Metaculus Questions Scraper
Pricing
from $7.50 / 1,000 results
Metaculus Questions Scraper
Scrapes Metaculus forecast questions by status, search term, and sort order. Returns each question as a flat row with its title, community prediction, resolution, and metadata.
Pricing
from $7.50 / 1,000 results
Rating
0.0
(0)
Developer
ParseForge
Maintained by CommunityActor stats
0
Bookmarked
2
Total users
1
Monthly active users
11 days ago
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Metaculus Questions Scraper
Scrape Metaculus forecast questions by status, search term, or sort order, up to a million per run. Each question returns its title, community prediction, resolution, and metadata. No API key required. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.
Metaculus is a prediction market and forecasting platform where thousands of users estimate the probability of future events. Manually tracking questions across topics like geopolitics, AI, and pandemics is slow and does not scale. This Actor reads the public question feed directly, letting you filter by open, closed, or resolved status, search by keyword, and sort by publish date or votes, returning a structured dataset ready for analysis.
| Who uses it | What they scrape Metaculus for |
|---|---|
| Forecasters and prediction market analysts | Build a personal archive of resolved questions to backtest their own forecasting accuracy. |
| Academic researchers | Gather a corpus of expert-elicited probability estimates for a specific domain like climate change. |
| Data journalists | Monitor newly published questions to spot emerging topics the forecasting community is focused on. |
| Risk managers | Track the community's predicted probability of specific geopolitical or economic events. |
What it does
This Actor collects Metaculus forecast questions by status, search query, and sort order, and returns each one as a flat row.
- ๐ Full-text search: Filter the entire question database by a keyword or phrase in the title.
- ๐ Status filtering: Target only open, closed, or resolved questions, or pull all of them at once.
- ๐ Flexible sorting: Order results by newest, oldest, closing soonest, or most upvoted questions.
Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.
What you can do with Metaculus data
๐ Backtest forecasting models.
A quantitative analyst scrapes all resolved questions with the search term 'AI' to compare their personal predictions against the Metaculus community consensus over time.
๐ฐ Monitor emerging risks.
A risk consultant runs the scraper daily for newly published open questions to identify early warnings on topics like disease outbreaks or financial instability.
๐ Research collective intelligence.
An academic researcher collects a dataset of resolved questions and their community prediction trajectories to study the accuracy of crowdsourced forecasting.
๐ Track topic popularity.
A market analyst sorts questions by most upvoted to see which future scenarios are currently capturing the most attention from the forecasting community.
Why choose this scraper
| What you get | |
|---|---|
| Community predictions | Access the aggregate forecast from thousands of predictors for any public question. |
| Resolution data | Get the final resolved outcome for closed questions to measure forecast accuracy. |
| No API key | Scrape the public feed without registering an application or managing OAuth tokens. |
How it compares
No other Store actor targets Metaculus the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.
| Metaculus Questions Scraper | Build it in-house | By hand | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | Run it now, zero config | Days of engineering | None, but hours per pull |
| When Metaculus changes | Maintained for you | You fix it | You re-learn the page |
| Proxies, retries, anti-bot | Built in | Your problem | Browser only |
| Output | Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export | Whatever you build | Copy-paste |
| Cost | Pay per result | Engineering time | Analyst hours |
Configure the run
Drive the Actor with a search term, a question status, and a sort order, alone or together, and filters run as each question is read so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.
A first run with the defaults:
A larger pull:
Pricing
Pay-per-result: $0.0085 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.
| Results collected | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| 100 results | $0.85 |
| 1,000 results | $8.50 |
| 10,000 results | $85.00 |
New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.
Free users
Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.
Run it
- Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
- Open the Metaculus Questions Scraper.
- Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
- Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.
Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.
Use with AI agents (MCP)
Give an AI agent live access to Metaculus through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:
Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.
Troubleshooting
Why am I getting no results?
Check that your search term is not too restrictive. Try running the Actor with the status set to 'All' and no search term to confirm the feed is reachable, then add filters back one at a time.
The run stopped after only 10 items.
Free Apify accounts are limited to a 10-item preview. Upgrade to a paid plan and increase the 'Maximum questions' field to scrape more data.
My search term is not finding a question I know exists.
The search scans question titles only. Try a shorter or more general keyword from the title. The Metaculus website search may index the body text, but this Actor matches on the title feed.
The community prediction value looks wrong.
The Actor captures the displayed community prediction at the time of the run. If the question is still open, this value changes as more users submit forecasts.
Why are some resolved questions missing a resolution value?
Some resolved questions may have a non-numeric or ambiguous resolution. The Actor returns the resolution text as displayed on the site, which can be a probability, a yes/no, or a free-text answer.
FAQ
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can I scrape questions from a specific category or topic? | There is no direct category filter, but you can use the search term input to target specific topics. For example, searching for 'AI' or 'climate' will return questions with those words in the title. |
| What data does each question row contain? | Each row includes the question title, status, community prediction, number of predictors, publish time, close time, resolution, and other metadata available on the public page. |
| Do I need a Metaculus API key to use this? | No. This Actor scrapes the publicly accessible web pages, so no registration, API key, or authentication is required. |
| How many questions can I scrape in one run? | Free users are limited to a preview of 10 items. Paid Apify users can set the maximum up to 1,000,000 questions per run. |
| Can I get the full time series of a prediction? | This Actor returns the current snapshot of each question, not the historical forecast trajectory. It captures the latest community prediction and metadata at the time of scraping. |
| What is the difference between closed and resolved questions? | Closed questions are no longer accepting new predictions. Resolved questions have an official outcome determined, meaning the event has occurred or the deadline has passed with a final answer. |
| Can I filter by the number of predictors? | The input schema does not include a predictor count filter. You can sort by vote score to prioritize popular questions, then filter the resulting dataset externally. |
| How do I search for an exact phrase? | Enter the phrase in the search term field. The Actor performs a full-text search across question titles, so a multi-word query will match questions containing those words. |
| Is it possible to scrape only questions closing this week? | You can sort by 'Closing soonest' to bring imminent deadlines to the top of your results, then limit the maximum items to capture only the most urgent questions. |
| What export formats are supported? | You can export your scraped dataset in CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML format from the Apify dataset tab. |
Related actors
Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.
๐ Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.
โ ๏ธ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Metaculus. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.
