Homebrew Formula & Cask Scraper 🍺

Scrape Homebrew packages — formulae (CLI tools) and casks (macOS apps) — from formulae.brew.sh into clean, structured JSON. Get descriptions, versions, licenses, dependencies and real 30-day / 365-day install analytics for any package you name. No API key, no login, datacenter-proxy friendly.

Perfect for developer intelligence, package popularity tracking, DevOps auditing and open-source market research.

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What it does

Give it a mode and a list of package names. For each name it hits the official per-package JSON endpoint and returns a normalised record. Missing names are skipped, not fatal.

• formulae — command-line packages (e.g. wget, git, node)
• casks — GUI/macOS apps (e.g. google-chrome, firefox)

It never downloads Homebrew's giant full-index file — only fast, targeted per-name lookups.

Example output

Formula (wget):

{
  "type": "formula",
  "name": "wget",
  "description": "Internet file retriever",
  "homepage": "https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/",
  "license": "GPL-3.0-or-later",
  "version": "1.25.0",
  "dependencies": ["libidn2", "libpsl", "openssl@3", "gettext", "libunistring"],
  "installs_30d": 18535,
  "installs_365d": 351514,
  "deprecated": false,
  "url": "https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/wget",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-18T06:00:00+00:00"
}

Cask (firefox):

{
  "type": "cask",
  "token": "firefox",
  "name": "Mozilla Firefox",
  "description": "Web browser",
  "homepage": "https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/",
  "version": "152.0.6",
  "installs_30d": 14660,
  "installs_365d": 201845,
  "url": "https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/firefox",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-18T06:00:00+00:00"
}

Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	select	formulae (CLI packages) or casks (macOS apps).
formulaNames	array	Formula names to scrape when mode is formulae.
caskNames	array	Cask tokens to scrape when mode is casks.
maxItems	integer	Cap on packages per run (default 100, max 1000).

{
  "mode": "formulae",
  "formulaNames": ["wget", "git", "node"],
  "maxItems": 100
}

Use cases

• Developer intelligence — track which tools your ecosystem depends on.
• Package analytics — monitor 30d/365d install trends for any package.
• Market research — compare adoption of competing tools or browsers.
• DevOps — audit dependency trees, spot deprecated packages in your stack.

Pricing

Pay-as-you-go: roughly ~$1 per 1,000 packages scraped, plus Apify platform usage. Lightweight (512 MB) and fast — the API is static JSON.

How it compares

	This actor	Manual brew info	Scraping HTML
Structured JSON	✅	⚠️ text parse	❌ brittle
Install analytics	✅ 30d + 365d	⚠️ separate cmd	❌
No local Homebrew needed	✅	❌	✅
Bulk lists	✅	❌	⚠️
Datacenter-friendly	✅	—	⚠️

Related actors

• NPM Package Scraper
• PyPI Scraper
• Hex Packages Scraper
• Docker Hub Scraper

Keywords

homebrew, brew, formulae, casks, macos packages, package analytics, install counts, developer tools, dependency scraper, homebrew api

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Not affiliated with or endorsed by the Homebrew project. Data comes from the public formulae.brew.sh JSON API.