Stack Overflow Scraper - Questions by Tag

Stack Overflow Scraper — Questions by Tag, Score, Views & Answers (No API Key)

Scrape developer questions from Stack Overflow and any of the 170+ Stack Exchange Q&A sites by tag, site and sort order — millions of questions across programming, DevOps, data science, sysadmin and more. Get title, tags, score, views, answer count, accepted-answer flag, author, reputation and timestamps in clean flat JSON, straight from the official public Stack Exchange API. Fast, no login, no API key, no proxy.

🏆 Why this Stack Exchange scraper?

14-column flat schema · thousands of questions per run · official public API (stable, no scraping fragility) · auto-pagination with backoff · no key, no proxy · export to JSON / CSV / Excel. The practical Stack Overflow API alternative for developer-insight research, SEO content mining and LLM training data.

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✨ What this Actor does / Key features

• 🌐 170+ network sites — Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Ask Ubuntu, DBA, Data Science, Code Review, Cross Validated, Software Engineering, DevOps and every other Stack Exchange site by short ID.
• 🏷️ Tag filtering — target a single tag (python, react, kubernetes) or combine several with ; to narrow to questions carrying all of them.
• 🔀 Flexible sorting — order results by activity, creation, votes or hot to surface the newest, the highest-voted or the trending questions.
• 📊 Engagement metrics — every row carries net score, total views and answer count, plus isAnswered and hasAcceptedAnswer flags for support and content triage.
• 👤 Author signals — asker display name and reputation score for community and influence analysis.
• 🕒 Full timestamps — creation and last-activity times in ISO format, ready for trend analysis and scheduled diffing.
• ⚡ Auto-pagination — set a cap or let it paginate until the tag is exhausted; the Actor respects the API quota with automatic backoff.
• 🧾 Flat, LLM-ready rows — a clean 14-column schema that drops straight into a spreadsheet, warehouse or RAG pipeline.
• 🟢 Zero setup — no Stack Exchange account, no API key, no proxy configuration.

🚀 Quick start (3 steps)

1. Configure — pick a site (e.g. stackoverflow), set a tag to filter (or leave empty for all), and choose a sort order.
2. Run — click Start. The Actor queries the public Stack Exchange API, paginates automatically and streams questions into your dataset.
3. Get your data — open the Output tab and export to JSON, CSV, JSONL, Excel, HTML or XML, or pull it via the Apify API.

📥 Input

Everything is optional — run it as-is to pull the latest Stack Overflow questions, or narrow with a site, tag and sort.

Example — highest-voted Python questions on Stack Overflow

{
  "site": "stackoverflow",
  "tag": "python",
  "sort": "votes",
  "maxQuestions": 500
}

Example — newest DevOps questions (product monitoring)

{
  "site": "devops",
  "tag": "kubernetes;helm",
  "sort": "creation",
  "maxQuestions": 300
}

Example — trending Server Fault questions

{
  "site": "serverfault",
  "tag": "",
  "sort": "hot",
  "maxQuestions": 200
}

Field	Type	Description
site	string	Stack Exchange site short ID: stackoverflow, serverfault, superuser, askubuntu, dba, datascience, codereview and 170+ more.
tag	string	Tag filter (e.g. python). Combine multiple tags with ; to require all of them. Empty = all questions for the site.
sort	string	activity, creation, votes or hot.
maxQuestions	integer	Total cap for the run. 0 = paginate until the tag is exhausted (subject to the API's daily quota).

Finding a site short ID: it's the subdomain of the site — stackoverflow for stackoverflow.com, serverfault for serverfault.com, datascience for datascience.stackexchange.com, and so on.

📤 Output

One row per question — a flat 14-column record, exportable to JSON, CSV, JSONL, Excel, HTML or XML. Here is a sample:

{
  "questionId": 78123456,
  "title": "How do I merge two dictionaries in Python 3?",
  "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78123456/how-do-i-merge-two-dictionaries-in-python-3",
  "tags": ["python", "python-3.x", "dictionary"],
  "author": "dev_ada",
  "authorReputation": 4820,
  "score": 137,
  "viewCount": 89412,
  "answerCount": 9,
  "isAnswered": true,
  "hasAcceptedAnswer": true,
  "createdAt": "2026-06-28T10:14:00Z",
  "lastActivityAt": "2026-07-05T22:03:00Z",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-06T12:00:00Z"
}

💡 Use cases

• Developer-insight & pain-point research — mine what users actually struggle with for a language, framework or product by pulling its tagged questions.
• Product & competitor monitoring — track questions tagged with your tool or a competitor's on a schedule and diff against yesterday.
• FAQ & SEO content generation — surface high-view, high-score questions to turn into docs, tutorials and articles.
• Support intelligence — quantify recurring issues by tag, score and view count to prioritise your knowledge base.
• LLM training data — assemble large, structured developer Q&A corpora for fine-tuning or RAG.
• Unanswered-question hunting — filter on isAnswered / hasAcceptedAnswer to find high-view gaps worth answering or documenting.

