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Stanford Online Courses Scraper

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from $19.00 / 1,000 results

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Stanford Online Courses Scraper

Stanford Online Courses Scraper

Scrapes Stanford Online continuing education and professional development courses by keyword. Returns each course as a flat row with title, description, and catalog metadata.

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from $19.00 / 1,000 results

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ParseForge

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3 days ago

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Stanford Online Courses Scraper

Scrape Stanford Online continuing education courses by keyword, up to a million per run. Each course comes with its title, description, and catalog metadata. No login or API key. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Stanford Online's catalog of professional and continuing education courses is spread across multiple pages and lacks a public API. This actor reads the public course listings directly, filters them by your search keyword, and returns each match in one fixed schema.

Who uses itWhat they scrape Stanford Online for
Continuing education advisorsBuild a current catalog of Stanford professional development courses for their advisees.
Corporate learning managersMonitor new Stanford Online courses relevant to their team's upskilling roadmap.
Edtech market analystsTrack Stanford's continuing education catalog size and topic coverage over time.

What it does

This Actor collects Stanford Online continuing education courses by keyword and returns each one as a flat row.

  • ๐Ÿ” Keyword search: Filter the entire Stanford Online catalog by course title or subject keyword.
  • ๐Ÿ“ฆ Bulk collection: Collect up to a million course records in a single run for complete catalog snapshots.
  • ๐Ÿ“„ Flat row output: Every course is returned as a clean, flat row ready for spreadsheets or databases.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Stanford Online data

๐Ÿ“‹ Build a course catalog.

A continuing education advisor runs the actor with no keyword to pull the full Stanford Online catalog into a searchable internal database.

๐ŸŽฏ Find specific upskilling courses.

A corporate learning manager searches for 'machine learning' to find Stanford Online courses for their engineering team's professional development plan.

๐Ÿ“Š Monitor catalog changes.

An edtech analyst runs the actor weekly to track new additions and removals in Stanford's continuing education offerings.

Why choose this scraper

What you get
No API neededReads the public Stanford Online catalog directly, no registration or API key required.
Keyword filteringCollect only the courses that match your subject or title search term.
Scalable collectionSet a high maximum to pull the entire catalog in one run.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets Stanford Online the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

Stanford Online Courses ScraperBuild it in-houseBy hand
SetupRun it now, zero configDays of engineeringNone, but hours per pull
When Stanford Online changesMaintained for youYou fix itYou re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-botBuilt inYour problemBrowser only
OutputFixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel exportWhatever you buildCopy-paste
CostPay per resultEngineering timeAnalyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor with a course title or subject keyword, and the filter runs as each course is read so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
"maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
"maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.021 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collectedApproximate cost
100 results$2.10
1,000 results$21.00
10,000 results$210.00

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

  1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
  2. Open the Stanford Online Courses Scraper.
  3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
  4. 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 Stanford Online through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/stanford-online-courses-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check your search query spelling. Try a broader keyword or leave the search query empty to see all available courses. Stanford Online may also have temporarily changed their page structure.

The actor returns fewer courses than expected.

Increase the maximum items setting. If the number is still lower than expected, Stanford Online may have fewer courses matching your keyword than anticipated.

Some course fields are empty in the output.

Not all courses in the Stanford Online catalog have every metadata field populated. Empty fields reflect missing data on the source page.

The actor fails to start or times out.

Stanford Online's website may be temporarily slow. Try reducing the maximum items or retry the run after a few minutes.

FAQ

QuestionAnswer
Do I need a Stanford account to scrape courses?No. This actor reads the public Stanford Online course catalog, so no login or account is required.
Can I scrape all Stanford Online courses at once?Yes. Leave the search query empty and set a high maximum items number to collect the entire catalog in one run.
What data does each course row contain?Each row includes the course title, description, and other catalog metadata as shown in the sample output above.
Can I filter by subject area?Yes. Use the search query field with a subject keyword like 'engineering' or 'data science' to filter the catalog.
How many courses can I collect per run?You can set the maximum up to 1,000,000 courses, which is more than the entire Stanford Online catalog.
What export formats are supported?You can export your dataset to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify platform.
Does this actor scrape degree programs or only continuing education?This actor scrapes the Stanford Online continuing education and professional development catalog, not degree-granting programs.
Can I schedule this actor to run automatically?Yes. Use Apify's scheduler to run the actor daily, weekly, or on any custom interval to track catalog changes.

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

๐Ÿ†˜ Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

โš ๏ธ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Stanford University. 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.