DEV.to Scraper

DEV.to Scraper: articles by tag, author or reaction count, with no API key

Pick a tag, an author, or neither, and get DEV.to articles back as rows: title, summary, tags, reaction count, comment count, reading time, cover image and the link. It reads DEV's own public API, so there is nothing to sign up for.

The article body is off by default. You get the summary DEV shows in a card, and you turn on Include full body when you want the whole post, which costs a second request per article.

📝 What DEV.to Scraper does

It queries DEV's public article listing and pages through it, 100 at a time, until it has the number you asked for or the results run out. Duplicate article ids are dropped.

Three orders are available. Top returns the most-reacted articles published in the last topDays, which is the one to use for finding what actually landed. Latest is newest first. Rising is what DEV currently considers gaining traction, across the whole site.

Filter by tag or by username, or by neither for the site-wide list. Not both at once: DEV reads only the tag when an author is set too, so that input is refused instead of charging you for other people's articles. An author goes with Latest, because DEV lists one author's articles newest first and ignores Top and Rising for them.

📥 What you give it

{
  "tag": "javascript",
  "sortBy": "top",
  "topDays": 7,
  "maxItems": 50,
  "includeBody": false
}

For an author, set sortBy to latest. DEV lists one author's articles newest first, whatever their age, and ignores the Top window. Left on the default top, the run stops with a free BAD_INPUT row rather than charge you for articles outside the window you asked for.

A strict minimum can return fewer rows than maxItems. The run reads at most five pages more than it would without one, then stops with what passed.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a recent run:

{
  "ok": true,
  "id": 4602684,
  "title": "So You've Got a Technical Interview in 7 days...",
  "description": "So you got head-hunted. A recruiter from a large company wanted to talk to you about a React...",
  "url": "https://dev.to/cathylai/so-youve-got-a-technical-interview-in-7-days-22g5",
  "author": "Cathy Lai",
  "authorUsername": "cathylai",
  "tags": ["react", "career", "javascript"],
  "reactions": 9,
  "comments": 2,
  "readingTimeMinutes": 2,
  "coverImage": null,
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-09T05:18:13Z"
}

🧾 Reading the output

Two kinds of row can land in your dataset.

The diagnostic row echoes the tag, username, sortBy and topDays you ran with, which makes it obvious when an empty result is a filter problem rather than an outage.

The default table view hides publishedAt and body. Switch to All fields or export as JSON when you need either.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open DEV.to Scraper and click Try for free. 2. Put a tag into Tag, or an author into Author username, or leave both empty. 3. Pick a Sort by. On top, set Top days to the window you care about. For an author, pick latest. 4. Set Max articles, tick Include full body if you want the text, then click Start. 5. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it from the Apify API.

💰 How much does it cost?

$2.00 per 1,000 articles, which is $0.002 each. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers.

You pay per article row delivered. Duplicates are dropped before they reach you, diagnostic rows are not charged, and if nothing matches, no rows are charged. Articles below your minimum are left out and not charged either.

One thing to know before you turn includeBody on: an article whose body request did not come back still arrives as a row, with body set to null, and still counts. Check for nulls if you are relying on the text.

💡 What people use it for

• Finding what actually resonated in a tag this week, with sortBy on top and topDays at 7.
• Pulling an author's whole catalogue for a reading list or a newsletter.
• Watching a niche tag on a schedule with minReactions set, so only what clears your bar arrives.
• Collecting full article text on a topic with includeBody, for search or summarisation.

🚧 What it does not do

• No body by default. Turn includeBody on and expect the run to take longer.
• No comments text. You get the count, not what anybody wrote.
• No reaction breakdown. One total, not hearts against unicorns against bookmarks.
• No series, no organisation feeds, no followers, no reading lists.
• latest with a tag is not sorted by date. DEV ignores the newest-first request when a tag is

set and sends the tag's current listing in its own order. On a busy tag that is roughly the last day of articles. Sort the rows on publishedAt if the order matters. With an author, latest is newest first.

• No tag and author together, and no Rising for a tag or an author. DEV's listing reads only one

of them, so those inputs are refused, free.

• A missing count reads as 0. There is no way to tell a genuine zero from a field DEV left out.
• Nothing older than the window on top. topDays is the whole search space for that order.
• 1,000 articles per run. For more, narrow by tag and run several times.

🧭 Which content scraper do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need a DEV account or an API key? No. The listing API is public.

Why was my author run refused? DEV ignores Top and Rising for an author, and ignores the author when a tag is set too. Clear the tag and set sortBy to latest.

How do I get the article text? Tick Include full body. It adds one request per article.

Can I filter by more than one tag? Not in one run. DEV's listing takes a single tag, so run it once per tag and join the rows on id.

Can I schedule it? Yes. A daily latest run on a tag, deduped on id, keeps a feed current.

Is scraping DEV.to legal? These are public articles served by DEV's own public API. Author names are personal data, which GDPR and similar laws cover, so have a reason for collecting it, and check DEV's terms for reuse of the text. Apify's write-up on scraping and the law is a good starting point, and we are not lawyers.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the run ID and the tag, username and sort you used. The errorCode on the diagnostic row usually names the problem on its own.