DEV.to Article Scraper

Scrape articles, comments, tags, and user data from DEV.to — the largest developer community platform. Uses the official Forem/DEV.to API for reliable, fast data extraction.

What can it do?

• Latest articles — Get the newest articles published on DEV.to
• Top/trending articles — Scrape top-rated articles by reactions and engagement
• Articles by tag — Filter by any tag (javascript, python, react, webdev, etc.)
• Search — Full-text search across article titles and content
• User articles — Get all articles from a specific author
• Single article — Full content (HTML + Markdown) for a specific article
• Comments — Nested comment threads for any article

Why use this scraper?

• ⚡ Fast — Uses the official API, no browser needed
• 🔄 Reliable — Auto-retry with exponential backoff on rate limits
• 📊 Rich data — Reactions, comments count, reading time, tags, author info
• 📝 Full content — Both HTML and Markdown body for single articles
• 🧵 Nested comments — Complete comment trees with author metadata

Input examples

Get latest 50 articles

{
  "mode": "latest_articles",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Search for AI articles

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "artificial intelligence",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Get articles by tag

{
  "mode": "articles_by_tag",
  "tag": "python",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Get all articles from a user

{
  "mode": "user_articles",
  "username": "ben",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Get single article with full content

{
  "mode": "single_article",
  "articleId": 123456
}

Get comments for an article

{
  "mode": "comments",
  "articleIdForComments": 123456
}

Output example

{
  "id": 123456,
  "title": "Building a REST API with Python",
  "description": "A step-by-step guide to building REST APIs",
  "url": "https://dev.to/author/building-rest-api-python",
  "tags": "python, api, tutorial, beginners",
  "public_reactions_count": 245,
  "comments_count": 32,
  "reading_time_minutes": 8,
  "published_at": "2026-03-01T10:00:00Z",
  "username": "author",
  "user_name": "Author Name"
}

Use cases

• Content research — Find trending topics and popular articles in your niche
• Competitor analysis — Track what content performs best on DEV.to
• Data journalism — Analyze developer community trends
• Lead generation — Find active developers writing about specific technologies
• Content aggregation — Build curated newsletters or feeds from DEV.to data

Pricing

This actor is free to use. You only pay for Apify platform usage (compute and storage).

Limitations

• DEV.to API rate limit: ~30 requests/second (handled automatically with retries)
• Maximum 1000 articles per run (API pagination limit)
• Comments are returned as flat list with parent_id for nesting