👥 Who uses it

Developer-relations & DevRel teams · technical content & SEO writers · product managers monitoring tool adoption · support and knowledge-base teams · ML engineers building Q&A datasets · community and open-source maintainers.

💰 Pricing

This Actor runs on a simple pay-per-result model — you pay for the questions you extract, with no separate Apify platform fees to calculate. Try it on the free tier first, then scale up. See the Pricing tab on this page for the current rate.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Is it legal to scrape Stack Overflow? The Actor uses the official public Stack Exchange API and collects only publicly available question data. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with Stack Exchange's terms and applicable laws.

Do I need a Stack Exchange API key? No. The Actor uses anonymous Stack Exchange API access — no account, key or proxy required. Anonymous usage is subject to the API's daily quota, which the Actor respects with backoff.

Do I need a proxy? No. Because it uses the official API, no proxy is needed — runs work out of the box.

Which sites can I scrape? Any of the 170+ Stack Exchange network sites — Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Ask Ubuntu, DBA, Data Science, Code Review, Cross Validated, Software Engineering, DevOps and more. Just enter the site's short ID.

Can I filter by multiple tags? Yes. Enter several tags separated by ; in the tag field to narrow results to questions carrying all of them.

Which export formats are supported? Each run is stored in an Apify Dataset, downloadable as JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel, HTML or XML, or accessible via the Apify API.

Is this a Stack Overflow API alternative?

Yes. If you want to scrape Stack Overflow without registering, this Actor is a practical Stack Overflow API alternative — it queries the public Stack Exchange API anonymously and returns flat rows ready for analysis, no key required.

How do I export Stack Exchange data to CSV or JSON?

Run the Actor for your chosen site and tag, then download the resulting dataset. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel or XML is one click in the Apify Console, or pull a Stack Overflow questions dataset in JSON straight from the Apify API.

Can I export Stack Overflow questions by tag?

Yes. Set the tag field (e.g. python) and the Actor returns every matching question with title, score, views, answers, author and dates — ideal for building a tagged Stack Overflow questions dataset.

How do I scrape the highest-voted Stack Overflow questions for a tag?

Set the tag (for example python), choose sort=votes, and the scraper returns questions ordered by net upvotes with score, views and answer counts.

Can I scrape questions from Server Fault or Super User too?

Yes. Enter any Stack Exchange short ID in the site field, such as serverfault, superuser or datascience, to scrape that network site by tag.

How do I find unanswered questions to build support content?

Scrape a tag, then filter the dataset on isAnswered or hasAcceptedAnswer — high-view questions without accepted answers are strong FAQ and content targets.

🔗 More data scrapers by logiover

Pair Stack Exchange with the rest of the developer & community intelligence suite:

Focus	Actor
💬 Reddit	Reddit Subreddit Scraper · Reddit Search Scraper
🟠 Hacker News	HN Search Scraper · HN Who Is Hiring
👩‍💻 Dev community	Dev.to Articles Scraper · Substack Newsletter Scraper
🐙 GitHub	GitHub Repository Scraper · GitHub Activity Stream
📦 Packages	npm Package Intelligence · Hugging Face Hub Intelligence
🏫 Communities	Skool Scraper · Meetup Scraper

👉 Browse all logiover scrapers on Apify Store — 180+ actors across real estate, jobs, crypto, social media & B2B data.

⏰ Scheduling & integration

Schedule this Actor on Apify to keep a fresh Q&A feed for a tag or product daily or weekly. Export results to JSON, CSV or Excel, sync to Google Sheets, or push to your database, BI tools and webhooks through the Apify API. Connect it to Make, n8n or Zapier to build automated developer-insight and content pipelines.

🤖 AI Agents, MCP & RAG Integration

Stack Overflow Scraper works natively as an on-demand data tool for AI assistants and autonomous workflows.

Connect this Actor directly to Apify AI, Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, LangChain, or LlamaIndex via the official Apify MCP Server — no custom wrapper code needed:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=logiover/stack-exchange-questions-scraper"
    }
  }
}

• Schema-typed inputs & outputs: Clean JSON records with explicit .actor/input_schema.json and .actor/output_schema.json definitions so LLM agents infer parameters and parse fields accurately without HTML noise.
• Bounded & predictable runs: Built-in volume caps and pay-per-result budget guards prevent runaway agent tool loops.
• RAG & automation ready: Stream run datasets straight into vector stores, n8n, Make, Zapier, or webhook pipelines.

