GitHub Repository Search — Stars, Forks, Languages & More

Search GitHub repositories by keyword using the free public GitHub Search API. Get repo names, descriptions, star counts, fork counts, owner info, licenses, and more. Filter by programming language and sort by stars, forks, or last updated. No authentication required.

What It Does

This actor queries the GitHub Search API to find repositories matching your keywords. It returns structured data for each repository including the full name, description, star count, fork count, primary language, owner information, open issues, license, and creation/update dates.

GitHub's Search API is free and requires no authentication (rate limited to 10 requests/minute for unauthenticated requests). This actor is immune to bot detection — it uses the official API, not HTML scraping.

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
searchQuery	string	Yes	—	Keywords to search for (e.g. "web scraper", "machine learning", "react components")
maxResults	integer	No	30	Maximum number of repositories to return (1–100)
sortBy	enum	No	stars	Sort order: stars, forks, or updated
language	string	No	—	Filter by programming language (e.g. python, javascript, go). Leave empty to search all languages.

Output Fields

Field	Type	Description
repoName	string	Repository name (e.g. "react")
fullName	string	Full name with owner (e.g. "facebook/react")
description	string	Repository description
url	string	GitHub URL
stars	integer	Star count
forks	integer	Fork count
language	string	Primary programming language
owner	string	Owner username or org name
ownerType	string	Owner type (User or Organization)
openIssues	integer	Open issue count
createdAt	string	ISO date created
updatedAt	string	ISO date last updated
license	string	License name (e.g. "MIT License")

Use Cases

• Market research — Identify trending technologies and frameworks by star count
• Competitor analysis — Find repos in your space and track their engagement metrics
• Developer lead generation — Discover active repos and their owners for outreach
• Tech stack discovery — Filter by language to find repos using specific technologies
• Open source monitoring — Track the most-forked or recently-updated repos in a category
• Content curation — Build curated lists of top repos by topic for newsletters or blogs

How It Works

The actor sends a GET request to https://api.github.com/search/repositories with your search query, optional language filter, and sort parameters. GitHub returns JSON directly — no browser, no HTML parsing, no bot detection risk. Results are pushed to the dataset as structured records.

Example Usage

Input:

{
    "searchQuery": "web scraping python",
    "maxResults": 10,
    "sortBy": "stars",
    "language": "python"
}

Sample Output:

{
    "repoName": "scrapy",
    "fullName": "scrapy/scrapy",
    "description": "Scrapy is a fast high-level web crawling and web scraping framework...",
    "url": "https://github.com/scrapy/scrapy",
    "stars": 52000,
    "forks": 10400,
    "language": "Python",
    "owner": "scrapy",
    "ownerType": "Organization",
    "openIssues": 350,
    "createdAt": "2010-02-22T02:01:14Z",
    "updatedAt": "2026-07-09T00:00:00Z",
    "license": "BSD 3-Clause \"New\" or \"Revised\" License"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-event pricing. You only pay for what you use — a small start cost plus a per-result fee. See the Apify Store listing for current rates.

Tips

• Use specific keywords for better results (e.g. "rest api framework" instead of just "api")
• Filter by language to narrow results to your tech stack
• Sort by updated to find actively maintained repositories