Event Finder — AI-powered tech conference discovery

Find tech conferences and open Calls for Proposals using plain English. Describe what you're looking for, and an AI model (via OpenRouter) filters and ranks the results from the community-maintained developers.events dataset.

No web scraping required. The data source is a free public JSON API.

Why use Event Finder?

• Save time searching — Describe what you want in natural language instead of filtering through spreadsheets
• Discover CFPs — Find open calls for proposals matching your talk topics
• AI-ranked results — AI scores each event's relevance so you see the best matches first
• Pre-filter by date/country — Reduce AI token usage and cost by narrowing the dataset before AI processes it

How inputs work together

The Actor processes inputs in two stages:

Stage 1: Hard pre-filters (always runs, no AI needed)

These reduce the dataset before any AI call. They are exact, cheap, and happen first.

Field	What it does
type	Picks which dataset to fetch: events or cfps. Events are conferences; CFPs are conferences actively seeking speaker submissions with a deadline
dateFrom / dateTo	Events: filters by event start date. CFPs: filters by submission deadline. Both dates inclusive. Default dateFrom is today so past items are excluded
location	A country name or a region. See below for how each is handled

Stage 2: AI filter (only if query is provided)

The query field is a plain English description of what you want. The pre-filtered list plus your query are sent to OpenRouter, which scores every event 1-10 on relevance, keeps items scoring 5+, and ranks the rest.

maxResults caps the final output (top N by score). Defaults to 10.

Dataset ──> Stage 1: hard pre-filters ──> Stage 2: AI scores ──> Top N results
(events or CFPs)   (type, date, location)      (query + maxResults)

If query is empty, Stage 2 is skipped entirely. You get all matching events sorted by date up to maxResults.

Location

The location field handles three types of values:

1. Specific country — Does an exact country match in the pre-filter. Common aliases are resolved automatically:

You type	Matches events in
Germany	Germany
USA, US, United States, America	USA
UK, United Kingdom, GB, England	UK
UAE	United Arab Emirates
Czech Republic	Czechia
Korea, South Korea	South Korea
Holland	Netherlands

2. Region — Expands to a list of countries in the pre-filter. All matching countries are included before AI sees anything:

Region	Countries included
Europe	Albania through UK + Wales (~40 countries)
DACH	Germany, Austria, Switzerland
EMEA	Europe + Middle East + Africa
APAC	East Asia + South Asia + Southeast Asia + Oceania
Asia	All Asian countries
North America	Canada, Mexico, USA
South America	All South American countries
Middle East	Bahrain through Yemen
Africa	All African countries
Oceania	Australia through Vanuatu
Scandinavia / Nordics	Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden

For the full list of supported regions and their country mappings, see src/location.ts.

3. Blank — No location filter. Events from all countries are included.

Combinations

Scenario	What happens
type: events + query: "AI conferences"	AI sees all events regardless of date/location and picks relevant ones
type: events + query: "AI conferences" + location: Germany + dateFrom: 2026-06-01	Pre-filter: only German events starting June 2026. AI scores those.
type: events + query: "AI conferences" + location: Europe	Pre-filter: all European countries. AI scores against your query.
type: events + query: "" + location: Japan	Dump mode: all events in Japan sorted by start date (no AI cost)
type: cfps + query: "Rust or Go topics" + location: DACH	CFPs from Germany, Austria, Switzerland with Rust/Go relevance
type: cfps + query: "cloud" + location: EMEA	CFPs from Europe, Middle East, Africa
type: cfps + dateFrom: 2026-06-01 + dateTo: 2026-07-01	CFPs with submission deadlines in June 2026
dateFrom: none (blank)	Defaults to today. Past events/expired deadlines excluded automatically

Input fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
query	string	optional	Plain English description. Leave empty for dump mode (sorted by date, no AI cost)
type	select	optional	events or cfps (default: events)
dateFrom	date	optional	Events: earliest start date. CFPs: earliest submission deadline. Blank defaults to today
dateTo	date	optional	Events: latest start date. CFPs: latest submission deadline. Blank = no upper bound
location	string	optional	Country name (with alias resolution) or region (expanded to country list). Blank = all countries
maxResults	number	optional	Max results to return (default: 10, max: 100)
openrouterApiKey	secret	optional	Your OpenRouter API key (or set OPENROUTER_API_KEY env var)

How to use Event Finder

1. Open the Actor's Input tab in the Apify Console
2. Enter a plain English query or leave blank for dump mode
3. Optionally set date range, location, and type
4. Click Run and wait for results
5. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, HTML, or Excel

Output

Each result is a JSON record in the dataset:

{
  "name": "React Summit",
  "type": "event",
  "date": { "start": "2026-06-12", "end": "2026-06-14" },
  "location": { "city": "Amsterdam", "country": "Netherlands" },
  "tags": ["react", "frontend", "javascript"],
  "url": "https://reactsummit.com",
  "cfpDeadline": "2026-03-01",
  "cfpUrl": "https://sessionize.com/react-summit-2026",
  "relevanceScore": 8,
  "reason": "Frontend conference with React focus matches the query for JavaScript/React events."
}

You can download the dataset in JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel format.

Data fields

Field	Description
name	Event name
type	event or cfp
date	Object with start and end ISO dates
location	Object with city and country
tags	Array of topic tags
url	Event website
cfpDeadline	CFP submission deadline (ISO date or null)
cfpUrl	CFP submission link (or null)
relevanceScore	AI relevance score (1-10)
reason	One-sentence explanation of why this matched

Cost estimation

Each run costs approximately $0.002–0.01 using a cheap model like deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash on OpenRouter. Model choice is the main cost driver — cheaper models (DeepSeek, Llama via OpenRouter) keep costs near zero. Hard pre-filters (date, country) reduce the AI payload so you pay for fewer tokens.

Tips

• Use pre-filters to cut cost — dateFrom/dateTo and location run before AI and are the cheapest way to narrow results. A tight pre-filter means fewer items sent to OpenRouter.
• Regions are pre-filtered too — Europe, DACH, EMEA, etc. expand to country lists and filter before AI, so they reduce cost the same way a single country does.
• No-query mode is free — Leave query blank for dump mode. No AI call means zero API cost.
• Set OPENROUTER_API_KEY as environment variable — Store your API key in the Actor's environment variables instead of passing it with every run.
• Cheap model by default — Uses deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash on OpenRouter. Override with OPENROUTER_MODEL env var for a different model.
• CFP hunting — Set type to cfps and use dateFrom/dateTo to narrow by submission deadline. A tight window like the next 30 days shows what you should apply to now.
• Date means different things — For events, dateFrom/dateTo filters by event start date. For CFPs, it filters by submission deadline. The output date field always shows the event date; cfpDeadline shows when submissions close.

FAQ, disclaimers, and support

Q: Do I need an OpenRouter API key? Yes, for AI filtering. Get one at openrouter.ai/keys. Without it, you can still use the no-query dump mode.

Q: Is web scraping involved? No. All data comes from the public JSON API at developers.events. No proxy or browser automation needed.

Q: Where does the data come from? The developers.events community-maintained dataset. Events are added and updated by the community.

Q: How accurate is the AI filtering? The AI model evaluates each event against your query contextually. It handles misspellings, related terms, and implicit preferences well, but always verify results before making decisions.

For issues or feature requests, use the Issues tab. Need custom event sourcing or scheduled digests? Contact the author.