Kickstarter Project Scraper

What does Kickstarter Project Scraper do?

Kickstarter Project Scraper extracts complete campaign data from any Kickstarter.com project page - funding stats (pledged amount, goal, backers, percentage funded, days left), campaign details (title, blurb, category, location, creator, dates), the full story text, and every reward tier. It can also download the project's cover photo and pitch video for you. Give it project URLs, discover/category URLs, or both, and it returns one structured row per project. Running it on the Apify platform gets you scheduling, API access to results, proxy rotation, and monitoring out of the box.

Why use Kickstarter Project Scraper?

• Track funding progress, backer counts, and deadlines across a shortlist of campaigns for market research or competitor analysis.
• Build a leads or outreach list of creators, complete with profile links and avatars.
• Analyze reward tier pricing and structure across successful campaigns in a category.
• Archive a campaign's story, photo, and pitch video before it disappears.
• Feed clean, structured campaign data into spreadsheets, BI tools, or downstream automation without manual copy-pasting.

What data can you extract?

Field	Description
project_id	Kickstarter's numeric project ID
slug, url	Project slug and full page URL
title, blurb	Campaign title and short tagline
state	live, successful, failed, canceled, etc.
pledged, funding_goal, percentage_funded	Funding amount, goal, and percent funded, in the project's own currency
usd_pledged, converted_pledged_amount	Amount pledged converted to USD / to the currency Kickstarter displayed for this run
backers	Number of backers
days_left	Days remaining, only set while the project is still live
currency, currency_symbol, fx_rate	Currency details and exchange rate used for conversions
creator, creator_id, creator_slug, creator_profile_url, creator_avatar_url	Creator name and profile
category, category_id, parent_category	Campaign category and its parent category
location, location_country, location_state	Creator's declared location
created_at, launched_at, deadline, state_changed_at	Campaign lifecycle timestamps (ISO 8601)
staff_pick, spotlight, labelledAs	Whether Kickstarter featured the project as "Project We Love" or a staff pick
image_url, video_high_url, video_hls_url	Public URLs for the cover photo and pitch video
photoKey, videoKey	References to the downloaded copies in this run's storage (see Media downloads below)
rewards	Array of reward tiers with title, description, and minimum pledge
text	Full plain-text campaign story
rewardsCount, imageCount, videoCount, gifCount	Counts of reward tiers and media embedded in the story

See the Dataset tab after a run for the complete field list.

How to use Kickstarter Project Scraper

1. Click Try for free (or Start) to open the Actor.
2. Paste one or more Kickstarter project URLs, and/or discover/category URLs, into Start URLs - e.g. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/<creator>/<project-slug> or https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/games.
3. Keep Proxy configuration on a residential proxy (enabled by default) for reliable results.
4. Optionally set Max items and Download photos and videos.
5. Click Start and wait for the run to finish, then open the Dataset tab to view, filter, and export the results.

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
startUrls	array	Yes	-	Kickstarter project URLs (one row each) and/or discover/category URLs (crawled for projects, with pagination).
maxItems	integer	No	10	Target number of projects to scrape. The first 10 per run are free. For discover/category URLs, the Actor discovers extra candidate projects to make up for any that fail.
downloadMedia	boolean	No	false	Download each project's cover photo and pitch video into this run's storage, in addition to collecting their public URLs.
proxyConfiguration	object	Yes	Residential proxy	Proxy settings. A residential proxy is strongly recommended - see Tips below.

Output data

A scraped project looks like this (story text truncated for readability):

{
    "project_id": 1534205096,
    "slug": "the-broken-empires-rpg",
    "state": "successful",
    "title": "The Broken Empires RPG™: Sim-Lite d100 Skills-Based TTRPG",
    "blurb": "Dramatic fantasy setting and Success Level System built for speed, detail and immersion! Live (or die) with your choices.",
    "creator": "Evil Baby Entertainment",
    "creator_id": 1304340314,
    "creator_slug": "evil-baby-ent",
    "creator_profile_url": "https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/evil-baby-ent",
    "creator_avatar_url": "https://i.kickstarter.com/assets/046/539/367/....png",
    "url": "https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evil-baby-ent/the-broken-empires-rpg",
    "rewards_url": "https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evil-baby-ent/the-broken-empires-rpg/rewards",
    "image_url": "https://i.kickstarter.com/assets/046/834/605/....jpg",
    "pledged": 523181,
    "usd_pledged": "523181.0",
    "backers": 4346,
    "funding_goal": 10000,
    "percentage_funded": 5231.81,
    "days_left": null,
    "currency": "USD",
    "currency_symbol": "$",
    "country": "US",
    "country_displayable_name": "the United States",
    "staff_pick": true,
    "spotlight": true,
    "is_launched": true,
    "category": "Tabletop Games",
    "parent_category": "Games",
    "created_at": "2024-07-17T18:04:52.000Z",
    "launched_at": "2024-10-01T13:00:25.000Z",
    "deadline": "2024-10-31T13:00:25.000Z",
    "location": "San Antonio, TX",
    "video_high_url": "https://v2.kickstarter.com/.../video-....mp4",
    "video_hls_url": "https://v2.kickstarter.com/.../video-....m3u8",
    "rewards": [{ "id": 0, "title": "No Reward", "description": "No Reward", "minimum_pledge": 1 }],
    "photoKey": "photo-1534205096",
    "videoKey": "video-1534205096",
    "text": "Story What is The Broken Empires RPG? ...",
    "rewardsCount": 1,
    "imageCount": 50,
    "gifCount": 6,
    "hasTopVideo": true,
    "labelledAs": "Project We Love"
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML.

