Stack Overflow Scraper — Questions, Answers, Users & Tags

Scrape Stack Overflow (and any StackExchange site) using the official StackExchange API. No browser. No proxies. No login required. Works across all 170+ StackExchange communities.

What you can scrape

Mode	What you get
search	Questions matching a keyword query (title, body, tags)
questions	Questions filtered by tag(s), sorted by activity/votes/creation/hot
answers	All answers for specific question IDs
tags	Most popular tags, or search tags by name
users	Top users by reputation, with badge counts and stats
user_questions	All questions asked by specific user IDs

Why use Stack Overflow Scraper?

• Developer research — analyze what problems developers actually face in a technology (Python async, React hooks, Kubernetes)
• Content marketing — find the most-asked questions to build SEO content around
• Q&A dataset building — build training or evaluation datasets for LLMs from Q&A pairs
• Competitive analysis — see which tags are growing, which frameworks have the most unresolved issues
• Community analytics — track top contributors, analyze user reputation growth
• Works on any SE site — stackoverflow, superuser, serverfault, datascience, ai, math, physics, and 160+ more

How to use

1. Select a Scrape Mode in the Input tab
2. Enter your query, tags, question IDs, or user IDs as appropriate
3. Optionally add a StackExchange API key for higher daily quota (10,000/day vs 300/day)
4. Click Start — results appear in the Output tab immediately

Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
scrapeMode	string	search	questions, search, answers, tags, users, user_questions
searchQuery	string	—	Keyword query for search mode. Also filters tag names in tags mode.
tags	string[]	—	Tag filter for questions mode (e.g. ['python', 'pandas']). AND logic.
questionIds	string[]	—	Question IDs for answers mode.
userIds	string[]	—	User IDs for users and user_questions modes.
sortBy	string	votes	activity, votes, creation, hot, week, month, relevance
site	string	stackoverflow	StackExchange site name (e.g. superuser, datascience, askubuntu)
maxItems	integer	100	Max items to return (0 = no limit, subject to API quota)
apiKey	string	—	StackExchange API key for 10,000/day quota vs 300/day default

Example inputs

Search for Python async questions

{
  "scrapeMode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "python async await performance",
  "sortBy": "votes",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Get top Python pandas questions

{
  "scrapeMode": "questions",
  "tags": ["python", "pandas"],
  "sortBy": "votes",
  "maxItems": 200
}

Get answers for specific questions

{
  "scrapeMode": "answers",
  "questionIds": ["11227809", "3437059"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Scrape Data Science Stack Exchange instead

{
  "scrapeMode": "questions",
  "site": "datascience",
  "tags": ["neural-network"],
  "sortBy": "votes",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Output examples

Question

{
  "type": "question",
  "questionId": 11227809,
  "title": "What does ** (double star/asterisk) and * (star/asterisk) do for parameters?",
  "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11227809",
  "score": 5864,
  "viewCount": 2891234,
  "answerCount": 22,
  "isAnswered": true,
  "acceptedAnswerId": 36908,
  "tags": ["python", "parameter-passing"],
  "owner": {
    "userId": 100297,
    "displayName": "user97370",
    "reputation": 1001
  },
  "createdAt": 1342517643,
  "body": "What do `*args` and `**kwargs` mean?..."
}

Answer

{
  "type": "answer",
  "answerId": 36908,
  "questionId": 11227809,
  "score": 8921,
  "isAccepted": true,
  "owner": {
    "userId": 4279,
    "displayName": "Jochen Ritzel",
    "reputation": 103452
  },
  "createdAt": 1197839523,
  "body": "The `*args` and `**kwargs` is a common idiom..."
}

User

{
  "type": "user",
  "userId": 22656,
  "displayName": "Jon Skeet",
  "reputation": 1421350,
  "badgeCounts": {"gold": 946, "silver": 3178, "bronze": 8038},
  "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/users/22656",
  "location": "Reading, United Kingdom",
  "answerCount": 40123,
  "questionCount": 58
}

API Quota

Without an API key: 300 requests/day per IP. Each page = 1 request, 100 items/page. So 300 requests = 30,000 items/day free.

With an API key (free, register at stackapps.com): 10,000 requests/day = 1,000,000 items/day.

For most use cases the free quota is sufficient. Heavy bulk scraping should use an API key.

Pricing

This actor uses Pay Per Event — you pay per item returned.

• 100 questions: ~$0.01
• 1,000 answers: ~$0.05
• Top 500 users: ~$0.03

Tips

• Use site: datascience or site: ai to target ML-specific communities
• The search mode supports boolean operators: python OR javascript async
• body field is included when available — useful for building Q&A training datasets for LLMs
• Combine user_questions + known expert user IDs to build curated expert answer datasets