CRAN R Packages Metadata Scraper
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from $2.00 / 1,000 results
CRAN R Packages Metadata Scraper
Pull authoritative metadata for any R package from the official CRAN crandb database. Returns package name, title, version, authors, maintainer, license, dependencies, and publication date. Handy for dependency audits, license compliance checks, and cataloging R tooling.
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from $2.00 / 1,000 results
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ParseForge
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📦 CRAN R Packages Scraper
🚀 Export R package metadata in seconds. Feed a list of package names and get clean, structured records straight from the official CRAN database.
Pull authoritative metadata for any package on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). This Actor queries the official crandb.r-pkg.org database, so every field comes directly from the package's own DESCRIPTION file. Hand it a list of package names and it returns the title, version, authors, maintainer, license, dependencies, and more for each one.
Coverage spans the entire CRAN registry. Popular packages like ggplot2, dplyr, and data.table resolve instantly, and any other published package name works the same way. Packages that do not exist on CRAN are reported as error records so you always know what resolved and what did not.
| 🎯 Target Audience | 💡 Primary Use Cases |
|---|---|
| R developers and data scientists | Audit dependencies and licenses across a package set |
| DevOps and security teams | Track versions and maintainers for supply-chain checks |
| Researchers and educators | Build catalogs of R tooling for analysis or teaching |
| Open-source maintainers | Monitor metadata of upstream and downstream packages |
📋 What the CRAN R Packages Scraper does
- Accepts a list of CRAN package names and fetches each one from the official crandb database.
- Returns 18 structured fields per package, including dependencies parsed into readable lists.
- Cleans the raw
DESCRIPTIONtext so multi-line authors and descriptions become tidy single-line values. - Flags any name that is not found on CRAN as an error record instead of failing the run.
📊 Data fields
Each record includes: license, maintainer, package, published, results, scrapedAt, title, url, version. These field names come straight from the actor's dataset schema, so what you see here is what lands in your dataset.
🚀 How to use
- Sign up for a free Apify account using this link.
- Open the CRAN R Packages Scraper in the Apify Console.
- Enter the package names you want, or keep the default popular set.
- Click Start and let the Actor fetch each package.
- Browse the results table or pull them through the Apify API.
🔗 Recommended Actors
- ParseForge collection for more developer and data tooling scrapers.
- Browse related package-registry and metadata Actors on the ParseForge profile.
💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.
⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with CRAN or the R Foundation. Only publicly available data collected.
🆘 Need Help?
If you hit a bug, have questions about setup, or need a scraper we haven't built yet, open our contact form or write to parseforge@protonmail.com. We also take on paid custom data projects.
For faster answers, join our Discord. It's the best place to get support and suggest new actors.
