NPM Package Scraper — Search, Downloads, Maintainers, Dependents, Versions & SBOM Data

Discover and export every NPM package matching a keyword, maintainer, scope or direct name. For each package: name, version, description, keywords, license, repository URL, homepage, npm URL, full maintainers list, weekly + monthly + yearly download counts, dependents count, deprecation status, runtime + dev + peer dependencies, file engines, exports map, and full version history with publish dates.

Built on the official open NPM Registry API + npmjs downloads stats API — no token, no proxy, no scraping.

Perfect for developer-tool competitive intelligence, dependency security & SBOM workflows, open-source maintainer outreach, sponsorship targeting, package marketplace seeding, and any 2026 JavaScript / Node.js ecosystem analytics.

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🚀 What does this NPM scraper do?

Two complementary input modes — combine them or use one alone:

Mode	When to use
Search Terms	Discover packages matching a keyword, scope, maintainer or keyword tag — paginated up to thousands of results per query
Package Names	You already know which packages — pass exact names (including scoped @org/pkg)

For each package, the actor combines three sources in one record:

1. Search snippet — search score, dependents count, basic downloads
2. Registry full doc (registry.npmjs.org/{pkg}) — full metadata, all versions, dist info, dependencies, maintainers
3. Downloads stats (api.npmjs.org/downloads/*) — last-day / week / month / year point counts + optional daily history series

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💡 Use cases

• Devtool competitive intel — find every JS package mentioning react + chart and rank by weekly downloads
• OSS sponsorship outreach — pull every popular package's maintainers + GitHub repository URL → CRM
• Dependency security / SBOM — feed package metadata + dependency tree into a vulnerability monitor
• Package marketplace seeding — discover every Apache-2.0 / MIT package in a niche above 10k downloads
• Maintainer talent intel — find every maintainer of @apify/* packages for recruiting / partnership
• Trend monitoring — track weekly download deltas with fetchDownloadsHistory to surface fast-growing packages
• Migration analysis — pull every package using a deprecated dep and prioritize outreach
• AI training data — every package's README + description is high-quality NL data about JS APIs
• OSS health dashboards — combine deprecation status + last-publish-date + maintainer count → "is this package alive?"

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⚙️ Input configuration

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchTerms	string[]	[]	NPM registry search queries (paginated 250/page).
packageNames	string[]	[]	Direct package names (incl. @scope/name).
maintainer	string	""	Search-only filter: maintainer:<username>.
scope	string	""	Search-only filter: scope:<scope> (without @).
keywords	string[]	[]	Search-only filter: keywords:<tag> for each entry.
maxResultsPerSearch	integer	100	Hard cap per search term.
fetchPackageDetails	boolean	true	Pull full registry doc per package — adds maintainers, dist-tags, repository, license, version history, dependencies, deprecation, file engines, exports.
fetchDownloadsStats	boolean	true	Add last-day / week / month / year download counts via the npmjs stats API.
fetchDownloadsHistory	boolean	false	Pull per-day downloads time series — adds downloadsHistory: [{day,downloads},…].
downloadsHistoryRange	string	"last-month"	Range for history (last-week / last-month / last-year or YYYY-MM-DD:YYYY-MM-DD).
fetchReadme	boolean	false	Include the package's raw README markdown in each record (requires fetchPackageDetails).
minMonthlyDownloads	integer	0	Client-side floor — drop packages below this monthly download count.
includeDeprecated	boolean	true	Set to false to skip packages marked deprecated by maintainers.
minVersionPublishDate	string	null	Drop packages whose latest version was published before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).

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📦 Output fields

Field	Description	Example
name	Package name	"apify"
scope	@scope (if scoped)	"@apify"
version	Latest published version	"3.7.2"
description	Short description	"The scalable web crawling..."
keywords	Author-supplied keywords	["headless","chrome","puppeteer"]
license	SPDX license ID	"Apache-2.0"
homepage	Project homepage	"https://docs.apify.com/sdk/js"
repositoryUrl	Source repository URL	"https://github.com/apify/apify-sdk-js"
repositoryType	git, svn, etc.	"git"
bugsUrl	Bug tracker URL	"https://github.com/.../issues"
npmUrl	NPM page URL	"https://www.npmjs.com/package/apify"
publishedAt	Latest version publish date	"2026-05-18T..."
createdAt	Original creation date	"2017-11-...":
lastModified	Last modification	"2026-05-18T..."
maintainers	List of maintainer usernames	["mtrunkat","jancurn"]
maintainersCount	Count	11
publisherUsername	Last publisher	"GitHub Actions"
author	Author display	"Apify Technologies s.r.o."
distTags	All dist-tags	{"latest":"3.7.2","beta":"3.8.0-beta.1"}
versionCount	Total published versions	1082
versionHistory	All versions + publish dates	[{version,publishedAt}, …]
engines	Node/npm engine constraints	{"node":">=18"}
exports	Package exports map	{...}
main	Main entry point	"build/index.js"
type	"module" / "commonjs"	"module"
dependencies	Runtime deps	{...}
devDependencies	Dev deps	{...}
peerDependencies	Peer deps	{...}
optionalDependencies	Optional deps	{...}
dependencyCount	Runtime dep count	12
deprecated	Deprecation message	null
isDeprecated	Bool	false
tarballUrl	Direct tarball	"https://registry.npmjs.org/.../apify-3.7.2.tgz"
unpackedSize	Unpacked size in bytes	1234567
fileCount	File count in tarball	42
shasum	Tarball SHA-1	"abc..."
integrity	SRI integrity hash	"sha512-..."
dailyDownloads	Last-day downloads	1247
weeklyDownloads	Last-week downloads	44630
monthlyDownloads	Last-month downloads	153258
yearlyDownloads	Last-year downloads	1900000
downloadsHistory	Per-day series (optional)	[{day:"2026-05-01",downloads:5200}, …]
dependentsCount	Packages depending on this	77
searchScore	NPM search relevance score	1422.05
readme	Full README markdown (optional)	"# Apify SDK\n…"
scrapedAt	UTC scrape timestamp	"2026-05-18T07:30:00Z"

