QS Top Universities Scraper

Pull QS university rankings from topuniversities.com at scale — rank, overall score, country, city, profile URL, and the full QS indicator breakdown for every ranked institution. Covers the QS World University Rankings, 20 further ranking tables, and all 59 QS Rankings by Subject. Built for university strategy teams, education consultants, study-abroad agencies, and EdTech products that need a clean, structured rankings dataset without copying tables out of a website one page at a time.

Why This Scraper?

• 21 ranking tables in one place — QS World University Rankings, Sustainability, Graduate Employability, five regional tables (Asia, Europe, Latin America & Caribbean, Arab Region, Sub-Saharan Africa), eight MBA tables, and five Business Masters tables (Management, Finance, Marketing, Business Analytics, Supply Chain Management).
• All 59 QS Rankings by Subject — from Computer Science & Information Systems and Data Science & Artificial Intelligence to Philosophy, Veterinary Science, and Petroleum Engineering. Pick several and each one comes back as its own complete table.
• The full QS methodology breakdown — up to 12 indicator scores and indicator ranks per university, with nine ready-to-sort columns: Academic Reputation, Employer Reputation, Faculty/Student Ratio, Citations per Faculty, International Faculty Ratio, International Student Ratio, International Research Network, Employment Outcomes, and Sustainability Score.
• No 100-row ceiling — the complete 1,504-university World University Rankings table comes back in a single run. Set Maximum Results to 0 and you get every row of whichever table you chose.
• Seven editions of the World University Rankings, 2021 to 2027 — track how an institution's rank and its individual indicator scores moved across seven years.
• 105 country filters and 6 world regions — narrow to Türkiye, Kazakhstan, Puerto Rico, or Macau SAR before a single row is collected, so you only pay for the universities you actually want.
• Official rank banding preserved — ties like =43 and banded tails like 1401+ arrive exactly as QS publishes them, alongside a clean numeric rank for sorting and charting.
• Three stable identifiers on every row — universityId, coreId, and scoreNodeId let you join the same institution across editions, subjects, and regional tables without fuzzy name matching.
• Sub-regional and archive tables by URL — paste a topuniversities.com ranking link, such as the Eastern Asia cut of the Asia rankings, and it resolves on its own.

Use Cases

Higher-Education Strategy & Benchmarking

• Benchmark your institution against a named peer group across all nine QS indicators
• Track seven years of rank movement to show trustees where the curve is heading
• Find which indicator is dragging an overall score down before the next submission
• Compare a university's global position against its regional and subject positions

Student Recruitment & Study-Abroad Advising

• Build shortlists of top-ranked universities in a target country or region
• Match students to subject-specific strengths rather than only overall reputation
• Compare Global MBA and Business Masters tables for postgraduate advising
• Rank destination countries by how many institutions they place in the top 500

Academic Research & Bibliometrics

• Build a longitudinal ranking dataset for higher-education policy research
• Correlate Citations per Faculty against International Research Network scores
• Study how sustainability performance maps onto research reputation
• Compare methodology outcomes across the world, regional, and subject tables

Content, Media & EdTech Products

• Power "best universities for X" pages with current, structured ranking data
• Keep a university comparison tool refreshed each ranking cycle
• Produce data-led articles on national or regional higher-education performance
• Feed rankings into course-finder and admissions guidance products

Market & Competitive Intelligence

• Size the ranked higher-education market by country before entering it
• Identify fast-rising institutions as partnership or sales targets
• Segment universities by region, city, and overall score for outreach planning
• Enrich an existing institution database with current rank and score fields

Getting Started

The Flagship Table

The simplest run — the top 100 of the latest QS World University Rankings:

{
    "ranking": "world-university-rankings",
    "maxResults": 100
}

A Whole Table, Every Row

Set maxResults to 0 to collect the table in full:

{
    "ranking": "world-university-rankings",
    "year": "2027",
    "maxResults": 0
}

Subject Rankings for One Country

{
    "subjects": [
        "computer-science-information-systems",
        "data-science-artificial-intelligence"
    ],
    "countries": ["US", "GB"],
    "maxResults": 50
}

Regional Table, Slimmed Down

Turn off the indicator breakdown when you only need rank, score, and location:

{
    "ranking": "asia-university-rankings",
    "region": "Asia",
    "includeIndicatorScores": false,
    "maxResults": 200
}