Media downloads

When Download photos and videos is enabled (the default), this Actor downloads each project's cover photo and, if the video isn't too large, its pitch video, and stores them in this run's Key-Value Store. The dataset's photoKey and videoKey fields hold the storage key for each file - open the run's Key-Value Store tab and look up that key to retrieve it, or fetch it via the Apify API using the key. If a project has no video, or its video is too large to download, videoKey is null and video_high_url / video_hls_url still give you the public link.

Usage examples

Scrape a single project with media downloads:

{
    "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evil-baby-ent/the-broken-empires-rpg" }],
    "maxItems": 1,
    "downloadMedia": true
}

Scrape a shortlist of projects, stats only (faster, no media download):

{
    "startUrls": [
        { "url": "https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/creator-one/project-one" },
        { "url": "https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/creator-two/project-two" }
    ],
    "maxItems": 10,
    "downloadMedia": false
}

How much will it cost to scrape Kickstarter?

This Actor uses pay-per-result pricing: the first 10 projects per run are free, and usage beyond that is billed per project scraped. See the Pricing tab for current rates. Use Max items to scope smaller, cheaper runs.

Tips for best results

• Use a residential proxy. Kickstarter has strong bot protection, and a residential proxy clears it far more reliably than a datacenter IP.
• Occasional retries are normal, not a bug. Some page loads get challenged even with a good proxy; this Actor automatically retries with a fresh session until it gets through (or retries run out). On a heavily-protected night, a discover/category run may land a little under Max items if enough individual pages get blocked even after retries - it discovers extra candidates to minimize this, but can't fully guarantee an exact count.
• Currency conversion fields can vary between runs. current_currency, usd_exchange_rate, and converted_pledged_amount reflect Kickstarter's own currency guess for the session and can differ slightly run to run; pledged and funding_goal (in the project's native currency) are the stable source numbers.
• Turn on media downloads only when you need the files - it's off by default to keep runs fast and light; enable it if you want copies of the cover photo/video, not just their URLs.

Integrations

Connect this Actor's dataset to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, or your own systems via the Apify API or webhooks, or schedule it to run on a recurring interval from the Schedules tab.

Export formats

Results can be downloaded from the Dataset tab as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, or HTML.

Frequently asked questions

How many projects can I scrape per run? Up to your Max items setting. There's no hard cap - it's billed per project beyond the first 10 free ones.

Can I use a search or category URL? Yes - a discover/category URL is crawled (with pagination) to collect projects up to Max items. You can also mix in direct project URLs, which each always produce a row.

Are duplicates removed? Yes, discovered project URLs are deduplicated automatically. Direct project URLs produce at most one row each too.

Why can some fields be empty? Kickstarter doesn't expose every field for every project (e.g. days_left is only set for live campaigns, and not every project has a pitch video).

Can I schedule this Actor? Yes, use the Apify Schedules feature to run it automatically on a recurring basis.

Does it support downloading media? Yes - see Media downloads above. It's off by default and can be turned on in the input.

Is the data current? Yes, each run fetches the live page at request time. Funding numbers reflect the moment the run executed.

Is it legal to scrape Kickstarter?

This Actor only collects publicly available Kickstarter campaign data. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Kickstarter, PBC. You are responsible for using scraped data in compliance with Kickstarter's Terms of Service and applicable law.

FAQ, disclaimers, and support

Found a bug or have a feature request? Use the Issues tab on this Actor's page. Need a custom scraping solution tailored to your workflow? Reach out through the Actor's page - custom builds are available.