🥞 StackOverflow Questions & Discussions Scraper

Search and extract StackOverflow programming questions, vote scores, answer counts, accepted answers, technology tags, and author reputation metrics in bulk.

Engineered for developer relations (DevRel), error diagnostic bots, LLM code assistants, and technology market share tracking.

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🥊 Why This Actor Beats the Competition

Feature	🥞 This Actor (litezero)	🐢 Headless Browser Scrapers	🔒 StackExchange Data Dumps
Speed	⚡ < 1.0 second / query	🐌 15–20 seconds / page	⏳ Gigabyte downloads, months stale
Pricing	💰 $1.20 / 1,000 questions (Free Platform Usage)	💸 High RAM/CPU cost ($8+/run)	💾 Expensive multi-GB cloud storage
Freshness	🔄 Real-time live questions	🚫 Cloudflare CAPTCHAs	🗓️ Updated only quarterly
Data Completeness	📦 Tags + Reputation + Accepted Answer + Dates	⚠️ Fragile DOM parsing	🧩 Complex multi-table relational schema
Setup Friction	🚀 Zero API keys required	🛠️ Proxy rotation & browser setup	💻 Requires local PostgreSQL server

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🛠️ Step-by-Step: How to Use

Method 1: Apify Web Console (No-Code)

1. Enter your search query (e.g. python asyncio, docker exit code 137, react hydration error).
2. Optional: Filter by specific tags (e.g. python, typescript, docker).
3. Select sorting (Highest Votes, Recent Activity, Newest Created, or Relevance).
4. Click Start and export results to JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Method 2: Python SDK

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run_input = {
    "query": "asyncio task exception was never retrieved",
    "tagged": "python",
    "sort": "votes",
    "maxResults": 20
}

run = client.actor("litezero/stackoverflow-questions-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(f"[{item['score']} votes] {item['title']} ({item['answer_count']} answers)")

Method 3: Node.js SDK

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('litezero/stackoverflow-questions-scraper').call({
    query: 'CORS policy preflight',
    tagged: 'javascript',
    maxResults: 15
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Retrieved ${items.length} questions.`);

Method 4: REST API / cURL

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/litezero~stackoverflow-questions-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "kubernetes pod crashloopbackoff", "maxResults": 10}'

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📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
query	string	Yes	"python asyncio"	Search keywords or error message.
tagged	string	No	"python"	Semicolon-delimited tag filter (e.g. python, docker).
sort	string	No	"votes"	Sort order: votes, activity, creation, relevance.
maxResults	integer	No	20	Max questions to retrieve (1–100).

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📤 Output Data Dictionary & Sample JSON

{
  "question_id": 48152528,
  "title": "multiprocessing vs multithreading vs asyncio",
  "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48152528/multiprocessing-vs-multithreading-vs-asyncio",
  "is_answered": true,
  "view_count": 142050,
  "answer_count": 8,
  "score": 420,
  "tags": [
    "python",
    "multithreading",
    "multiprocessing",
    "python-asyncio"
  ],
  "owner_name": "tech_lead_alex",
  "owner_reputation": 18450,
  "owner_user_id": 829104,
  "owner_profile_url": "https://stackoverflow.com/users/829104/tech-lead-alex",
  "creation_date_iso": "2018-01-08T12:00:00.000Z",
  "last_activity_date_iso": "2024-03-12T15:20:00.000Z",
  "accepted_answer_id": 48152700,
  "scraped_at": "2026-10-04T06:00:00.000Z"
}

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💡 Top Commercial Use Cases

1. DevRel & Community Monitoring: Track emerging developer questions, confusion points, and missing documentation for developer tools and libraries.
2. Automated Error Diagnostic Bots: Match runtime error stack traces to top-voted StackOverflow solutions inside IDEs and CI/CD pipelines.
3. LLM Technical Grounding: Build specialized coding RAG pipelines with high-reputation community answers and code snippets.