Full-Featured Example

{
    "ranking": "world-university-rankings",
    "year": "2025",
    "countries": ["DE", "FR", "NL", "CH"],
    "region": "Europe",
    "searchQuery": "Technical",
    "sortOrder": "asc",
    "maxResults": 0,
    "includeIndicatorScores": true
}

Paste a Ranking URL

{
    "rankingUrls": [
        "https://www.topuniversities.com/asia-university-rankings/eastern-asia",
        "https://www.topuniversities.com/mba-rankings/europe"
    ],
    "maxResults": 0
}

Input Reference

Ranking

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
ranking	select	QS World University Rankings	Which QS ranking table to extract. 21 choices: World, Sustainability, Graduate Employability, five regional tables, eight MBA tables, and five Business Masters tables. Ignored if you select subjects or paste ranking URLs.
subjects	multi-select	[]	Extract QS Rankings by Subject instead. 59 subjects available; each selected subject becomes its own ranking table. Leave empty to use the Ranking choice.
year	select	2027 (latest)	Which edition to extract, 2021 through 2027. When an edition isn't available for the table you chose, the latest one is used instead and the run log tells you. Ignored when you paste ranking URLs.
rankingUrls	string[]	[]	Paste topuniversities.com ranking page URLs to extract them directly — useful for sub-regional tables and archive editions. When set, these are used instead of the choices above, including the edition year, which is taken from the URL itself. Repeated links to the same page are collected once.

Filters

Filters are applied before any results are collected, so you only pay for the rows you keep.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
countries	multi-select	[]	Only return universities based in these countries. 105 countries available, from Argentina to Vietnam. Leave empty for every country.
region	select	All regions	Only return universities in one world region: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, or Oceania.
searchQuery	string	""	Only return universities whose name matches this text, for example Oxford or Technical University.

Results

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
maxResults	integer	100	How many universities to collect from each ranking table. Set to 0 to collect the whole table. Results arrive in blocks of up to 200 rows, so a request that isn't a round number may return a few extra rows.
sortOrder	select	Highest ranked first	Collect from the top of the ranking down, or from the bottom up. Only matters when you limit the number of results.
includeIndicatorScores	boolean	true	Include the per-indicator score and rank breakdown for each university. Turn off for a slimmer, faster result.

Output

One flat row per university, per ranking table. Here is a real World University Rankings row:

{
    "rank": 1,
    "rankDisplay": "1",
    "name": "Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)",
    "country": "United States",
    "city": "Cambridge",
    "region": "North America",
    "overallScore": 100.0,
    "url": "https://www.topuniversities.com/universities/massachusetts-institute-technology-mit",
    "logo": "https://www.topuniversities.com/sites/default/files/massachusetts-institute-of-technology-mit_410_medium.jpg",
    "stars": null,
    "advancedProfile": false,
    "universityId": "294850",
    "coreId": "410",
    "scoreNodeId": "4155277",
    "rankingName": "QS World University Rankings 2027",
    "rankingType": "world-university-rankings",
    "rankingYear": 2027,
    "rankingUrl": "https://www.topuniversities.com/world-university-rankings",
    "subject": null,
    "indicators": [
        { "category": "Research & Discovery", "indicatorId": "76", "name": "Academic Reputation", "score": 100.0, "rank": "4" },
        { "category": "Employability", "indicatorId": "77", "name": "Employer Reputation", "score": 100.0, "rank": "2" },
        { "category": "Global Engagement", "indicatorId": "14", "name": "International Student Ratio", "score": 91.1, "rank": "170" },
        { "category": "Sustainability", "indicatorId": "3897497", "name": "Sustainability Score", "score": 93.2, "rank": "=43" }
    ],
    "academicReputation": 100.0,
    "employerReputation": 100.0,
    "facultyStudentRatio": 100.0,
    "citationsPerFaculty": 100.0,
    "internationalFacultyRatio": 100.0,
    "internationalStudentRatio": 91.1,
    "internationalResearchNetwork": 94.4,
    "employmentOutcomes": 100.0,
    "sustainabilityScore": 93.2
}

