StackOverflow Scraper

Scrape questions from StackOverflow and any StackExchange site. Get hot questions, search by topic, or filter by tags. Returns titles, scores, view counts, answers, and body excerpts. Uses the official StackExchange API v2.3 -- no browser needed.

What data does it extract?

Field	Description
questionId	Unique question ID
title	Question title
link	Full URL to the question page
score	Net vote score (upvotes minus downvotes)
answerCount	Number of answers
viewCount	Total view count
isAnswered	Whether the question has an accepted or upvoted answer
tags	List of tags (e.g. ["python", "pandas"])
owner.name	Author's display name
owner.reputation	Author's reputation score
creationDate	When the question was posted (ISO 8601)
lastActivityDate	Last activity timestamp (ISO 8601)
body	Question body text (HTML stripped)

Use cases

• Developer trend tracking -- Monitor which technologies are trending based on question volume and votes.
• Content creation -- Find popular questions to create blog posts, tutorials, or YouTube videos around.
• Knowledge base building -- Pull top-voted questions and answers for internal team wikis.
• Competitive analysis -- Compare question activity across competing frameworks or libraries.
• Research datasets -- Build datasets of programming Q&A data for NLP or ML projects.

How to use

Get trending hot questions:

{
    "mode": "hot",
    "maxResults": 20
}

Search for a specific topic:

{
    "mode": "search",
    "searchQuery": "async await best practices",
    "sort": "relevance",
    "maxResults": 50
}

Filter by tags, sorted by votes:

{
    "mode": "tagged",
    "tags": ["python", "pandas"],
    "sort": "votes",
    "maxResults": 100
}

Query a different StackExchange site:

{
    "mode": "hot",
    "site": "serverfault",
    "maxResults": 10
}

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
mode	enum	hot	hot for trending, search for text query, tagged for tag filter
searchQuery	string	""	Text query (only for search mode)
tags	string[]	[]	Tags to filter by (required for tagged, optional for search)
site	string	stackoverflow	Any StackExchange site slug (e.g. serverfault, askubuntu, superuser)
maxResults	integer	50	Max questions to return (1-250)
sort	enum	hot	Sort by: activity, votes, creation, hot, or relevance (search only)

Output example

{
    "questionId": 71382145,
    "title": "What is the fastest way to flatten a list in Python 3.12+?",
    "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71382145/what-is-the-fastest-way-to-flatten-a-list-in-python",
    "score": 847,
    "answerCount": 12,
    "viewCount": 234019,
    "isAnswered": true,
    "tags": ["python", "list", "performance", "python-3.x"],
    "owner": {
        "name": "alex_dev",
        "reputation": 15420
    },
    "creationDate": "2024-03-05T18:22:31.000Z",
    "lastActivityDate": "2026-02-14T09:15:02.000Z",
    "body": "I have a list of lists and need to flatten it into a single list. I've tried itertools.chain, sum(), and list comprehensions but I'm not sure which is fastest for large lists..."
}

Performance & cost

• Fetches 100 questions per API call with automatic pagination. A full run of 250 questions uses 3 API requests.
• The StackExchange API allows 300 requests/day without an API key. Quota-aware -- stops before exhausting your limit.
• No browser needed. A typical run completes in under 5 seconds and costs under $0.005 in platform credits.

FAQ

Can I scrape answers too? This actor focuses on questions. Answer content is not included in the output, only the answer count.

What's the API quota? 300 requests per day without an API key, shared across your IP. With pagesize=100, a single run of 250 questions uses only 3 requests.

What StackExchange sites can I use? Any site in the network: stackoverflow, serverfault, superuser, askubuntu, mathoverflow, and dozens more. Use the site slug from the URL.

Why does sort "relevance" only work in search mode? The StackExchange API only supports relevance sorting when a search query is provided. In other modes, use hot, votes, activity, or creation.