Stack Exchange Questions Scraper

Collect public Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange questions by site, tag, keyword, date, score, and answer settings.

Use this Actor when you need repeatable developer Q&A data for SEO, DevRel, product research, support insights, developer content planning, or technical trend monitoring. Results can be downloaded as CSV, JSON, Excel, XML, RSS, or used through the Apify Dataset API.

At a glance

• Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange search: collect questions from Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Ask Ubuntu, Math, Data Science, and other Stack Exchange sites.
• Tag and keyword filters: search by tags, free-text query, date range, score, and sort mode.
• Question metadata: save titles, URLs, tags, owner names, score, views, answer count, accepted answer ID, and dates.
• Optional answer summaries: include answer snippets when your workflow needs more context.
• Developer workflow ready: export to content calendars, SEO tools, support dashboards, RAG systems, or AI analysis.

What can it do?

Stack Exchange Questions Scraper turns public developer Q&A searches into structured question rows.

• Export Stack Overflow question data by site, tag, query, date range, score, and sort mode.
• Collect technical SEO signals such as question titles, tags, views, scores, accepted answers, and activity dates.
• Find product and support language from real developer questions around APIs, SDKs, errors, packages, and tools.
• Monitor technical topics by scheduling recurring searches for specific tags or keywords.
• Use it as a Stack Exchange questions API workflow for CSV, JSON, Excel, or Apify Dataset API exports.

Common workflows

• Developer SEO research: identify high-intent questions and tags for documentation or blog content.
• DevRel planning: learn what developers ask about a platform, API, SDK, or integration.
• Support triage: monitor Stack Overflow for unresolved or high-score questions.
• Competitive tracking: follow public questions about competitor tools and libraries.
• AI/RAG enrichment: feed question rows and optional answers into research or support agents.

What data can you collect?

Each dataset row represents one public Stack Exchange question.

Example input

{
  "sites": ["stackoverflow"],
  "tags": ["python", "pandas"],
  "query": "filter dataframe",
  "sort": "relevance",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "minScore": 0,
  "includeAnswers": false
}

Example output

{
  "site": "stackoverflow",
  "questionId": 123456,
  "title": "How do I filter rows in a pandas DataFrame?",
  "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/123456/example",
  "tags": ["python", "pandas", "dataframe"],
  "ownerDisplayName": "developer123",
  "ownerUrl": "https://stackoverflow.com/users/123/developer123",
  "score": 42,
  "answerCount": 3,
  "viewCount": 10000,
  "isAnswered": true,
  "acceptedAnswerId": 123457,
  "creationDate": "2026-01-01T12:00:00.000Z",
  "lastActivityDate": "2026-01-03T09:30:00.000Z",
  "contentLicense": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
}

Tips for best results

• Use exact site names: stackoverflow, serverfault, superuser, askubuntu, math, and similar Stack Exchange API names.
• Combine tags carefully: multiple tags narrow results because Stack Exchange treats them as an intersection.
• Use query for phrase discovery: tags are cleaner; query is better for natural-language product or error terms.
• Enable answers only when needed: answer summaries require extra requests and can increase run time.
• Schedule topic monitors: recurring runs are useful for support, DevRel, and content gap workflows.

Limits and caveats

• The Actor extracts public Stack Exchange data only.
• It does not access private Teams, deleted posts, private user data, or moderator-only content.
• Results depend on Stack Exchange public API availability, quotas, filters, and sorting behavior.
• Answer summaries are optional and may not include full answer bodies.

API usage

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetch_cat~stack-exchange-questions-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"sites":["stackoverflow"],"tags":["python"],"maxItems":50}'

MCP and AI agents

This Actor can be used through the official Apify MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com.

For a focused single-Actor tool setup, use:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/stack-exchange-questions-scraper

Use the same JSON keys shown in the input configuration table, such as sites, tags, query, sort, maxItems, minScore, and includeAnswers.

Support

If a run fails, returns no data, or a field looks wrong, open an issue from the Actor page.

Please include the Apify run ID or run URL, input JSON, one example public URL, query, or input item, what you expected, and what the dataset returned. Small reproducible inputs make parsing or site-layout issues much faster to fix.