Chrome Web Store Scraper — Pay Per Result

Scrape Chrome extension metadata and public reviews from the Chrome Web Store via lightweight HTTP requests. Pass extension IDs or Store URLs — metadata, reviews, or both in one run.

Store search keywords: Chrome Web Store scraper · extension metadata · extension reviews · Chrome extension data · CWS scraper

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Why this Actor

Need	What you get
Extension intelligence	Name, rating, user count, version, developer, category, manifest summary
Review monitoring	Review text, stars, reviewer, dates, helpful votes
Failures that shouldn’t bill	404 / empty / unparseable → not charged
Low cost	HTTP-only (no Playwright); PPE priced from measured unit economics

Public listing pages only. No Google developer API key required.

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Endpoints (public HTTP)

There is no official public REST API for browsing extension catalog data or reviews. This Actor uses the same HTML pages your browser loads:

Purpose	URL	Data source
Extension metadata	GET https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/{extensionId}	Embedded AF_initDataCallback({ key: 'ds:0', data: … }) SSR blob
Public reviews (first page)	GET https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/{extensionId}/reviews	Embedded AF_initDataCallback({ key: 'ds:1', data: … }) SSR blob

Legacy URLs on chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/… redirect to chromewebstore.google.com and are accepted in input.

Google’s official Chrome Web Store API (chromewebstore.googleapis.com) is developer-only (publish/manage your own items) — not used here.

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Input

{
  "extensionIds": ["gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom"],
  "urls": ["https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm"],
  "mode": "both",
  "maxItemsPerExtension": 10,
  "requestDelayMs": 400
}

Accepted ID / URL forms:

• ID: gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom
• Detail URL: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/adblock/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom
• Reviews URL: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom/reviews
• Legacy: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/…/{extensionId}

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Output fields

recordType: "metadata" (one row per extension)

Field	Description
extensionId	32-character extension ID
name	Extension title
shortDescription	Store listing blurb
developerName	From embedded manifest author
websiteUrl	Developer site when listed
storeUrl	Canonical detail URL
iconUrl / heroImageUrl	Image URLs from SSR data
ratingValue / ratingCount	Average rating and review count
userCount	Approximate install/user count (integer)
category	Store category slug (e.g. productivity/workflow)
version	Current published version
updatedAt	Human-readable “Updated …” text from HTML
manifest	Summary: permissions, manifest version, locale

recordType: "review" (one row per review)

Field	Description
reviewId	UUID review identifier
reviewerName / reviewerAvatarUrl	Public reviewer profile
rating	1–5 stars
reviewText	Review body
reviewDate / editedDate	ISO timestamps
helpfulCount	Helpful votes when exposed
extensionVersion	Extension version at review time
language	Review language code

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Pricing

Pay-per-event for each delivered dataset row (apify-default-dataset-item).

• Empty extensions, 404 IDs, and parse failures → not charged
• Metadata-only runs bill one row per extension; review runs bill one row per review

~$0.50 / 1,000 results on the Store pricing tab (HTTP-only; empty/404 free).

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Limitations (honest)

• Reviews pagination: Each /reviews HTTP response embeds ~10 reviews. Fetching older pages requires Google’s internal batchexecute RPC (undocumented, changes often) — not implemented in v0.1.
• SSR structure drift: Metadata/reviews are parsed from AF_initDataCallback blobs. Google can rearrange indices; parser may need updates.
• No search/discovery: Pass known extension IDs or URLs — category/search crawling is out of scope.
• Rate limits: High volume may trigger HTTP 429/503; use requestDelayMs and optional Apify Proxy.
• Removed extensions: Return HTTP 404 and are skipped (not charged).
• Screenshots: Not extracted in v0.1 (not reliably present in the SSR blob).

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Issues / feature requests: use the Actor Issues tab.