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🧪 Example inputs

1. Top scraping packages with full stats

{
  "searchTerms": ["scraper", "crawler", "puppeteer"],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 50,
  "fetchPackageDetails": true,
  "fetchDownloadsStats": true,
  "minMonthlyDownloads": 1000
}

2. All packages in the @apify scope

{
  "searchTerms": ["scope:apify"],
  "scope": "apify",
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 500
}

3. Direct package list with downloads history

{
  "packageNames": ["react", "vue", "svelte", "solid-js", "preact", "lit"],
  "fetchPackageDetails": true,
  "fetchDownloadsStats": true,
  "fetchDownloadsHistory": true,
  "downloadsHistoryRange": "last-year"
}

4. Fresh packages only (published in 2026)

{
  "searchTerms": ["typescript starter"],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 200,
  "fetchPackageDetails": true,
  "minVersionPublishDate": "2026-01-01"
}

5. Healthy + non-deprecated React UI libraries

{
  "searchTerms": ["react component library"],
  "keywords": ["react", "ui"],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 200,
  "includeDeprecated": false,
  "minMonthlyDownloads": 10000
}

6. SBOM-style: full dependency map for a list of packages

{
  "packageNames": ["next", "@types/react", "tailwindcss", "drizzle-orm"],
  "fetchPackageDetails": true,
  "fetchDownloadsStats": false,
  "fetchReadme": true
}

7. OSS sponsorship outreach: maintainers of top scraping libs

{
  "searchTerms": ["scraper", "crawler"],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 1000,
  "fetchPackageDetails": true,
  "fetchDownloadsStats": true,
  "minMonthlyDownloads": 5000,
  "includeDeprecated": false
}

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🧠 How it works

1. Search → GET https://registry.npmjs.org/-/v1/search?text=<query>&size=250&from=N paginates 250 packages per page.
2. Per-package full doc → GET https://registry.npmjs.org/<name> returns every published version + repository + maintainers + license + time map.
3. Downloads point stats → GET https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/point/<range>/<name> for each of last-day, last-week, last-month, last-year.
4. Downloads time series → GET https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/range/<range>/<name> returns one entry per day.
5. Dedup — names are tracked across search terms and direct lists to avoid double-processing.

No authentication. NPM's registry + stats APIs are public by design.

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🛑 Limits & notes

• NPM stats API rate limit: ~5 req/sec per IP under normal conditions. The actor uses sequential per-package enrichment with backoff retries.
• dependentsCount in the search snippet is approximate; for exact dependents enumeration use the https://www.npmjs.com/browse/depended/{pkg} page (not yet supported — open a feature request).
• readme can be large (some packages ship 50+ KB markdown). Disable for large runs unless needed.
• Scoped private packages are not returned. Public scopes (@types/*, @apify/*, etc.) are fully accessible.
• Search relevance score is NPM's internal ranking — useful for ordering but not directly comparable across queries.

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💰 Pricing

Monetized via pay-per-event on Apify — pay per package record saved. NPM registry + stats APIs are free.

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❓ FAQ

Does this work for private NPM registries (GitHub Packages, JFrog)? Not by default. The actor targets the public registry.npmjs.org. Open an issue to add an auth_token + custom registry URL feature.

Can I get exact lists of packages that depend on package X? Not yet — NPM no longer exposes a stable "dependents" API. The search snippet returns an approximate count. For full reverse-dependency enumeration consider GitHub code search.

Can I export to CSV / Excel? Yes — every Apify dataset can be exported in CSV, Excel, XML, JSONL, or RSS from the run page or via the API.

How is this different from npm-registry-fetch or pacote? Those are Node libraries to call the same endpoints from your own code. This actor adds: cross-source merging, pagination guardrails, normalized output, optional download history, deprecation/staleness filtering and Apify-native scheduling, webhooks, dataset views.

Does it cover PyPI / RubyGems / Cargo / Maven? No — JavaScript NPM only. Each ecosystem can be added as a sibling actor.

Does it download tarballs? No — only metadata. tarballUrl is provided for downstream fetching if needed.

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🔗 Related actors

• logiover/github-repository-scraper — combine NPM repositoryUrl with GitHub for stars + contributors
• logiover/website-contact-scraper — enrich homepage URLs with maintainer contact emails for outreach
• logiover/sitemap-to-url-crawler — crawl each package's docs site for additional content
• logiover/devto-articles-scraper — track how often each package is discussed on Dev.to

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🆘 Support

Need PyPI, RubyGems, Cargo or Maven equivalent? Open an issue on the actor's Apify page.

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Changelog

• 2026-05-20 — Maintenance pass: reviewed the input schema and default values for a smooth one-click start, and rebuilt the Actor on the latest base image.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-20.