GitHub Trending Scraper

Scrape trending repositories and developers from GitHub Trending. Get full metadata including star counts, forks, contributors, programming language, and stars gained during the trending period — all as clean, structured JSON ready for pipelines, dashboards, or LLM workflows.

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What This Actor Does

GitHub Trending is one of the most reliable signals for discovering new open-source projects, tracking developer activity, and spotting which technologies are gaining momentum. This actor automates full extraction of the trending page — both repositories and developers — with support for language filtering, date range selection, and spoken language filters.

• Trending Repositories — extract rank, full name, owner, description, language, total stars, total forks, stars gained in the period, and top contributors
• Trending Developers — extract rank, username, display name, avatar, and their featured popular repository with description
• Language Filters — narrow results to any programming language GitHub supports (Python, TypeScript, Rust, Go, etc.)
• Date Range — choose daily, weekly, or monthly trending windows
• Spoken Language — filter repos by their README/documentation language (English, Chinese, Japanese, etc.)
• Zero-Config Defaults — runs out of the box with no configuration required; defaults to daily trending repositories across all languages

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Input Configuration

Field	Type	Default	Description
type	string	"repositories"	What to scrape: "repositories" or "developers"
language	string	""	Programming language filter (e.g., "python", "rust"). Empty = all languages
dateRange	string	"daily"	Trending window: "daily", "weekly", or "monthly"
spokenLanguage	string	""	ISO 639-1 spoken language code (e.g., "en", "zh"). Only applies to repositories. Empty = all

Example Input — Trending Python repos this week:

{
  "type": "repositories",
  "language": "python",
  "dateRange": "weekly",
  "spokenLanguage": ""
}

Example Input — Trending developers in Rust:

{
  "type": "developers",
  "language": "rust",
  "dateRange": "daily",
  "spokenLanguage": ""
}

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Output Schema

Repository Output Example

{
  "rank": 1,
  "name": "openai/whisper",
  "owner": "openai",
  "repoName": "whisper",
  "url": "https://github.com/openai/whisper",
  "description": "Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision",
  "language": "Python",
  "stars": 73500,
  "forks": 8900,
  "starsToday": 412,
  "builtBy": [
    {
      "username": "rbreaves",
      "avatarUrl": "https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/1234567",
      "profileUrl": "https://github.com/rbreaves"
    }
  ],
  "extractedAt": "2026-03-11T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Developer Output Example

{
  "rank": 1,
  "username": "torvalds",
  "displayName": "Linus Torvalds",
  "url": "https://github.com/torvalds",
  "avatarUrl": "https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/1024025",
  "popularRepo": "linux",
  "popularRepoDescription": "Linux kernel source tree",
  "popularRepoUrl": "https://github.com/torvalds/linux",
  "extractedAt": "2026-03-11T12:00:00.000Z"
}

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Use Cases

• Tech Trend Monitoring — track which languages and frameworks are gaining momentum over time by running the actor daily and storing results
• Developer Outreach — identify trending project maintainers for partnership, sponsorship, or hiring outreach
• Content Creation — automatically populate "trending repos this week" newsletters or blog posts
• Market Research — understand which open-source ecosystems are growing, useful for product planning or investment research
• Portfolio Discovery — surface new libraries or tools worth evaluating before they go mainstream
• Competitive Intelligence — watch when competitors or competing technologies appear on trending lists
• LLM Context Enrichment — feed trending repo data into AI workflows to answer questions about what's popular on GitHub right now

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How It Works

The actor uses a lightweight CheerioCrawler (no browser, no Playwright) because GitHub's trending page is server-rendered HTML — no JavaScript execution is needed. This makes runs fast and cost-effective.

1. Constructs the appropriate GitHub Trending URL based on your inputs
2. Fetches the page through Apify's proxy infrastructure (bypasses rate limits, ensures reliability)
3. Parses article.Box-row elements for repositories, or article elements for developers using Cheerio
4. Extracts all fields including the star counts, forks, language badges, and contributor avatars
5. Charges one repo-scraped event per result (typically 25 results per run — GitHub shows up to 25 trending items)
6. Pushes all results to the Apify dataset as clean, flat JSON records

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Pricing

This actor uses Pay-Per-Event billing: $0.0006 per item (repository or developer) scraped. A full trending page run scrapes up to 25 items and costs approximately $0.015 per run. The first 500 events are free — you can run the actor many times before paying.

Pricing includes all platform compute costs — no hidden fees.

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Related Actors

• Hacker News Scraper — scrape stories, comments, and user profiles from Hacker News with full thread support
• Reddit Scraper — extract posts, comments, and subreddit data from Reddit

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Frequently Asked Questions

How many results does each run return?

GitHub Trending displays up to 25 repositories or developers per page. Each actor run scrapes exactly one trending page, so you'll get between 0 and 25 results depending on how many are currently trending for your filters.

Why did I get 0 results?

This can happen if you use a very specific language + spoken language combination that has no trending results today. Try removing filters (set language and spokenLanguage to empty strings) to verify the actor is working, then narrow down your filters.

Does this work with all programming languages?

Yes — any language slug that GitHub Trending supports works. Use the exact slug from the GitHub Trending URL. For example, https://github.com/trending/typescript uses the slug typescript. If an invalid language is provided, GitHub redirects to the all-languages page.

Can I schedule this to run automatically?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run the actor daily, weekly, or on any cron schedule. Combine with Apify Webhooks or the API to pipe results into your own database or notification system.

What does starsToday mean for weekly/monthly runs?

The starsToday field reflects stars gained during the selected dateRange period — not necessarily just today. For weekly runs it's stars this week, for monthly runs it's stars this month. The field name reflects its origin in GitHub's UI text.

Is GitHub Trending scraping allowed?

GitHub's terms of service permit automated access for personal and research purposes. This actor uses Apify's proxy infrastructure to ensure responsible, non-abusive access patterns. Do not use this for commercial data resale without reviewing GitHub's terms.

Can I get more than 25 results?

No — GitHub only shows 25 items per trending page. If you need broader coverage, combine multiple runs with different language or date range filters.