GitHub Trending & Repo Scraper

Get GitHub repositories as clean rows: what’s trending today, this week or this month for any languages, full details for repositories you list, or results of a GitHub search.

What it does

• Trending: rank, stars, forks and new stars in the period, for any number of languages.
• Repos: stars, forks, open issues, watchers, topics, license, homepage and activity dates.
• Search: GitHub search syntax (language:, stars:>, topic:...) sorted by stars, forks or recent updates.
• No personal data: repository data and usernames only.

Why this one: Trending, full repository details and search in one Actor, several languages per run, numbers as numbers, and a clear message (plus an optional token) when GitHub’s free API limit is reached.

In our last check, 20 runs over varied inputs succeeded 100% of the time.

Use cases

• Spotting rising open-source projects early
• Tracking competitors’ and your own repositories
• Research lists of projects by language or topic

Input example

{
  "mode": "trending",
  "languages": [
    "python"
  ],
  "since": "weekly",
  "maxItems": 5
}

• mode: trending, repos or search
• languages + since: trending
• repos: owner/name list
• query + sort: search
• githubToken: optional, user’s own

Output sample

Real results from a run of this Actor:

[
  {
    "repo": "apify/crawlee",
    "owner": "apify",
    "name": "crawlee",
    "url": "https://github.com/apify/crawlee",
    "description": "Crawlee—A web scraping and browser automation library for Node.js to build reliable crawlers. In JavaScript and TypeScript. Extract data for AI, LLMs, RAG, or GPTs. Download HTML, PDF, JPG, PNG, and other files from websites. Works with Puppeteer, Playwright, Cheerio, JSDOM, and raw HTTP. Both headful and headless mode. With proxy rotation.",
    "language": "TypeScript",
    "stars": 26275,
    "forks": 1736,
    "openIssues": 152,
    "watchers": 135,
    "topics": [
      "apify",
      "automation",
      "crawler",
      "crawling",
      "headless",
      "headless-chrome",
      "javascript",
      "nodejs",
      "npm",
      "playwright",
      "puppeteer",
      "scraper",
      "scraping",
      "typescript",
      "web-crawler",
      "web-crawling",
      "web-scraping"
    ],
    "license": "Apache-2.0",
    "homepage": "https://crawlee.dev",
    "isFork": false,
    "isArchived": false,
    "defaultBranch": "master",
    "sizeKb": 176629,
    "createdAt": "2016-08-26T18:35:03.000Z",
    "updatedAt": "2026-10-27T19:45:23.000Z",
    "pushedAt": "2026-10-27T16:50:56.000Z",
    "sourceUrl": "https://github.com/apify/crawlee",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-27T20:35:37.245Z"
  },
  {
    "repo": "react/react",
    "owner": "react",
    "name": "react",
    "url": "https://github.com/react/react",
    "description": "The library for web and native user interfaces.",
    "language": "JavaScript",
    "stars": 251784,
    "forks": 51574,
    "openIssues": 1502,
    "watchers": 6608,
    "topics": [
      "declarative",
      "frontend",
      "javascript",
      "library",
      "react",
      "ui"
    ],
    "license": "MIT",
    "homepage": "https://react.dev",
    "isFork": false,
    "isArchived": false,
    "defaultBranch": "main",
    "sizeKb": 1130153,
    "createdAt": "2013-05-24T16:15:54.000Z",
    "updatedAt": "2026-10-27T19:55:24.000Z",
    "pushedAt": "2026-10-27T15:08:39.000Z",
    "sourceUrl": "https://github.com/react/react",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-27T20:35:37.487Z"
  }
]

Fields:

• repo, owner, name, url, description, language, stars, forks
• Trending: rank, starsInPeriod, period
• Repos/search: openIssues, watchers, topics, license, homepage, isFork, isArchived, defaultBranch, sizeKb, createdAt, updatedAt, pushedAt

Pricing

Pay per result: $3.00 per 1,000 results. You pay only for results you get; Apify platform costs are included. Set a maximum charge for a run and the Actor stops cleanly when it's reached, keeping everything collected so far.

Tips

• Trending needs no token. For repos and search beyond 60 requests an hour, add your own GitHub token (no permissions needed).
• Search returns at most 1,000 results per query (a GitHub limit); split big searches with stars:>N ranges.

FAQ

Do I need an account on GitHub? No. It only reads public pages and data.

Is my token stored? It is a secret input field: Apify encrypts it and it is only used for this run’s requests to GitHub. Something broke or a field is missing? Open an issue on the Issues tab and include your run link. We fix scrapers quickly when sites change.

Legal

This Actor collects publicly available data only. You're responsible for using it lawfully and in line with GitHub's terms.