🧩 Chrome Web Store Scraper

🚀 Pull every public Chrome Web Store extension into clean, structured JSON — ratings, install counts, manifest, developer, screenshots, badges, and more. Built for speed, designed to survive blocks, ready for API + MCP.

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✨ Why choose this actor?

• 🔁 Two run modes — paste raw listing URLs, or just type a keyword and let the actor build the search URL for you.
• 🎯 Search filters built in — Featured, Established Publisher, Extension / Theme, minimum star rating.
• 📦 Full manifest, optionally included — get permissions, version, manifest_version, host permissions, content scripts, etc.
• 🛡️ Automatic proxy ladder — starts direct, falls back to datacenter, then residential with 3 retries, and sticks with whatever first works.
• 🧠 Resilient parser — no minified-key hardcoding. Survives Google rotating internal RPC / WIZ_global_data identifiers.
• 💾 Live dataset push — every extension lands in the dataset the moment it's parsed; crashes mid-run never lose work.
• 💳 Pay-per-event ready — one billable event per scraped extension.

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🎛️ Key features

🔎 Search keyword + filters	item type, Featured, Established Publisher, min star rating
🔗 Bulk URL input	any Chrome Web Store category, collection, or search-result URL
🛡️ Smart proxy fallback	direct → datacenter → residential (sticky, with retries)
⚡ Concurrent detail scraping	tune detailConcurrency (1–32, default 8)
🧱 Cap output volume	maxItems ceiling (1–5000)
📦 Manifest toggle	include or strip the full Chrome manifest dict
📊 Multi-view dataset	overview, developer, media, technical tabs in Apify Console

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📥 Input

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "ai",
  "itemTypes": ["EXTENSION"],
  "filterBy": ["featured"],
  "minimalRating": 4,
  "maxItems": 100,
  "extractManifest": false,
  "detailConcurrency": 8,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": false }
}

Field reference

Field	Type	Purpose
mode	string "url" / "search"	Pick which set of inputs the run uses.
startUrls	array of URLs	(URL mode) Chrome Web Store listing URLs to scrape.
searchQuery	string	(Search mode) Keyword.
itemTypes	array	(Search mode) Subset of EXTENSION, THEME. Empty = no filter.
filterBy	array	(Search mode) Subset of featured, establishedPublisher. Empty = no filter.
minimalRating	integer 0–5	(Search mode) Minimum star rating; 0 disables.
maxItems	integer	Hard cap on collected extensions.
extractManifest	boolean	Include the full manifest dict in each record.
detailConcurrency	integer 1–32	Parallel detail-page workers.
proxyConfiguration	proxy object	Override the starting tier. Default = direct.

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📤 Output

Each record looks like this (full manifest omitted for brevity):

{
  "extensionId": "difoiogjjojoaoomphldepapgpbgkhkb",
  "iconUrl": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/.../wTNe...",
  "promoTileUrl": "https://.../irg6...",
  "marqueeTileUrl": "https://.../eQr...",
  "name": "Sider: Chat with all AI: GPT-5, Claude, DeepSeek, Gemini, Grok",
  "rating": 4.918653426548515,
  "ratingCount": 112285,
  "users": 5000000,
  "version": "5.25.12",
  "category": "productivity/tools",
  "shortDescription": "ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, Claude, Grok all in one AI sidebar…",
  "websiteUrl": "sider.ai",
  "permissions": ["storage", "cookies", "scripting", "activeTab", "tabs"],
  "manifestVersion": 3,
  "manifest": { "...": "(only when extractManifest = true)" },
  "author": "care@sider.ai",
  "url": "https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/difoiogjjojoaoomphldepapgpbgkhkb",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-17T11:29:57.813Z",
  "description": "ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, Claude, Grok all in one AI sidebar…",
  "screenshots": ["https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/.../jEZ..."],
  "developer": {
    "email": "care@sider.ai",
    "displayName": "ChatGPT Sidebar",
    "address": "335 Huntington Ave APT 35 Boston, MA 02115 US",
    "phone": "+18577560822",
    "legalEntity": "Vidline Inc.",
    "registrationNumber": "106977314",
    "developerId": "u7940399ce3ad5f805172c7a395b8b66b"
  },
  "developerWebsite": "https://sider.ai",
  "privacyPolicyUrl": "https://sider.ai/privacy.html",
  "isFeatured": true,
  "isEstablishedPublisher": true
}

The dataset offers four pre-configured views in Apify Console: 📊 Overview, 👤 Developer, 🖼️ Media & content, and ⚙️ Technical.

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🚀 How to use (Apify Console)

1. 🔐 Log in at console.apify.com → Actors.
2. 🔎 Open this actor (chrome-web-store-scraper).
3. 🎛️ Pick a run mode and fill the inputs.
4. ▶️ Click Start.
5. 📜 Watch the log — you'll see every extension as it's discovered and scraped, with proxy events called out live.
6. 📤 Open Output when the run finishes — export to JSON / CSV / XLSX.

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🤖 Use via API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/USER~chrome-web-store-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
        "mode": "search",
        "searchQuery": "password manager",
        "itemTypes": ["EXTENSION"],
        "minimalRating": 4,
        "maxItems": 50
      }'

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🎯 Best use cases

• 🧠 Market research — competitor catalogues, install counts, rating trends.
• 🛒 Store intelligence — track Featured and Established Publisher badges across categories.
• 🔐 Permission audits — bulk-collect manifests and surface risky permission patterns.
• 📈 Lead generation — pull developer contact + website fields straight from the store.
• 📊 Trend tracking — schedule the actor on a cron and diff rating + user counts over time.

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💰 Pricing

This actor uses Apify's Pay-Per-Event model. You only pay for results — not for compute, proxies, or storage.

Event	What it bills for	Price
🧩 row_result	One Chrome Web Store extension successfully written to the dataset (full record — rating, users, version, permissions, developer, screenshots, badges).	$0.005

That works out to $5 per 1,000 extensions scraped. Failed extensions (page errors, blocks that survive the proxy ladder) are not charged — only successful rows count.

Runs stop gracefully when your spend limit (ACTOR_MAX_TOTAL_CHARGE_USD) is reached — partial results stay in the dataset, no failed-run penalty.

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❓ FAQ

Does this need a Google account or login? No. Everything is fetched anonymously from public Chrome Web Store pages.

Will it work if I leave proxy on "direct"? Usually yes for small runs. If the store rate-limits, the actor escalates to datacenter, then residential, automatically. Large runs benefit from setting proxyConfiguration.useApifyProxy = true up front.

Why is the manifest field sometimes missing? You disabled extractManifest to keep records small. Summary fields (version, permissions, manifestVersion) are kept either way.

What happens if the Chrome Web Store HTML layout changes? The parser discovers RPC IDs, request templates, and WIZ_global_data keys at runtime, so most layout / minification changes are absorbed automatically. Issues are tracked in the Issues tab.

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⚖️ Cautions & legal

• 🌐 Only publicly available Chrome Web Store data is collected.
• ✅ The Chrome Web Store does not require authentication for the pages this actor reads.
• 🧑‍⚖️ You are responsible for compliance with the Chrome Web Store Terms of Service, as well as any GDPR / CCPA / anti-spam obligations when you use the output (especially the developer.email / developer.phone / developer.address fields).
• 🤝 The actor honors reasonable rate limits and politely backs off when the store pushes back.

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💬 Support & feedback

Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab or use the Feedback button in Apify Console. PRs and suggestions welcome.