VSCode / Open VSX Extension Metadata Scraper

Pull rich metadata for any VSCode-compatible extension from the Open VSX registry — downloads, version, publisher, license, repository, tags, and timestamps. Feeds dev-tools market research, competitive dashboards, and editor-extension analytics. No API key required.

Open VSX (open-vsx.org) is the vendor-neutral marketplace used by VSCodium, Gitpod, Theia, and Cursor. It exposes a clean public REST API with no authentication.

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How to use

Send a JSON input with one field:

{
  "extension_id": [
    "redhat/java",
    "ms-python/python",
    "dbaeumer/vscode-eslint",
    "esbenp/prettier-vscode",
    "eamodio/gitlens"
  ]
}

Each entry must be in namespace/extension form (case-sensitive, usually lowercase). The actor fetches one row per id and writes results to the dataset. Unknown or unlisted ids are skipped with a warning.

If extension_id is omitted the actor runs on three demo extensions (redhat/java, ms-python/python, dbaeumer/vscode-eslint).

Input schema

Field	Type	Required	Description
extension_id	string[]	no	List of namespace/extension ids to fetch

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Example output row

{
  "extension_id": "eamodio/gitlens",
  "namespace": "eamodio",
  "name": "gitlens",
  "version": "15.5.1",
  "display_name": "GitLens — Git supercharged",
  "description": "Supercharge Git within VS Code — Visualize code authorship at a glance via Git blame annotations...",
  "published_by": "eamodio",
  "download_count": 48210931,
  "average_rating": 4.2,
  "review_count": 1284,
  "published_at": "2024-11-20T15:32:10.123Z",
  "license": "MIT",
  "repository": "https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens",
  "homepage": "https://gitkraken.com/gitlens",
  "categories": ["SCM Providers", "Visualization", "Other"],
  "tags": ["git", "blame", "history", "diff", "github"]
}

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Pricing

Event	Price
dataset-item — per extension metadata row returned	$0.001

A run over 100 extensions costs $0.10. Only successfully fetched rows are charged; 404s and API errors are free.

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Buyer

• Extension market intelligence — track download trends, rating trajectories, and version cadences across any extension portfolio.
• Dev-tools competitive research — benchmark your extension or a competitor set against the full Open VSX catalog.
• IDE ecosystem analytics — build dashboards covering VSCodium / Gitpod / Theia / Cursor adoption across publisher namespaces.
• Publisher audits — enumerate all extensions under a given namespace and surface licensing, repository, and maintenance signals.
• No-auth, no-rate-limit headache — Open VSX's public API requires no key; the actor handles pacing so you don't get throttled.

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Source

Data is fetched from the Open VSX REST API:

GET https://open-vsx.org/api/{namespace}/{extension}

Documentation: open-vsx.org/swagger-ui

The Microsoft VSCode Marketplace (marketplace.visualstudio.com) exposes only a non-standard POST extensionquery endpoint; Open VSX is the cleaner public surface and covers all extensions published to the open registry.