npms.io Package Search Scraper

Search the entire npm registry through the public npms.io search API and get clean, structured package data — no API key, no login, no rate-limit headaches. For every match you get the package name, latest version, description, keywords, author, publisher, npm/homepage/repository links, and the npms quality, popularity and maintenance scores.

Perfect for package discovery, dependency selection, dev tooling, and open-source research.

Why this Actor

• No API key — uses the free, public npms.io v2 search endpoint.
• Real scores — quality, popularity, maintenance and a combined final score for every package, so you can rank alternatives objectively.
• Batch queries — pass a list of search terms and get all results in one dataset.
• Clean, flat schema — ready for spreadsheets, dashboards, or your own pipeline.
• Cheap — roughly $0.5 per 1,000 packages.

Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	string	Scraping mode. Currently search (queries → packages).
queries	array	One or more free-text search queries. Prefilled with ["react", "web scraping", "cli"].
maxItems	integer	Max total packages across all queries (1–1000, default 100).

Example input

{
  "mode": "search",
  "queries": ["web scraping", "graphql client", "date parsing"],
  "maxItems": 200
}

Output

Each dataset item is one package:

{
  "name": "react",
  "version": "18.2.0",
  "description": "React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces.",
  "keywords": ["react"],
  "author": "React Team",
  "publisher": "gnoff",
  "npm_url": "https://www.npmjs.com/package/react",
  "homepage": "https://reactjs.org/",
  "repository": "https://github.com/facebook/react",
  "score_final": 0.93,
  "quality": 0.902,
  "popularity": 0.916,
  "maintenance": 0.967,
  "updated": "2022-06-14T19:46:38.369000+00:00",
  "source": "npms",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-24T12:00:00+00:00"
}

All fields are nullable — missing data on npms.io comes back as null rather than failing the run.

Use cases

• Package discovery — find libraries for a task and rank them by real scores.
• Dependency selection — compare candidates on quality, popularity and maintenance before you commit.
• Dev tooling — feed package metadata into internal dashboards, linters or CI checks.
• Open-source research — map an ecosystem, track maintainers, or study package trends.

Related Actors

• npm Package Scraper
• Bundlephobia Scraper
• pkg.go.dev Scraper
• GitHub Scraper

Notes

This Actor uses the public npms.io API and does not require authentication. If api.npms.io is unreachable the run fails loudly with a clear message so you never get silent, empty results.