Chrome Web Store Scraper: Extension Users & Ratings

Extract structured data from public Chrome Web Store extension pages: user count, star rating, number of ratings, version, last-updated date, size, languages, category, developer name, badges and full description. Discover extensions from category pages or paste your own list of URLs/IDs.

Why use it

• Market research: size a niche by summing users across a category.
• Competitor monitoring: track version bumps, rating drift and user growth of rival extensions on a schedule.
• Lead lists for extension builders and investors: find fast-growing extensions with high ratings.
• Cheap: pay only per extension scraped — no monthly rental.

What data you get

Field	Example
name	uBlock Origin Lite
users	21000000
rating / ratingCount	4.5 / 3700
version / updated	2026.1012.1545 / October 13, 2026
size	8.7MiB
category	Privacy & Security
developerName	Raymond Hill (gorhill)
languagesCount	60
isFeatured, followsRecommendedPractices, isTrader	true, true, false
shortDescription, description, iconUrl, url, id, scrapedAt	…
categoryPath / discoveredVia	extensions/productivity/tools / category

How to use

1. Add extension URLs (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/name/ID) or bare 32-character IDs, and/or category URLs such as https://chromewebstore.google.com/category/extensions/productivity/tools.
2. Set Max items to cap cost.
3. Run and download results as JSON, CSV, Excel or via API.

Example input

{
  "extensionUrls": ["nngceckbapebfimnlniiiahkandclblb"],
  "categoryUrls": ["extensions/productivity/tools"],
  "maxItemsPerCategory": 30,
  "maxItems": 100
}

Related discovery and manifests (opt in)

followRelated (default false) extracts other 32-character extension IDs from raw detail HTML before scripts are removed. A deduplicated FIFO work queue processes category seeds first, then direct input seeds, then related discoveries breadth-first, under the existing concurrency semaphore and maxItems cap. With this flag off, the original input-first order is preserved. categoryPath is the discovery category slug, or null for a direct input; related items inherit their parent's slug. discoveredVia is input, category, or related. Existing per-result extension-result charging is unchanged.

includeManifest (default false) fetches the public CRX with redirects. It first requests the final 65,536 bytes, reads the ZIP end/central directory, computes the ZIP start within the CRX prefix, and requests only the manifest's local header and compressed bytes. Stored and raw-DEFLATE entries are supported. Servers that ignore ranges fall back to a full download capped at 60 MiB. HTTP 204 means unavailable; individual manifest failures do not discard store metadata. JSON accepts UTF-8 BOMs and, on strict parse failure, comments outside strings and trailing commas.

Manifest output: manifestVersion, permissions, optionalPermissions, hostPermissions, optionalHostPermissions, contentScriptMatches (unique content-script matches), and manifestError (null on success, a short error string otherwise). MV2 URL patterns are moved out of permissions into the respective required/optional host arrays. These fields are emitted only when manifest collection is enabled.

{
  "categoryUrls": ["extensions/productivity/tools"],
  "maxItemsPerCategory": 40,
  "maxItems": 2000,
  "maxConcurrency": 5,
  "followRelated": true,
  "includeManifest": true
}

Offline range-parser tests build local CRX-like fixtures (prefix + ZIP) with a fake fetcher. No Apify credentials or network are needed:

python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.002 per extension returned (1,000 extensions = $2). No start fee. Platform usage is included.

Compliance

• Public store detail/category pages are used for metadata. Opt-in manifest collection also requests Google's public CRX update/CDN service. Reviews, search, support and privacy subpages are not crawled.
• Developer e-mail addresses and other personal data are deliberately not collected.
• Polite concurrency and back-off are built in.

FAQ

Does it need a Google login or proxy? No. Can I schedule it? Yes — use Apify Schedules to track changes daily/weekly. Something broke? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab; fixes are usually shipped within 48 hours.