Coursera Scraper

Extract Coursera courses, specializations, and professional certificates by keyword. Get structured data on course titles, universities, ratings, difficulty levels, skills, duration, and more — no browser needed, pure HTTP.

What does this scraper do?

This actor searches Coursera by keyword and returns detailed course listings. It is useful for:

• EdTech market research — survey what courses exist in any subject area
• Learning path discovery — find all specializations and professional certificates for a skill
• Competitive benchmarking — compare Coursera's catalog to your own content
• Lead generation — identify topics with high enrollment and learner ratings
• Academic research — analyze MOOCs by university, level, and skills taught

Input

Field	Type	Description
queries	array	List of search keywords, e.g. ["machine learning", "python"]
maxResults	integer	Max courses per query (default: 50, max: 500)
proxyConfiguration	object	Optional Apify proxy config (not required for Coursera)

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
title	string	Course title
slug	string	URL slug, e.g. machine-learning-introduction
url	string	Full Coursera URL
partner	string or array	University or organization offering the course
partners	array	Full list of partners (for co-offered courses)
course_type	string	course, specialization, professional-certificate, guided-project
level	string	Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, or Mixed
rating	number	Average learner rating (0–5), e.g. 4.87
num_ratings	integer	Number of ratings
duration	string	Estimated time, e.g. 1-3 months
skills	array	Skills covered (up to 10), e.g. ["Python", "Machine Learning"]
is_free	boolean	Whether the course is free to audit
is_coursera_plus	boolean	Included in Coursera Plus subscription
image_url	string	Course thumbnail URL
tagline	string	Short marketing description
languages	array	Languages the course is fully translated into
query	string	The query that returned this course

Example output

{
  "title": "Machine Learning",
  "slug": "machine-learning-introduction",
  "url": "https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-introduction",
  "partner": ["DeepLearning.AI", "Stanford University"],
  "partners": ["DeepLearning.AI", "Stanford University"],
  "course_type": "specialization",
  "level": "Beginner",
  "rating": 4.89,
  "num_ratings": 38721,
  "duration": "1-3 months",
  "skills": ["Unsupervised Learning", "Supervised Learning", "Machine Learning Methods", "Model Training"],
  "is_free": false,
  "is_coursera_plus": false,
  "image_url": "https://d15cw65ipctsrr.cloudfront.net/...",
  "tagline": "#BreakIntoAI with Machine Learning Specialization\nOffered by DeepLearning.AI, and Stanford University",
  "languages": ["English"],
  "query": "machine learning"
}

Technical details

• Data source: window.__APOLLO_STATE__ embedded JSON in Coursera's SSR search pages
• Pattern: Pure HTTP (Pattern A) — 256 MB memory, no browser
• Rate: 12 courses/page, polite 1.5s delay between pages, 2s delay between queries
• Deduplication: by slug across all queries
• Proxy: not required; optional Apify proxy supported

Pricing

Pay-per-result pricing with volume discounts:

Tier	Price
FREE (first 1K)	$0.002/result
BRONZE	$0.0016/result
SILVER	$0.0012/result
GOLD	$0.001/result

Use cases

Find all machine learning courses

{ "queries": ["machine learning"], "maxResults": 100 }

Compare Python courses across levels

{ "queries": ["python beginner", "python intermediate", "python advanced"], "maxResults": 50 }

Survey digital marketing certificates

{ "queries": ["digital marketing", "social media marketing", "seo"], "maxResults": 60 }

Notes

• Coursera search returns specializations, professional certificates, and individual courses in the same results
• Filter by course_type in your downstream processing to separate these
• The num_ratings field is the most reliable proxy for enrollment count (Coursera does not expose raw enrollment in search results)
• Results are sorted by Coursera's relevance ranking by default