Chrome Extension Reviews Scraper

Extract reviews, ratings, metadata and developer replies from Chrome Web Store extension pages — no API key required.

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🔍 What Is This Actor?

Chrome Extension Reviews Scraper is an Apify Actor that automatically collects structured data from any Chrome Web Store extension page. It scrapes both the extension metadata (ratings, user count, version, category) and the user reviews (text, stars, date, helpful votes, developer replies).

Ideal for:

• 📊 Extension developers monitoring user feedback and sentiment
• 🕵️ Competitive intelligence — analyze what users love or hate about rival extensions
• 🔬 UX researchers identifying pain points and feature requests from real users
• 🤖 AI/ML training data — build sentiment or NLP datasets from real product reviews
• 📈 Market analysts tracking adoption trends and satisfaction scores over time

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⚡ Features

Feature	Details
📦 Extension metadata	Name, developer, rating, user count, version, size, category, description, icon
⭐ Star breakdown	Counts per star rating (5★ / 4★ / 3★ / 2★ / 1★)
💬 User reviews	Reviewer name, star rating, full review text, date, helpful votes
🗣️ Developer replies	Captures developer response text and reply date
📄 Pagination	Automatically scrapes all review pages until your limit is reached
🔢 Bulk input	Multiple extension URLs or IDs in a single run
🔽 Sort control	Most Helpful or Most Recent
🌟 Star filter	Scrape only 1★, 2★, 3★, 4★ or 5★ reviews
🔒 Proxy support	Residential proxy routing (required — see below)

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🚀 Quick Start

Option 1 — Extension URLs

Paste one or more Chrome Web Store URLs into Start URLs:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/grammarly/kbfnbcaeplbcioakkpcpgfkobkghlhen

Option 2 — Extension IDs

Paste the 32-character extension IDs directly into Extension IDs:

cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm
kbfnbcaeplbcioakkpcpgfkobkghlhen

Tip: The extension ID is the last segment of the URL after /detail/extension-name/.

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🎛️ Input Configuration

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	Array	—	Chrome Web Store extension URLs
extensionIds	Array	—	Raw extension IDs (32 lowercase chars)
scrapeReviews	Boolean	true	Whether to scrape user reviews
maxReviews	Integer	100	Max reviews per extension. 0 = unlimited
reviewSortBy	String	helpful	helpful or recent
filterByStars	Integer	—	Filter to a specific star rating (1–5)
proxyConfiguration	Object	RESIDENTIAL	Proxy settings (residential required)

Example Input JSON

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm" }
  ],
  "scrapeReviews": true,
  "maxReviews": 50,
  "reviewSortBy": "recent",
  "filterByStars": 1,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

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📦 Output Format

The dataset contains two record types distinguished by the type field. Both types are stored in the same dataset.

Extension Record (type: "extension")

One record per extension, containing full metadata.

{
  "type": "extension",
  "extensionId": "cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm",
  "extensionName": "uBlock Origin",
  "extensionUrl": "https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm",
  "developer": "Raymond Hill",
  "developerUrl": "https://chromewebstore.google.com/publisher/...",
  "averageRating": 4.8,
  "totalRatings": 52341,
  "userCount": "10,000,000+ users",
  "version": "1.61.2",
  "updatedDate": "January 15, 2025",
  "size": "6.95MiB",
  "category": "Productivity",
  "description": "An efficient blocker. Easy on CPU and memory...",
  "iconUrl": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/...",
  "ratingBreakdown": { "5": 44200, "4": 3100, "3": 1200, "2": 800, "1": 2041 },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-03-13T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Review Record (type: "review")

One record per individual user review.

{
  "type": "review",
  "extensionId": "cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm",
  "extensionName": "uBlock Origin",
  "extensionUrl": "https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm",
  "reviewerName": "John D.",
  "reviewerUrl": "https://google.com/maps/contrib/...",
  "rating": 5,
  "reviewText": "Best ad blocker out there. Lightweight, reliable, and completely open source. My browser feels faster with it.",
  "reviewDate": "January 10, 2025",
  "helpfulCount": 142,
  "developerReply": null,
  "developerReplyDate": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-03-13T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Output Fields Reference

Field	Type	Description
type	string	"extension" or "review"
extensionId	string	32-char Chrome extension ID
extensionName	string	Extension display name
extensionUrl	string	Full Chrome Web Store URL
developer	string	Publisher name
developerUrl	string	Developer Store profile URL
averageRating	number	Average star rating (1.0–5.0)
totalRatings	integer	Total count of star ratings
userCount	string	Active users string, e.g. "10,000,000+ users"
version	string	Current version, e.g. "1.61.2"
updatedDate	string	Last updated date
size	string	Package size, e.g. "6.95MiB"
category	string	Store category
description	string	Full extension description
iconUrl	string	Extension icon URL
ratingBreakdown	object	{ "5": N, "4": N, ... }
reviewerName	string	(review) Reviewer display name
reviewerUrl	string	(review) Reviewer Google profile URL
rating	integer	(review) Stars given (1–5)
reviewText	string	(review) Full review body
reviewDate	string	(review) Date of the review
helpfulCount	integer	(review) Helpful vote count
developerReply	string	(review) Developer reply text, if any
developerReplyDate	string	(review) Date of developer reply
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 scrape timestamp

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🔒 Proxy Configuration

Residential proxies are required. Chrome Web Store actively blocks requests from datacenter IP ranges. Without a residential proxy, you will receive 403 errors or empty responses.

Configure via the Proxy Configuration input field:

{
  "useApifyProxy": true,
  "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
}

Apify Residential proxies rotate automatically and provide global coverage.

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💡 Use Cases & Examples

Monitor your own extension's reviews

Track user feedback in real time. Pipe the output into a Google Sheet, Slack notification, or email digest whenever new 1-star reviews appear.

Competitive analysis

Scrape the top 10 extensions in your category. Compare average ratings, review volume, and recurring complaints. Discover gaps your extension can fill.

Sentiment analysis & NLP training

The structured reviewText + rating fields make this dataset ideal for training sentiment classifiers, fine-tuning LLMs, or benchmarking NLP pipelines on real product data.

Extension market research

Aggregate userCount, averageRating, and ratingBreakdown across hundreds of extensions to map the competitive landscape of any niche.

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⚙️ Technical Notes

Rendering

Chrome Web Store requires full JavaScript execution. This Actor uses Playwright with headless Chromium — CheerioCrawler or raw HTTP will not work here.

Selector stability

Google uses obfuscated/generated class names (e.g. nDnNFb, Mqkyhb) that may change without notice. This Actor relies on aria-label attributes, time elements, and semantic HTML which are far more stable across Google UI updates.

If data fields appear empty after a Google update

1. Run the Actor with a screenshot enabled (add await page.screenshot() temporarily)
2. Inspect the review container in DevTools
3. Update the page.evaluate() selector logic in src/main.js
4. Key stable anchors: [aria-label*="out of 5"], time, [itemprop="description"], a[href*="/category/"]

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📊 Performance & Costs

Metric	Estimate
Speed	~10–20 records/min (browser overhead)
Memory	1024 MB recommended
Cost per result	~$0.008

Cost scales with number of reviews. Extension metadata records are cheap; long review lists on popular extensions may take several minutes.

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📝 License

Apache 2.0 — free to use, modify, and distribute.