Stack Overflow Trending Scraper

Scrape questions from Stack Overflow and the entire Stack Exchange network by tag. Extract titles, vote counts, answer counts, accepted-answer status, view counts, excerpts, tags, and author information as structured JSON. No API key required.

This actor uses CheerioCrawler for fast HTML scraping with automatic pagination and optional deep-link scraping of individual question pages. It works across Stack Overflow and any Stack Exchange subdomain (e.g. serverfault, superuser, askubuntu). Export to JSON, CSV, or via API.

Features

• Scrape questions by tag from Stack Overflow or any Stack Exchange site
• Sort options: newest, active, votes, frequent, bountied
• Optional accepted-answers-only filter
• Optional detail scraping of individual question pages for answer content
• Automatic pagination to reach maxItems
• Works across all Stack Exchange network sites
• Extracts title, URL, votes, answers, accepted-answer flag, views, excerpt, tags, author, and timestamp

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
tag	String	javascript	Stack Overflow tag to scrape (e.g. python, react, docker)
sortBy	String	newest	Sort order: newest, active, votes, frequent, bountied
maxItems	Integer	50	Maximum number of questions to return
includeAnswers	Boolean	true	Enable deep-link scraping of question detail pages
includeAcceptedOnly	Boolean	false	Only return questions with an accepted answer
site	String	stackoverflow	Stack Exchange site subdomain (e.g. serverfault, askubuntu)

Example input

{
    "tag": "python",
    "sortBy": "votes",
    "maxItems": 100,
    "includeAcceptedOnly": true,
    "site": "stackoverflow"
}

Output

{
    "title": "How to merge two dictionaries in Python 3.9+",
    "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38987/how-to-merge-two-dictionaries",
    "votes": 4500,
    "answers": 12,
    "hasAccepted": true,
    "views": "1.2m",
    "excerpt": "I have two Python dictionaries, and I want to write a single expression...",
    "tags": ["python", "dictionary", "merge"],
    "author": "user123",
    "askedWhen": "asked 5 mins ago",
    "site": "stackoverflow"
}

Use cases

• Developer research — identify common pain points and trending topics in a technology
• Content creation — find popular questions to write tutorials, blog posts, or documentation around
• SEO — discover high-traffic question topics to target with content
• Community monitoring — track activity in specific tags across the Stack Exchange network
• Support intelligence — aggregate unanswered or trending questions for product teams
• Technical recruiting — identify active experts by tag and reputation

How to use

1. Open the actor on the Apify Store.
2. Enter a tag (e.g. python, react, docker).
3. Choose a sortBy option and optionally set includeAcceptedOnly.
4. Optionally switch site to a different Stack Exchange subdomain.
5. Click Start and export results to JSON, CSV, or via API.

Use scheduled runs to track new questions in your technology stack and feed them into content or support workflows.