📦 Vcpkg Ports Scraper

🚀 Export the full vcpkg port catalog in seconds. Name, version, description, dependencies, supported triplets, and license.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-06-05 · 📊 11 fields per record · 2,000+ C and C++ ports · Microsoft vcpkg catalog · No login required

The Vcpkg Ports Scraper turns the public vcpkg.io/output.json catalog dump into a structured dataset. It loads the full port index, normalizes verbose vcpkg keys (Version-string, Version-semver, Version-date) to a single version field, and lets you filter by substring, license, or supported triplet.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
🏗️ C and C++ build engineers	Audit dependency trees
🛡️ Security teams	Find ports affected by a CVE
📊 Package authors	Track ecosystem coverage
🚀 DevRel	Build vcpkg discovery dashboards
🧪 Researchers	Study C and C++ dependency graphs
👩‍💻 Developers	Find a port for a new dependency

📋 What the Vcpkg Ports Scraper does

• Fetches the canonical https://vcpkg.io/output.json catalog.
• Flattens vcpkg's multiple version key variants into a single version field.
• Filters by substring search, license, or supported triplet.
• Normalizes the dependencies array to plain strings.
• Surfaces upstream errors as a single diagnostic record.
• Exports to every Apify dataset format.

💡 Why it matters: vcpkg ships with thousands of ports but the catalog is a single 30 MB JSON blob with awkward key variants. This actor reshapes it for SQL and BI tools.

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon.

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
maxItems	integer	No	Free 10. Paid up to 1,000,000.
search	string	No	Substring match against name or description.
license	string	No	Substring match against license field.
supportsTriplet	enum	No	Keep only ports supporting the chosen triplet.

Example 1. All MIT-licensed ports.

{ "license": "MIT", "maxItems": 100 }

Example 2. Windows-only OpenSSL family.

{ "search": "openssl", "supportsTriplet": "windows" }

⚠️ Good to Know: The catalog dump is large. Free users see 10 records; paid users can pull the entire catalog.

📊 Output

Field	Type	Description
📛 name	string	Port name.
🔢 version	string	Normalized version string.
📝 description	string	Port description.
🔗 homepage	string	Upstream project homepage.
⚖️ license	string	SPDX-style license string.
🧩 supports	string	vcpkg supports expression.
📦 dependencies	array	Dependency names.
🛠️ features	object	Per-feature configuration.
👥 maintainers	array	Port maintainers.
🕒 scrapedAt	string	When this row was fetched.
❌ error	string	Set on upstream error.

{
  "name": "zlib",
  "version": "1.3.1",
  "description": "A massively spiffy yet delicately unobtrusive compression library",
  "homepage": "https://zlib.net/",
  "license": "Zlib",
  "supports": null,
  "dependencies": ["vcpkg-cmake"],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-05T12:00:00.000Z",
  "error": null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

| 🆓 | Public catalog, no key required. | | 🧹 | Normalizes vcpkg's three version-key variants into one. | | 🔎 | Filter by substring, license, or supported triplet. | | 🛟 | Clean diagnostic records on upstream errors. | | 💾 | Push to dataset for instant export. |

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Setup	Normalized	Filters	Auto export
Parse output.json manually	30 min +	manual	manual	manual
Clone vcpkg repo and grep	1 hr +	manual	❌	❌
This Actor	5 sec	✅	✅	✅

🚀 How to use

1. Click Try for free.
2. Optionally set a search, license, or triplet filter.
3. Click Start and download the dataset.

💼 Business use cases

🛡️ CVE audits. Quickly list every port that depends on a CVE-flagged package.

🏗️ Build planning. Spot which triplets a candidate dependency supports.

📊 Ecosystem analytics. Track how the vcpkg catalog grows month over month.

🚀 Tooling integrations. Drive an internal package picker UI.

🔌 Automating Vcpkg Ports Scraper

• Make and Zapier trigger this actor on a schedule.
• Cron keeps your mirror fresh.
• Webhooks notify on completion.
• Pipe to BigQuery, Snowflake, or Postgres with native integrations.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

🎓 Education. Teach package-manager design with real catalog data.

🧪 Personal research. Track the C and C++ ecosystem.

🤝 Non-profit and open data. Publish a vcpkg dashboard.

🧰 Tinkering. Discover libraries fast.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Pop this README into ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI assistant and ask it to map your specific workflow to the actor's inputs.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

❓ Where does data come from? The official vcpkg.io/output.json catalog.

❓ Need an API key? No.

❓ How big is the catalog? Around 2,000 ports.

❓ Schedule runs? Yes.

❓ API or scraping? Public endpoint.

❓ Schema stability? Stable.

❓ Rate limits? None observed.

❓ Maximum run? 1,000,000 records on paid plans.

❓ Triplet filtering? Substring match against the supports field.

❓ Download formats? Any Apify dataset format.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Apify ships native integrations with Make, Zapier, Slack, Discord, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Gmail, Airbyte, Keboola, Telegram, GitHub, and any REST API or webhook endpoint.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for 900+ production-grade scrapers.

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