Open VSX Registry Scraper

Extract public extension data from the Open VSX registry: downloads, ratings, versions, categories, publishers, licenses and repository links. Search by keyword, pull a whole publisher namespace, or fetch specific extensions by id or URL. No API key, no login, no captcha.

Open VSX is the vendor-neutral extension marketplace run by the Eclipse Foundation. It is where VSCodium, Gitpod, Eclipse Theia, code-server and the AI editors Cursor and Windsurf get their extensions, because Microsoft's own Visual Studio Marketplace is restricted to Microsoft products. If you publish extensions, build a VS Code fork, or track the developer-tools market, Open VSX is the registry that actually serves that ecosystem, and this actor turns it into clean rows.

What it does

• Keyword search across the registry, paginated, sorted by downloads, rating or recency
• Whole-namespace pull: every extension a publisher ships (e.g. ms-python, redhat)
• Direct lookups by namespace.name or open-vsx.org URL
• Optional per-extension reviews (rating and comment)
• A politeness delay, retries with backoff, and a hard maxItems cap

Input

Field	What it does
searchQueries	Keywords to search. Empty means browse everything by the chosen sort. Default ["python"].
namespaces	Publishers to pull in full, e.g. ["ms-python", "redhat"].
extensionIds	Specific extensions as namespace.name or a full URL.
category	Restrict search to one category (Themes, Linters, AI, and so on).
sortBy / sortOrder	downloadCount, averageRating, timestamp or relevance, ascending or descending.
fetchFullDetails	Enrich each hit with categories, tags, license, repository and publisher. On by default.
includeReviews	Also pull user reviews per extension.
maxItems	Cap on rows returned. Default 100.
requestDelaySecs	Delay between requests. Default 0.2s.

A run with no input returns the top Python extensions by download count, so you always get a real dataset on the first click.

Output

One row per extension:

extensionId, namespace, name, displayName, description, version, preRelease, downloadCount, averageRating, reviewCount, categories, tags, license, homepage, repository, bugs, sponsorLink, publisherLogin, publisherName, publisherProvider, publisherHomepage, verified, namespaceAccess, targetPlatform, deprecated, lastUpdated, iconUrl, downloadUrl, openVsxUrl, apiUrl, and reviews when requested.

Export to JSON, CSV, Excel or the API.

Use cases

• Market research before you build an extension: sizes, ratings and gaps in a category
• Competitor tracking: watch downloads, versions and release dates over time
• Publisher intelligence: who ships what, with GitHub handles and repository links
• Feed a dataset for the Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium and Gitpod ecosystem
• A clean, allowed alternative to scraping Microsoft's restricted marketplace

Notes on the data

Everything here is served by the public Open VSX REST API (https://open-vsx.org/api). Each extension carries its own license, shown in the license field. Respect it when you redistribute anything beyond the metadata.

Pricing

Pay per result. Platform usage is free, and you pay a small amount for each extension returned plus a tiny per-run fee. Start on the free tier, then scale.