RubyGems Scraper - Ruby Gems & Downloads

Search RubyGems or look up Ruby gems by name and get clean rows: description, total and version downloads, latest version, licenses, authors, homepage, source code and documentation links. Built on the official RubyGems API - no API key, no browser, no proxy. Run one search or import a file of gem names.

What you get per gem

Field	Meaning
name / version	Gem name and latest version
downloads / versionDownloads	All-time downloads and downloads of the latest version
info / authors / licenses	Description, authors and license list
homepage / sourceCode / documentation	Homepage, source repo and docs URLs
bugTracker / changelog / funding	Author-declared extra links
versionCreatedAt / yanked / runtimeDependencies	Latest-version date, yanked flag and dependency count (on exact gemNames lookups)
platform / gemUrl	Platform and the gem's RubyGems page

Input

{ "searchQueries": ["authentication", "testing"], "maxItemsPerQuery": 50 }

• Search terms - one per line (e.g. rails, authentication, json).
• Gem names - fetch exact gems (e.g. rails, devise); these carry the version date, yanked flag and dependency count.
• Import from a file - paste a list, or link a public .txt/.csv, a Google Sheet/Drive link, or an Apify key-value-store record.
• Output fields - trim every record to exactly the columns you need.

Leave everything empty and the run returns a small free sample so you can see the shape first.

Reliability

Reads the official RubyGems API - no key, no proxy, no anti-bot. A search that returns nothing, an unknown gem name, or an import that cannot be read bills $0 and says why.

Honest limits

• versionCreatedAt, yanked and runtimeDependencies are detail-only. RubyGems returns them on the per-gem endpoint, not in search results, so they populate for gemNames exact lookups and are null for searchQueries results (probed 2026-08-15) - the API's shape, not a scraping gap.
• sourceCode / documentation / bugTracker / changelog / funding are author-optional - present only when the gem author declared them; an honest null otherwise.

Pricing

$0.001 per gem on the FREE tier (tiered pricing lowers it with volume). Only gems actually saved are billed; empty searches, unknown names and unreadable imports cost nothing.

Output views

• Gems - name, version, description, downloads, licenses and source link.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

Available through the Apify MCP server - an agent can find the top Ruby gems for a task, compare download counts, or enrich a list of gem names with versions and licenses in one call.

Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is agent-ready - AI agents can discover it, run it, and pay for it autonomously, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses pay-per-event pricing and limited permissions, so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

• x402 - an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the Apify MCP server - no account, no API key.
• Skyfire - agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.