Chrome Web Store Scraper

Scrape Chrome extensions from the Chrome Web Store. Pull comprehensive extension metadata — name, rating, review count, user count, version, full manifest, permissions, category, developer info, screenshots, and website URL. Search by keyword or provide specific extension IDs.

Features

• Three input modes: by extension ID, by URL, or by search query
• Rich data extraction: 25 fields per extension including the full parsed manifest.json
• No proxy needed: Chrome Web Store serves to datacenter IPs cleanly
• Fast extraction: Data is embedded server-side in the HTML — no JavaScript rendering required
• Permissions analysis: Extracts permissions array from the manifest for security audits

Use Cases

• Extension research and competitive analysis
• Security auditing — identify extensions with broad permissions (<all_urls>, webRequest, etc.)
• Developer directory building
• Chrome extension market research and trend tracking
• Finding extensions by category or keyword

Input Configuration

Field	Type	Description
extensionIds	Array	List of extension IDs (32-char alphanumeric) to scrape directly
startUrls	Array	Chrome Web Store URLs (detail pages, search pages, or category pages)
searchQuery	String	Search term to find extensions (e.g. "password manager", "ad blocker")
maxItems	Integer	Maximum number of records to return (0 = unlimited, default 20)

Provide one of extensionIds, startUrls, or searchQuery. If none are provided, the actor runs a default search for "productivity".

Example: Scrape by Extension ID

{
    "extensionIds": ["cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm"],
    "maxItems": 1
}

Example: Search by Keyword

{
    "searchQuery": "password manager",
    "maxItems": 20
}

Example: Specific Store URLs

{
    "startUrls": [
        "https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm",
        "https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/vpn"
    ],
    "maxItems": 50
}

Output Fields

Each result record contains:

Field	Type	Description
extension_id	String	Unique 32-char extension ID
url	String	Chrome Web Store detail page URL
name	String	Extension display name
short_description	String	Short description shown in search results
long_description	String	Full description from the detail page
rating	Number	Average user rating (0–5)
review_count	Integer	Total number of user reviews
user_count	Integer	Approximate number of active users
version	String	Current published version
size	String	Extension file size (e.g. "4.27MiB")
category	String	Primary category path (e.g. "productivity/workflow")
website_url	String	Developer's website URL
icon_url	String	Extension icon URL
header_image_url	String	Header/marquee image URL
promo_image_url	String	Promotional tile image URL
screenshots	Array	Screenshot image URLs
developer_email	String	Developer contact email
developer_name	String	Developer display name
developer_id	String	Developer identifier
manifest	Object	Full parsed manifest.json
permissions	Array	Extension permissions list
languages	Array	Supported language names
published_at	String	Original publish date (ISO 8601)
updated_at	String	Last update date (ISO 8601)
scraped_at	String	Scrape timestamp (ISO 8601)

Sample Output

{
    "extension_id": "cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm",
    "url": "https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm",
    "name": "uBlock Origin",
    "short_description": "Finally, an efficient blocker. Easy on CPU and memory.",
    "rating": 4.6973,
    "review_count": 35453,
    "user_count": 14000000,
    "version": "1.71.0",
    "size": "4.27MiB",
    "category": "make_chrome_yours/privacy",
    "developer_email": "ubo@raymondhill.net",
    "developer_name": "Raymond Hill (gorhill)",
    "permissions": ["alarms", "contextMenus", "privacy", "storage", "tabs", "webRequest", "webRequestBlocking", "<all_urls>"],
    "published_at": "2014-06-24T00:52:35.000Z",
    "updated_at": "2026-05-12T05:16:59.000Z",
    "scraped_at": "2026-06-12T03:00:10.000Z"
}

Technical Notes

• Data is extracted from server-rendered AF_initDataCallback script blocks — no browser rendering needed
• core_crawler (CheerioCrawler) with concurrency 3 to respect Google rate limits
• No proxy required — datacenter IPs work fine
• Memory: 512 MB is sufficient for most runs
• Timeout: 4 hours default (plenty for bulk runs)