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GitHub API

GitHub Scraper API for Profiles, Repositories, Contributions, and Trending

Scrappa's GitHub API returns public GitHub data as structured JSON. Read user profiles, repository lists, the public contributions calendar, followers and following, activity feeds and events, full repository details, and the trending repositories and developers GitHub shows today. No GitHub account, token, or credential is ever required. Scrappa is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by GitHub.

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Structured JSON
Ready for apps
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Browse endpoints Try first endpoint
31
Endpoints
Up to 365
Calendar days returned, variable window
$0.20
Per 1k requests

Try it now

Make one request. Inspect structured JSON.

Use the first endpoint in this API family with a Scrappa API key. Every account includes 500 free monthly credits, so you can validate the response shape before buying credits.

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Request 
curl -X GET "https://scrappa.co/api/github/user?username=torvalds" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "X-API-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY"
JSON response 
{
  "search_parameters": {
    "engine": "github_user",
    "username": "torvalds"
  },
  "login": "torvalds",
  "id": 1,
  "name": "Linus Torvalds",
  "company": "Linux Foundation",
  "location": "Portland, OR",
  "followers": 2400000,
  "following": 0,
  "public_repos": 8,
  "created_at": "2011-09-03T15:26:22Z"
}

What you can build

Structured data for real applications. Here are some ideas.

Developer Directory Enrichment

Enrich a list of developer handles with their public profile, repository list, primary language, star counts, and contribution history without asking users for a GitHub token.

Open Source Intelligence

Track a repository's commits, contributors, branches, tags, releases, issues, and diffs over time to spot maintainer changes, release cadence, and contribution concentration.

Contribution Analytics

Read the public contributions calendar per account and per year to chart activity, spot hiatuses, and compare contributor engagement across a team.

Trend Monitoring

Poll the trending repositories and trending developers endpoints daily or weekly, per language, to build a digest of what the developer community is picking up.

Talent Sourcing

Find active contributors to a repository, read their profiles and popular repositories, and rank candidates by commit volume in the projects you care about.

GitHub API alternative

GitHub data as JSON, without a GitHub token

The GitHub API is built for developer directories, open source intelligence, talent research, and analytics teams that need repository and account data in their own apps and dashboards. Every endpoint reads public GitHub data anonymously, so you never build an OAuth flow or ask your users for a personal access token. One call returns an account profile, a contribution calendar, a repository audit, or the trending page for a language and period, and every response echoes your input in search_parameters.

Read a public profile with /api/github/user and its repository list with /api/github/user/repositories.

Get the contributions calendar with /api/github/user/contributions: one entry per day at a 0-4 level, historical years included.

Audit a repository with details, contributors, commits, releases, issues, and diffs between any two refs.

Separate lifetime stars from stars_this_period on the trending endpoints; they are different numbers.

Pass page and per_page explicitly. Pages are never fetched for you, so each page is one billable request.

Test the GitHub API with 500 free monthly credits before scaling production traffic.

Choose the right GitHub API endpoint

Profile a maintainer

Call /api/github/user for the profile, /api/github/user/repositories for their public work, and /api/github/user/contributions for their activity calendar. Followers and following are separate endpoints so you pay for what you read.

Open GitHub User Profile API docs

Audit a repository

Start at /api/github/repository for the metadata, then read /api/github/repository/contributors and /api/github/repository/activity to see who maintains it and how active it is. A repository with no activity data returns an empty 52-week series, not an error.

Open GitHub Repository API docs

Build a trend digest

Poll /api/github/trending/repositories and /api/github/trending/developers daily or weekly per language. stars_this_period separates this week's momentum from lifetime totals, so a long-running project does not masquerade as a rising one.

Open GitHub Trending API docs

Available endpoints

Everything you need in one API.

Related resources

Google Search API overview

Search the wider web for a repository, a maintainer, or a project name that GitHub itself does not index.

Web Scraper API overview

Fetch an arbitrary public URL as text, HTML, or Markdown when a project publishes something GitHub does not expose.

Google Scholar API overview

Search academic papers by author or title when you need research context alongside a project's repository.

Scrappa vs GitHub REST API (direct)

See how Scrappa compares to the official API.

No end-user GitHub token required
Scrappa:
GitHub REST API (direct): Token or OAuth app needed
Trending repositories and developers
Scrappa:
GitHub REST API (direct):
Public contributions calendar
Scrappa:
GitHub REST API (direct):
Quota-free github.com tier as the backbone; REST budget pooled across egress
Scrappa:
GitHub REST API (direct): 60 requests per hour, per IP
Repository contributors with explicit page/per_page control and an `anon` pass-through
Scrappa:
GitHub REST API (direct): Single anonymous contributor page
Unified JSON responses with stable field names
Scrappa:
GitHub REST API (direct): Yes, same raw shapes
Price per 1k requests
Scrappa: From $0.20
GitHub REST API (direct): Free, but quota-limited

Key features

Public user profiles with follower, following, repository, and gist counts
The public contributions calendar, one entry per day, including historical years
Followers, following, starred repositories, and the public activity feed
Repository metadata, contents, git tree, branches, tags, releases, and commits
Readmes decoded to text, raw file bytes, languages, and issue comments
Weekly commit activity per repository, and diffs and patches between any two refs
Trending repositories and trending developers per language and period
No GitHub token, account, or credential required on any endpoint

Frequently asked questions

No. Every endpoint reads public GitHub data anonymously and no endpoint accepts, requires, or forwards a customer credential. There is no OAuth flow to build.

GitHub does not serve those anonymously. Use the repository contents and tree endpoints for file-level discovery, the star count plus the contributors and starred endpoints in place of the stargazer list, and the REST and web tiers this API already covers in place of GraphQL. Nothing is silently missing.

No. GitHub publishes a 0-4 activity level per day and not a count, so the response returns the level and never invents a count. For raw activity events use the user events endpoint.

It might. Privately, renamed, and nonexistent repositories are indistinguishable to an anonymous caller, so this API reports the 404 rather than guessing which one it is.

Failed requests are never charged, and the API never answers with HTTP 429. An upstream outage or an exhausted upstream budget returns a retryable error that costs you nothing.

No. Scrappa is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by GitHub. The data returned is public GitHub data, shaped as JSON for your own applications.

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