MELPA Emacs Package Scraper - Extract Metadata & Download Analytics

Extract comprehensive metadata and download statistics from the MELPA (Milkman Emacs Lisp Package Archive) repository. This Actor retrieves package names, source repositories, VCS fetchers, included files, and download counts for every Emacs package distributed through MELPA.

Whether you are building an Emacs ecosystem dashboard, researching package popularity trends, or curating a custom package list, this tool delivers structured data with zero configuration required.

Use Cases

• Emacs ecosystem analytics — Track package popularity, identify trending repositories, and analyze download distributions across the Emacs community.
• Package curation — Build custom Emacs configurations by filtering packages by repository, fetcher type, or download volume.
• Market research — Understand which Emacs packages are most downloaded to prioritize development or tooling investments.
• Data enrichment — Feed MELPA metadata into BI tools, dashboards, or downstream data pipelines for further analysis.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
maxItems	Number	Yes	Maximum number of packages to extract (default: 100)
proxyConfiguration	Object	No	Proxy configuration for requests

Output

The Actor outputs a dataset with the following fields:

{
  "name": "magit",
  "repo": "magit/magit",
  "fetcher": "github",
  "files": "(:defaults \"lisp/\")",
  "branch": "main",
  "url": "",
  "oldNames": "",
  "downloads": 5197709
}

Field	Type	Description
name	String	Package name
repo	String	Source repository identifier
fetcher	String	VCS fetcher (github, gitlab, sourcehut, hg, etc.)
files	String	Files included as a string representation
branch	String	Git branch or commit reference
url	String	Custom source URL if provided
oldNames	String	Former package names as comma-separated list
downloads	Integer	Total download count from MELPA

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.001 per package extracted.

Limitations

• MELPA serves package metadata via a public JSON API with no authentication required.
• Download counts are aggregated totals from MELPA and may not reflect real-time usage.
• Packages with no download history will report 0 downloads.

FAQ

Q: Do I need an API key? A: No. MELPA provides open access to both recipes.json and download_counts.json.

Q: How many packages are available? A: MELPA hosts approximately 9,000 Emacs packages. Set maxItems to extract the full catalog or a subset.

Q: What happens if a package has no download data? A: The downloads field will be set to 0.

Changelog

• v1.0.0 — Initial release