MetaCPAN Perl Module Scraper

Scrape Perl distributions and modules from MetaCPAN — version, author, license, abstract, release date, repository, bug tracker, download URL and dependency data — with no API key, no login and no proxy required.

This Actor talks directly to the public MetaCPAN API (fastapi.metacpan.org), the same backend that powers metacpan.org. It returns one clean, flat row per CPAN release, ready for CSV, JSON, Excel or your data warehouse.

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What this Actor does

Source	MetaCPAN public API (CPAN — the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network)
API key	Not needed
Proxy	Not needed (datacenter-clean)
Output	One item per release (distribution at its latest version)
Speed	~50 releases per request, paginated automatically
Cost	Roughly $0.5 per 1,000 releases

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Features

• Keyword search — query CPAN like you would on metacpan.org and get the latest release of every matching distribution.
• Direct distribution lookup — pass exact distribution names (Mojolicious, DBI, Plack) and get their current release.
• Dependency intelligence — total dependency count plus the explicit list of runtime / requires modules.
• Licensing data — the declared license list (perl_5, artistic_2, mit, …) for compliance and OSS audits.
• Repository & issue links — GitHub/GitLab repository, bug tracker and homepage, pulled from the distribution metadata.
• Only latest releases — results are filtered to status:latest, so you never get stale versions polluting your dataset.
• Robust by design — Chrome-impersonating HTTP client with a plain-urllib fallback, retries with exponential backoff, and graceful handling of missing fields.

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Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	select	search	search (keyword queries) or distributions (exact names)
queries	array	["JSON", "Mojolicious"]	Keywords or module names to search, used in search mode
distributions	array	—	Exact distribution names, used in distributions mode (use dashes: List-Util)
maxItems	integer	100	Maximum releases to push (max 1000)

Example — search mode

{
  "mode": "search",
  "queries": ["JSON", "async", "web framework"],
  "maxItems": 300
}

Example — distributions mode

{
  "mode": "distributions",
  "distributions": ["Mojolicious", "DBI", "Plack", "Moose"],
  "maxItems": 100
}

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Output

Every item is one CPAN release:

{
  "name": "Mojolicious-9.48",
  "distribution": "Mojolicious",
  "version": "9.48",
  "author": "SRI",
  "abstract": "Real-time web framework",
  "license": ["artistic_2"],
  "date": "2026-07-14T12:53:44+00:00",
  "status": "latest",
  "maturity": "released",
  "main_module": "Mojolicious",
  "download_url": "https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/S/SR/SRI/Mojolicious-9.48.tar.gz",
  "repository": "https://github.com/mojolicious/mojo",
  "bugtracker": "https://github.com/mojolicious/mojo/issues",
  "homepage": "https://mojolicious.org",
  "dependency_count": 5,
  "runtime_requires": ["IO::Socket::IP", "Pod::Simple"],
  "provides_count": 112,
  "url": "https://metacpan.org/dist/Mojolicious",
  "source": "metacpan",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-28T12:00:00+00:00"
}

Field reference

Field	Description
name	Full release name including version (JSON-4.11)
distribution	Distribution name without version (JSON)
version	Release version string
author	PAUSE ID of the uploading author (ISHIGAKI)
abstract	Short description, capped at 2,000 characters
license	List of declared licenses
date	Release timestamp, normalised to ISO 8601 UTC
status	Release status (always latest in search mode)
maturity	released or developer
main_module	Primary module namespace (JSON::XS)
download_url	Direct tarball URL on cpan.metacpan.org
repository	Source repository web URL
bugtracker	Issue tracker URL
homepage	Project homepage
dependency_count	Number of declared dependencies across all phases
runtime_requires	Module names required at runtime
provides_count	Number of modules the distribution provides
url	Canonical metacpan.org page
source	Always metacpan
scraped_at	UTC timestamp of the scrape

All fields are nullable — missing metadata comes back as null rather than breaking your pipeline.

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Use cases

• Perl dependency research — map which distributions depend on which runtime modules, spot heavy dependency trees, and audit supply chains before adopting a library.
• Package discovery — find every CPAN distribution matching a topic (JSON, ORM, async) with authors, versions and activity dates in one table.
• Open-source intelligence — track license distribution across the Perl ecosystem, find abandoned distributions by release date, or identify the most prolific PAUSE authors.
• Developer tooling — feed internal package registries, dashboards, dependency scanners, changelog bots or documentation portals with live CPAN metadata.

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Pricing

Pay-per-event style economics: expect roughly $0.5 per 1,000 releases scraped. A typical 100-release run finishes in seconds on the 512 MB default memory setting.

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Related Actors

If you're mapping package ecosystems beyond Perl, these pair well:

• Hex.pm Scraper — Elixir & Erlang packages
• pkg.go.dev Scraper — Go modules
• npms Search Scraper — npm / JavaScript packages
• crates.io Scraper — Rust crates

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Notes & limitations

• Only the latest release of each distribution is returned; historical versions are out of scope.
• Search results come from MetaCPAN's ElasticSearch index and are ordered by relevance.
• MetaCPAN is a public, free service — please keep run volumes reasonable.
• This Actor scrapes only publicly available, openly licensed package metadata. No personal data beyond public PAUSE author IDs is collected.

FAQ

Do I need a MetaCPAN account or API key? No. The MetaCPAN API is fully public and this Actor uses no credentials.

Can I look up a module instead of a distribution? Use search mode with the module name (e.g. JSON::XS) — the matching distribution will be returned. In distributions mode you must use the dashed distribution name (JSON-XS).

Why is runtime_requires empty for some distributions? Some distributions declare no runtime requirements, or only declare build/configure/test phase dependencies. dependency_count still reflects the full declared set.