Stack Overflow Scraper - Questions & Users

Scrape Stack Overflow questions and users via the official Stack Exchange API - no login required. Get titles, scores, answer/view counts, tags, question bodies, and user profiles (reputation, badges, location). Search by keyword, filter by tag, fetch by ID, and works across all Stack Exchange sites. Export to JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML, or pull via the Apify API.

Perfect for developer research, sentiment/trend analysis, tech support tooling, and recruiting.

Features

• ✅ Official Stack Exchange API - accurate, structured data
• ✅ Questions and users in one actor
• ✅ Search, tag filter, or ID lookup
• ✅ Any Stack Exchange site - Stack Overflow, Super User, Server Fault, Ask Ubuntu, etc.
• ✅ Optional question bodies and user profiles with separate dataset views
• ✅ Optional API key - 10,000 requests/day vs 300 without

Input

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
searchQueries	string[]	Keyword searches	["async await"]
tags	string[]	Tag filters (e.g. "javascript")	[]
questionIds	string[]	Specific question IDs	[]
userIds	string[]	Specific user IDs shown in the Users view	[]
sort	string	votes, activity, creation, hot	votes
includeBody	boolean	Include full question body	false
maxResults	integer	Max questions	100
site	string	Stack Exchange site	stackoverflow
apiKey	string (secret)	Optional Stack Apps key	—
proxyConfiguration	object	Optional proxy settings	Disabled

Example input

{
  "searchQueries": ["memory leak"],
  "tags": ["python"],
  "sort": "votes",
  "includeBody": true,
  "maxResults": 200
}

Sample output

{
  "questionId": 37576685,
  "title": "Using async/await with a forEach loop",
  "score": 3351,
  "answerCount": 35,
  "viewCount": 2476784,
  "isAnswered": true,
  "acceptedAnswerId": 37576787,
  "tags": ["javascript", "node.js", "promise", "async-await"],
  "ownerName": "Saad",
  "ownerReputation": 54989,
  "createdAt": "2016-06-01T18:55:58.000Z",
  "lastActivityAt": "2025-01-28T01:27:13.000Z",
  "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37576685/...",
  "site": "stackoverflow",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-11T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-result pricing:

Event	Price
Per question scraped	$0.002 ($2 / 1,000 questions)
Per user scraped	$0.002 ($2 / 1,000 users)

Each question or user is saved and charged atomically. Duplicate questions are skipped, one global question cap is enforced across inputs, and later pages or batches stop when the user's spending limit is reached. Proxy usage is disabled by default; an API key is preferred for higher quotas.

How to Scrape Stack Overflow (Step by Step)

1. Click Try for free / Run.
2. Enter what you want: add searchQueries keywords, tags, questionIds, or userIds.
3. Choose a sort order and set maxResults (start small to test), and optionally set site for another Stack Exchange community.
4. Run the Actor (toggle includeBody if you need full question text).
5. Export the results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML, or pull them via the Apify API.

Use cases

• Developer research - track popular questions, tags, and trends
• Sentiment & topic analysis - feed titles/bodies into NLP pipelines
• Support tooling - surface top Q&A for a technology
• Recruiting - find high-reputation users in a domain

Tips

• Questions and users are stored atomically in the default dataset and presented through separate views.
• Add a free Stack Apps API key to lift the daily quota from 300 to 10,000 requests.
• Set site to scrape other Stack Exchange communities (e.g. superuser, askubuntu).

Responsible Use

This Actor is intended for lawful collection of publicly available information only. Users are responsible for ensuring their use complies with the source website's terms, robots.txt, applicable privacy laws, including India's DPDP Act, and all local regulations.

Do not use this Actor to collect, store, sell, or misuse personal data without a lawful basis. The Actor author is not responsible for misuse by end users.

License

Apache-2.0