes) to detect pain points and emerging patterns before they become trends.
• SLA and stale issue alerts — extract issues older than a threshold date and feed them into Slack alerts or project management tools.

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How to use GitHub Issues Tracker

1. Open the Actor on Apify and click Try for free.
2. Set repositories to a list of owner/repo strings (e.g. ["microsoft/vscode", "facebook/react"]).
3. Choose state: open, closed, or all.
4. Optionally add labels (comma-separated) and issueType (issues_only, prs_only, or all).
5. Set since to an ISO 8601 date to limit results to recently updated items.
6. Add a githubToken for high-volume runs (avoids the 60 req/hour anonymous limit).
7. Click Start — the dataset populates as each repository is queried.
8. Export as JSON or CSV, or connect to the GitHub issues tracker API endpoint.

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Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
repositories	array	yes	—	List of owner/repo strings to query
state	string		open	Filter by issue state: open, closed, or all
labels	string		—	Comma-separated label names (e.g. bug,good first issue)
issueType	string		all	all, issues_only, or prs_only
since	string		—	ISO 8601 cutoff — only items updated after this date
maxResults	integer		100	Max items per repository (1–1,000)
githubToken	string		—	Personal access token for 5,000 req/hour rate limit

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Output

Sample records from a GitHub open issues monitor run:

[
  {
    "repo": "microsoft/vscode",
    "issue_number": 218345,
    "type": "issue",
    "title": "Extension panel freezes on large workspaces",
    "state": "open",
    "body": "When opening a workspace with more than 50,000 files the Extensions panel becomes unresponsive...",
    "labels": ["bug", "performance"],
    "author": "dev_user_123",
    "assignees": ["teammate_a"],
    "reactions_total": 47,
    "comment_count": 12,
    "created_at": "2026-08-20T14:00:00Z",
    "updated_at": "2026-09-01T09:22:00Z",
    "closed_at": null,
    "url": "https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/218345",
    "is_locked": false,
    "milestone": "September 2026",
    "fetched_at": "2026-09-02T08:00:00Z"
  },
  {
    "repo": "facebook/react",
    "issue_number": 31102,
    "type": "pr",
    "title": "Fix concurrent rendering edge case in StrictMode",
    "state": "open",
    "body": "This PR addresses a race condition found in concurrent mode when...",
    "labels": ["CLA Signed"],
    "author": "contrib_xyz",
    "assignees": [],
    "reactions_total": 5,
    "comment_count": 3,
    "created_at": "2026-08-28T10:00:00Z",
    "updated_at": "2026-08-30T16:45:00Z",
    "closed_at": null,
    "url": "https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/31102",
    "is_locked": false,
    "milestone": null,
    "fetched_at": "2026-09-02T08:00:00Z"
  }
]

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Data fields

Field	Type	Description
repo	string	Full repository name (owner/repo)
issue_number	integer	Issue or PR number
type	string	issue or pr
title	string	Issue or PR title
state	string	open or closed
body	string	First 1,000 characters of the description
labels	array	List of label names
author	string	GitHub username of the creator
assignees	array	List of assigned usernames
reactions_total	integer	Total emoji reaction count
comment_count	integer	Number of comments
created_at	string	ISO 8601 creation timestamp
updated_at	string	ISO 8601 last-updated timestamp
closed_at	string	ISO 8601 close timestamp (null if open)
url	string	Direct link to the issue or PR
is_locked	boolean	Whether the thread is locked
milestone	string	Milestone title (if assigned)
fetched_at	string	ISO 8601 fetch timestamp

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Cost estimation

Pricing is Pay-Per-Event at $0.001 per issue or PR returned.

Run scenario	Items	Estimated cost
1 repo, 100 open issues	100	$0.10
5 repos, 100 issues each	500	$0.50
10 repos, all states, 200 each	2,000	$2.00
Daily org-wide bug monitor (10 repos)	~500/day	~$0.50/day

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FAQ

Do I need a GitHub account or API key to use this repo bug tracker API? No — public repositories are accessible without authentication. Adding a personal access token (free, no special scopes for public repos) raises the rate limit from 60 to 5,000 requests per hour, which is required for large multi-repo runs.

Can I track pull requests as well as issues? Yes. Set issueType to prs_only for PRs, issues_only for issues, or leave it as all to get both in one dataset.

How do I set up a live GitHub open issues monitor? Use Apify's scheduler to run this Actor on a cron schedule (e.g. daily at 08:00 UTC) and export results to a webhook, Google Sheets, or your own database via the Apify API.

Disclaimer: This Actor uses the official GitHub REST API and retrieves only publicly available data. Users are responsible for complying with GitHub's Terms of Service and API usage policies. Do not use to access private repositories without authorization or exceed rate limits in ways that violate GitHub's guidelines.

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Keywords: GitHub issues tracker, repo bug tracker API, GitHub open issues monitor, GitHub REST API, pull request tracker, open source contribution tracker, developer tools automation

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Related actors

• GitHub Repo Analytics — Stars, forks, and contributor activity for repos monitored with this actor
• GitHub CI Monitor — CI/CD workflow status alongside open issue and PR counts
• GitHub Trending Tracker — Discover trending repos then monitor their issue velocity with this actor

Feedback

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