🧠 Open Trivia Database Question Scraper

🚀 Pull trivia questions across 24 categories with correct + incorrect answers, difficulty, type, category counts. Stable IDs for dedupe.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-08 · 📊 26 fields per record · 21,000+ trivia questions · 24 categories · easy / medium / hard · multiple choice + true/false · stable hash IDs · category + global counts

The Open Trivia Database Question Scraper pulls trivia questions from the Open Trivia DB community dataset. Output includes a stable question ID (SHA-1 hash for dedupe across runs), category name + numeric ID + group + subject, difficulty, type, language, the question text + length + word count, correct answer, incorrect answers (plain + joined text), all answers shuffled with the correct answer's index, per-category total + easy + medium + hard counts, and global category counts (total / verified / pending / rejected).

The Actor uses session tokens to avoid duplicates within a run, plus a SHA-1 hash of the question for dedupe across runs. Filter by category, difficulty (easy / medium / hard), and type (multiple choice / true-false).

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Quiz app builders, ML / NLP researchers, education platforms, party-game makers, content marketers	Quiz / trivia apps, educational content generation, NLP training data, conversational agents, party games

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📋 What the Open Trivia Database Question Scraper does

Five filtering workflows in a single run:

• 🆔 Stable question IDs. SHA-1 hash for dedupe across runs.
• 🏷️ 24 categories. General Knowledge, Books, Film, Music, Science, History, Sports, etc.
• 📊 Difficulty filter. Easy / medium / hard.
• ✅ Type filter. Multiple choice or true / false.
• 📈 Category counts included. Per-category and global totals (verified / pending / rejected).

💡 Why it matters: clean, server-side filtering and fresh data on every run.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan up to 1,000,000.
category	string	""	Category ID (9 = General Knowledge, 11 = Film, 21 = Sports, etc). Empty = any.
difficulty	string	""	easy, medium, or hard. Empty = any.
type	string	""	multiple or boolean. Empty = any.

Example: 100 random trivia questions.

{
    "maxItems": 100
}

Example: hard science questions.

{
    "maxItems": 50,
    "category": "17",
    "difficulty": "hard"
}

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📊 Output

Each record contains 26 fields. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🆔 questionId	string	"a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8"
🏷️ category	string	"Geography"
🆔 categoryId	number	22
🏷️ categorySubject	string	"Geography"
📊 difficulty	string	"hard"
📊 type	string	"multiple"
🌐 language	string	"en"
❓ question	string	"What North American tourist attraction is served by..."
📏 questionLength	number	88
🔢 wordCount	number	15
✅ correctAnswer	string	"Niagara Falls"
❌ incorrectAnswers	array	["Whistler","Disney World","Yosemite"]
🔀 allAnswers	array	["Niagara Falls","Yosemite","Disney World","Whistler"]
🔢 answerCount	number	4
✅ correctAnswerIndex	number	0
📊 categoryTotalQuestions	number	383
📊 categoryEasyCount	number	121
📊 categoryMediumCount	number	179
📊 categoryHardCount	number	83
📊 categoryGlobalTotal	number	815
📊 categoryGlobalVerified	number	383
📊 categoryGlobalPending	number	269
📊 categoryGlobalRejected	number	163

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🆔	Stable IDs. SHA-1 hash of question lets you dedupe across runs (the API has no native ID).
🔀	Shuffled answers + index. Quiz-app ready: all answers in random order plus the index of the correct answer.
📊	Category counts. Per-category and global counts let you weight your sampling.
🌐	24 categories. From General Knowledge through Sports, Science, History, Books, Film, Music.
🆓	Free + open. Open Trivia DB is community-maintained.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ This Actor	$5 free credit	24 categories	Live per run	Filters	⚡ 2 min
Open Trivia DB direct	Free	Same	Live	DIY	🐢 Code
Trivia API (paid)	$$	Larger	Live	Yes	🐢 Account
Manual scraping	Free	Mixed	Live	DIY	🐢 Days

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Find the Open Trivia Database Question Scraper on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick filters and maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start.
5. 📥 Download. Grab results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

📱 Quiz + Trivia Apps Question banks for trivia apps Daily quiz generators Party-game card decks Pub-trivia content	🤖 ML + NLP Train QA models Multiple-choice fine-tuning Distractor-generation research Difficulty-prediction studies
🎓 Education Classroom quiz tools After-school trivia clubs Reading-comprehension warm-ups Learning-app gamification	🎲 Games + Entertainment Board-game card content Streaming-show fact moments Holiday party games Mobile game side-quests

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🔌 Automating Open Trivia Database Question Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows.

🎓 Research and academia QA datasets Distractor research Difficulty calibration Reproducible trivia corpora	🎨 Personal and creative Personal trivia collections Pub-quiz hosting Side projects with question data Quiz-app prototypes
🤝 Non-profit and civic Educational trivia outreach Free quiz collections Public-library trivia nights Community game events	🧪 Experimentation Train answer-generators Prototype tutoring agents Build difficulty-classifiers Test gamification logic

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Set optional filters (category, difficulty, type) and a max item count. The Actor pages OpenTDB with a session token to avoid duplicates and emits one record per question.

📊 How many fields per record?

26, including the question text, correct + incorrect answers, all answers shuffled, category + global counts, stable ID.

🆔 What's questionId?

SHA-1 hash of category + type + difficulty + question + correct answer. Stable across runs for dedupe.

🌐 Are non-English questions supported?

No. OpenTDB is English-only.

📊 What does correctAnswerIndex mean?

Index (0-based) of the correct answer inside the shuffled allAnswers array. Useful for quiz UIs.

🔢 Why are there only 24 categories?

OpenTDB defines 24 active categories. The category list is loaded once at the start of each run.

⏱️ Why is this slower than other Actors?

OpenTDB rate-limits to 1 request per 5 seconds. 100 items takes ~18 seconds.

🆓 Do I need an API key?

No. OpenTDB is free and open.

🔁 Can I schedule runs?

Yes. Schedule daily for a fresh question rotation.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free plan covers preview runs (10 records).

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🔌 Integrate with any app

Open Trivia Database Question Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications
• Airbyte - Pipe data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits
• Google Drive - Export datasets to Sheets

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Open Trivia DB project, its maintainers, or any individual question contributor. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open data is collected.