WordPress Plugin & Theme Scraper — Installs, Downloads & Ratings

Extract the entire WordPress.org plugin & theme directory as structured data: active installs, total downloads, rating & review count, version, PHP/WordPress requirements, support-thread stats, author and dates. Search, browse by tag, or pull ranking feeds — clean JSON/CSV/Excel in seconds. Built for plugin market intelligence, competitive research and "plugin store optimization".

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What This Actor Does

The WordPress.org directory hosts 60,000+ plugins and thousands of themes — with the numbers that reveal market share and quality. This Actor turns it into a dataset. For each plugin/theme it returns:

• Reach — active installs and total downloads
• Quality — rating (0–5 and 0–100), review count, support threads and resolution rate
• Tech — current version, required & tested WordPress version, required PHP version
• Meta — author, homepage, tags, last-updated & added dates, description, download link and directory URL

Search by keyword, browse by tag, or pull ranking feeds (popular / new / updated / top-rated / featured) — paginated 100 at a time.

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Why Use This

• Plugin market intelligence. Active installs and downloads reveal real market share — essential for plugin developers, SaaS and agencies sizing a niche or competitor.
• "Plugin store optimization" (ASO for WordPress). Rating, reviews, version cadence and support resolution show where a listing wins or loses — the WordPress counterpart of App Store / Google Play ASO.
• Compatibility & risk research. Required PHP/WP versions and last-updated dates flag abandoned or risky plugins.
• Clean and free. Reads WordPress.org's official public API — no key, no anti-bot, no browser.

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Quick Start

Run it in the console (no code)

1. Choose Plugins or Themes.
2. Add Search terms (e.g. seo), Tags, and/or Browse feeds (popular, new, top-rated).
3. Set Max items, click Start, then export as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or push to Google Sheets, a webhook or a database.

Run it via API (Python)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

run_input = {"type": "plugins", "searchTerms": ["seo"], "browse": ["popular"], "maxItems": 500}

run = client.actor("YOUR_USERNAME/wordpress-directory-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

for p in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(p["name"], "·", p["activeInstalls"], "installs ·", p["ratingStars"], "★")

Size a niche (Python)

run = client.actor("YOUR_USERNAME/wordpress-directory-scraper").call(run_input={
    "type": "plugins", "searchTerms": ["backup"], "maxItems": 300,
})
rows = [p for p in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items() if p.get("activeInstalls")]
print("total installs in niche:", sum(p["activeInstalls"] for p in rows))
for p in sorted(rows, key=lambda x: -x["activeInstalls"])[:10]:
    print(p["name"], p["activeInstalls"], p["ratingStars"])

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Input Parameters

Field	Type	Description
type	string	plugins or themes.
searchTerms	array	Keywords to search.
tags	array	Directory tags to browse.
browse	array	Ranking feeds: popular, new, updated, top-rated, featured.
maxItems	integer	Max items across all sources. 0 = no limit.
maxPages	integer	Max pages per source (100 per page). Default 20.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy. Datacenter is enough (public API).

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Output

Each plugin/theme is one record:

{
  "type": "plugin",
  "slug": "seo-by-rank-math",
  "name": "Rank Math SEO – AI SEO Tools to Dominate SEO Rankings",
  "version": "1.0.279",
  "author": "Rank Math SEO",
  "activeInstalls": 4000000,
  "downloaded": 198548892,
  "rating": 96,
  "ratingStars": 4.8,
  "numRatings": 7507,
  "supportThreads": 41,
  "supportThreadsResolved": 30,
  "requiresWp": "6.7",
  "testedWp": "7.1.2",
  "requiresPhp": "7.4",
  "lastUpdated": "2026-09-22 7:45am GMT",
  "homepage": "https://rankmath.com/",
  "tags": ["seo", "sitemap", "schema"],
  "url": "https://wordpress.org/plugins/seo-by-rank-math/"
}

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Use Cases

1. Plugin/theme market intelligence

Size a niche by total installs and downloads, and rank competitors by market share and growth.

2. Competitive & ASO research

Compare ratings, review counts, version cadence and support resolution to position a listing and find gaps.

3. Compatibility & risk audits

Flag plugins that are outdated or incompatible (last-updated, requires/tested WP & PHP) for security and maintenance.

4. Lead generation for WP services

Find popular plugins/authors to target for partnerships, integrations or agency services.

5. Trend & ecosystem analysis

Track new and updated plugins over time to spot emerging categories.

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Tips

• Combine sources: mix searchTerms, tags and browse feeds in one run for broad coverage (results are deduped by slug).
• browse: ["popular"] is the fastest way to get the biggest plugins in the directory.
• ratingStars is the 0–5 rating; rating is the raw 0–100 value.
• Schedule it with Apify Schedules to track installs, versions and ratings over time.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need an account or key? No. The WordPress.org directory API is public — no login, key or anti-bot.

How current are active installs? Active installs are WordPress.org's own bucketed figure (e.g. 1M+, 4M+), updated by WordPress.

Plugins and themes both? Yes — set type to plugins or themes.

What export formats are supported? JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or via API — plus Google Sheets, webhooks, Make and Zapier.

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Legal & Responsible Use

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by WordPress, the WordPress Foundation or Automattic. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. It reads only the public WordPress.org directory API. Use reasonable request volumes and comply with applicable terms.