Core Fields

Field	Type	Description
rank	number	Numeric rank, ready for sorting
rankDisplay	string	Rank exactly as QS publishes it, including ties (=43) and bands (1401+)
name	string	University name
country	string	Country the university is based in
city	string	City the university is based in
region	string	World region
overallScore	number	Overall QS score out of 100
url	string	Direct link to the university's profile page
logo	string	University logo image URL
stars	string	QS Stars rating, where the institution holds one
advancedProfile	boolean	Whether QS hosts an enhanced profile for this institution

Identifiers

Field	Type	Description
universityId	string	Stable university identifier — the same across editions and tables
coreId	string	QS core institution identifier
scoreNodeId	string	Identifier for this specific ranking row

Ranking Context

Field	Type	Description
rankingName	string	Full ranking title, e.g. QS World University Rankings 2027
rankingType	string	Ranking family, e.g. world-university-rankings
rankingYear	number	The edition that was actually delivered
rankingUrl	string	Source ranking page URL
subject	string	Subject name, on subject rankings only

Indicator Scores

Populated when includeIndicatorScores is on.

Field	Type	Description
indicators	object[]	Every indicator for this table: category, indicatorId, name, score, and rank (rank stays text, so ties and bands survive)
academicReputation	number	Academic Reputation score
employerReputation	number	Employer Reputation score
facultyStudentRatio	number	Faculty/Student Ratio score
citationsPerFaculty	number	Citations per Faculty score
internationalFacultyRatio	number	International Faculty Ratio score
internationalStudentRatio	number	International Student Ratio score
internationalResearchNetwork	number	International Research Network score
employmentOutcomes	number	Employment Outcomes score
sustainabilityScore	number	Sustainability Score

Tips for Best Results

• Test with 100, then open it up — leave maxResults at 100 for a first run to confirm the columns are what you need, then set it to 0 to pull the table in full. If you call the actor from code, always send maxResults explicitly: with no value at all the whole table is collected, which is 1,504 rows for the World ranking.
• Archive editions exist for most tables, but not all — the World table publishes 2021 through 2027, Asia and Arab Region 2021 through 2026, Sustainability 2023 through 2026, Latin America 2024 through 2026, Europe 2024 through 2025, and subject tables 2025. When an edition isn't available the latest one is used instead, the run log says so, and rankingYear on every row tells you exactly which edition you received.
• indicators is the authoritative array — MBA, Business Masters, Employability, and subject tables use different QS indicator sets (Return on Investment, Thought Leadership, Entrepreneurship & Alumni Outcomes, H-index Citations), so the nine named columns are empty there and indicators carries the real breakdown.
• Country codes are two letters — pick from the dropdown rather than typing country names, and combine several codes to build a custom peer group in one run.
• Flip sortOrder to sample the tail — set Start From to "Lowest ranked first" with a small maxResults to inspect the banded end of a table (the 1401+ rows) without collecting the whole thing.
• Join tables on universityId — run the world table and a subject table in separate runs, then match on universityId to see where an institution outperforms its overall position.
• Select several subjects in one run — each subject returns its own full table, so a single run can produce a complete multi-discipline dataset for a country shortlist.

Pricing

From $4.00 per 1,000 results — one flat rate for every ranking table, including the full indicator breakdown that competing tools do not surface at all. Bronze, Silver, and Gold subscribers pay progressively less; the table below shows total cost at each discount tier.

Results	No discount	Bronze	Silver	Gold
100	$0.48	$0.45	$0.43	$0.40
1,000	$4.80	$4.50	$4.25	$4.00
10,000	$48.00	$45.00	$42.50	$40.00
100,000	$480.00	$450.00	$425.00	$400.00

A "result" is one university row in the output dataset. No compute or time-based charges — you pay per result, plus a small fixed per-run start fee.

Integrations

Export data in JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS. Connect to 1,500+ apps via:

• Zapier / Make / n8n — Workflow automation
• Google Sheets — Direct spreadsheet export
• Slack / Email — Notifications on new results
• Webhooks — Trigger custom integrations on run completion
• Apify API — Full programmatic access

Legal & Ethical Use

This actor collects publicly published university ranking tables for research, benchmarking, journalism, and educational guidance. Ranking data belongs to QS Quacquarelli Symonds, and you are responsible for complying with applicable laws, topuniversities.com's Terms of Service, and any attribution rules when you republish or redistribute the figures. No personal data about students or staff is collected. Use the data responsibly and represent rankings accurately in whatever you publish.