📊 Stack Exchange Questions Scraper

🚀 Search every question across Stack Overflow and 170+ Stack Exchange sites.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-06 · 📊 22 fields per record · 170+ sites · 20M+ questions on Stack Overflow alone · scores, tags, accepted answers, view counts

The Stack Exchange Questions Scraper searches across Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Mathematics, Cross Validated, Ask Ubuntu, Code Review, Game Development, and 170+ other Stack Exchange community sites. Output includes title, full body, tags, score, view count, answer count, accepted answer ID, asker information, creation and last-activity dates.

The full Stack Exchange network spans 170+ communities and contains 20+ million questions on Stack Overflow alone, plus millions more across the rest. Filters run server-side, so a single run can isolate the highest-voted Python questions, every async-await question with 5+ answers, or recent questions about a niche topic.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Developer-marketing teams, NLP/ML pipelines, content marketers, technical writers, recruiter teams	Identify trending dev topics, generate developer content, train code-Q&A models, find user-pain-point articles, source FAQ content

---

📋 What the Stack Exchange Questions Scraper does

Five filtering workflows in a single run:

• 🔍 Title search. Match keywords in question titles across the entire network.
• 🌐 Site filter. Pick from 70+ enumerated sites (stackoverflow, superuser, math, etc.).
• 🏷️ Tag filter. Filter by one or many tags (e.g. 'python;asyncio').
• 📊 Sort options. Activity, creation, votes, or relevance.
• ⭐ Score threshold. Filter to questions above a minimum score.

💡 Why it matters: clean, server-side filtering removes the parser-and-pagination work from your team and keeps your dataset fresh on every run.

---

🎬 Full Demo

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

---

⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan up to 1,000,000.
query	string	"python async"	Words that must appear in the question title.
site	string	"stackoverflow"	Stack Exchange site code.
tags	string	""	Tag filter, semicolon-separated.
sort	string	"activity"	`activity`, `creation`, `votes`, `relevance`.
minScore	integer	0	Minimum score (votes).

Example: top 100 highest-voted Python questions.

{
    "maxItems": 100,
    "tags": "python",
    "site": "stackoverflow",
    "sort": "votes"
}

Example: async questions with 10+ score.

{
    "maxItems": 200,
    "query": "async",
    "tags": "python;asyncio",
    "minScore": 10
}

---

📊 Output

Each record contains 22 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
👤 ownerProfileImage	string	"https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/..."
🆔 questionId	number	37278647
📛 title	string	"\"Fire and forget\" python async/await"
📝 bodyMarkdown	string	"\nIs there a way to..."
⭐ score	number	212
👀 viewCount	number	119759
💬 answerCount	number	12
✅ isAnswered	boolean	true
✅ acceptedAnswerId	number	37345564
🏷️ tags	array	["python","asynchronous","python-asyncio"]
📅 creationDate	ISO 8601	"2016-05-17T00:00:00Z"
👤 ownerName	string	"user1234"
👤 ownerReputation	number	8420
🔗 url	string	"https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37278647/..."

📦 Sample records

---

✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🌐	170+ sites in one Actor. Stack Overflow, Super User, Server Fault, Mathematics, Code Review, plus niche communities.
📊	Rich engagement metrics. Score, view count, answer count, accepted answer, asker reputation.
🏷️	Multi-tag filtering. Combine tags for precise topical extraction.
⚡	Fast. 100 questions in under 30 seconds.
🔄	Live per run. Latest scores and answer counts on every fetch.

---

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ This Actor	$5 free credit	170+ sites	Live per run	query, site, tags, sort, score	⚡ 2 min
Stack Exchange Data Explorer	Free	SQL on dump	Daily	SQL	🐢 SQL knowledge
Manual SE search	Free	Manual	Live	Web filters	🕒 Manual
Custom HTTP scraping	Free	All	Live	DIY	🐢 Days

Pick this Actor when you want broad coverage, server-side filtering, and no pipeline maintenance.

---

🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the Stack Exchange Questions Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick your filters and maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

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

---

💼 Business use cases

📊 Developer Marketing Identify pain points by tag Build content from popular questions Track trending tags Sentiment analysis on dev topics	🤖 ML & NLP Train code-Q&A and chat models Build technical-help embedding indexes Code-classification training data Retrieval-augmented generation corpora
📰 Tech Content Generate FAQs from real questions "Top X mistakes" article research Newsletter content on trending issues Curated learning paths	🧑‍💻 DevRel & Hiring Find experts by tag and reputation Track community activity around your tools Source recruiting leads by skill Measure documentation gaps

---

🔌 Automating Stack Exchange Questions Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 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. Hourly, daily, or weekly refreshes keep downstream databases in sync automatically.

---

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Software-engineering research Knowledge-graph construction Reproducible Q&A snapshots Tag-evolution studies	🎨 Personal and creative Personal Q&A databases Side projects on trending tech Newsletter content Hobbyist learning trackers
🤝 Non-profit and civic Educational outreach datasets Open-source community analysis Mentorship platform content Documentation improvement projects	🧪 Experimentation Train retrieval-augmented agents Prototype dev-help chatbots Test answer-quality classifiers Build search experiments

---

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

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

---

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Provide a query and site (or tags only). The Actor queries the public Stack Exchange index and returns one record per question.

🌐 How many sites are covered?

170+. Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Mathematics, Cross Validated, Ask Ubuntu, Code Review, Game Development, plus 60+ niche communities.

📊 How many fields per record?

22, including title, full body markdown, score, view count, answer count, accepted answer, tags, asker reputation, and creation date.

📝 Does it include answers?

No. The Actor returns question records. For per-question answers, contact us via the Tally form below.

🏷️ Can I filter by multiple tags?

Yes. Pass tags semicolon-separated; results must match all of them.

🔁 Can I schedule runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to track tag activity, monitor brand mentions, or feed a content pipeline.

⚖️ Is this data public?

Yes. Stack Exchange publishes content under a Creative Commons license. Only public posts are collected.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free plan covers preview runs. A paid plan unlocks higher item counts and scheduling.

🆘 What if a run fails?

Apify retries transient errors. Partial datasets are preserved.

⏱️ Are there rate limits?

The Actor handles rate limiting transparently with backoff. Large runs auto-pace.

---

🔌 Integrate with any app

Stack Exchange Questions Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

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

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes.

---

🔗 Recommended Actors

• 📰 Hacker News Search - Every HN story since 2007
• 💻 VS Code Marketplace - VS Code extensions catalog
• 🌐 Wikidata Entity Search - 100M+ open knowledge-graph entities
• 📚 Open Library Books - 30M+ books and editions
• 📖 arXiv Scraper - Academic preprints

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

---

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

---

⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Stack Exchange Inc., Stack Overflow, or any of the Stack Exchange network communities. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open data is collected.