💬 Support, Issues & Reviews

• Bug reports & target-site changes: Hit an unexpected empty result or selector change? Open a ticket in the Issues tab with your Run ID or sample input — we actively monitor issues and ship fixes fast.
• Feature & field requests: Need an additional data attribute or filter? Request it in the Issues tab.
• Enjoying this Actor? If it saved you engineering time, please consider leaving an honest review on Apify Store or bookmarking logiover/stack-exchange-questions-scraper — organic developer feedback helps others discover reliable tools and keeps maintenance prioritized.

⚖️ Legal

This Actor extracts only publicly available data via the official Stack Exchange API and is intended for legitimate research, analytics and content use. You are responsible for complying with Stack Exchange's terms of service and any applicable local laws.

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This Actor is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Stack Overflow; Stack Overflow and all other trademarks mentioned here are the property of their respective owners.

How much Stack Overflow data can you extract in one run?

A single run returned 58 rows in 9 seconds on the example input. That example is deliberately narrow; the result limit and the input list are both yours to widen. That is roughly 386 rows a minute.

There is no hard ceiling built into this Actor. What bounds a run is the result limit you set, the breadth of the input you give it, and how much Stack Overflow itself publishes. Because billing is per result, a wider run costs proportionally more and a narrow one costs almost nothing — so it is worth starting small and scaling once the output looks right.

📝 Changelog

2026-11-11

• Added reliable terminal run status telemetry and structured Apify AI / MCP Server (mcp.apify.com) tool configuration.
• Added direct Issues & Reviews support links and refreshed live maintenance verification.

2026-11-01

• Monthly health check (2026-11-01): a live run on the current build completed successfully and returned data. Input options, output fields and pricing are unchanged.
• README refreshed: 2 links to renamed Actors updated; independence disclaimer added.

2026-10-15

• A run that reaches its maximum cost per run now stops cleanly with its results saved and a status message, instead of ending as aborted.
• A proxy group your account cannot use no longer stops the run at start-up; it falls back to the default Apify Proxy.
• Runs with a short timeout (API and AI-agent calls) now finish inside it with what they collected, instead of being cut off.
• Memory is managed within the run's own limit, which removes a rare out-of-memory crash on large pages.

2026-09-23

• Fleet-wide quality audit. Verified end to end against live data and re-checked the input schema, the output columns and the run configuration.
• Output verified on a live run: 14 columns returned, 99.8% of cells populated.
• Run reliability reviewed: 100.0% of public runs succeeded in the last 30 days.
• Input schema, output schema and pricing configuration reviewed.

2026-09-01

• Fleet-wide health check. Verified against this Actor's real run history: 30-day success rate, output row counts, per-field fill rates, and peak memory against the configured memory limit.
• Reviewed for the failure patterns that have cost this fleet runs — unguarded proxy setup, retry loops that can outlast the run's own time budget, and full-page HTML parsing that can exhaust a small container.
• No change to input, output fields or scraping logic.

2026-08-11

• Maintenance release: refreshed the build and dependencies.
• Re-verified live execution, non-empty structured output and dataset field/type integrity.
• Reviewed reliability (retries, pagination) and output quality as part of a full-fleet QA pass.

2026-08-01

• Completed the August 2026 full health check: verified empty/programmatic default, Console UI default, and two source-informed alternative inputs on Apify.
• Confirmed successful live execution, non-empty structured output, dataset-field/type integrity, and logical sample quality within the 5-minute quality window.

2026-07-06

• ✨ README overhaul: richer output sample, ready-to-run example scenarios, developer & community suite links, shields badges and a clearer quick start.

2026-07-01

• Maintenance pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data and confirmed successful runs within the 5-minute quality window on the default input.
• Sharpened Store metadata (SEO title & description) and expanded the FAQ with high-intent, long-tail questions for easier discovery in Google and Apify Store search.
• Added ready-to-run example tasks that cover common real-world use cases.

2026-06-15

• Reliability pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data with real-world inputs. Routine maintenance build.

2026-06-07

• Docs: added coverage for Stack Overflow API alternative, exporting Stack Exchange data to CSV/JSON, and pulling a Stack Overflow questions dataset by tag.

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*Maintained: last verified 2026-11-11 — checked end-to-end against live run history (reliability, output fields and types, and time/memory budgets).