Datamuse Word Finder Scraper

Datamuse Word Finder Scraper

Scrape related words, rhymes, synonyms, and more from the Datamuse API, up to a million per run. Every word comes with its score, part-of-speech tags, and optional dictionary definitions. No API key required. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Finding the right word is hard when a thesaurus gives you stale, unrelated suggestions. The Datamuse API is a word-finding engine that understands phonetic similarity, semantic meaning, and contextual usage, but querying it by hand for large lists is slow and repetitive. This Actor automates the entire process, letting you feed in a seed word and collect a structured dataset of related terms in seconds.

Who uses it	What they scrape Datamuse for
Copywriters and content marketers	Generating a bank of semantically related keywords and phrases for a new campaign.
SEO specialists	Building long-tail keyword lists from a seed topic to find low-competition search terms.
Linguists and NLP engineers	Collecting structured lexical data like hypernyms, meronyms, and trigger words for language model training.
Poets and songwriters	Finding perfect and near rhymes with syllable counts and frequency data.

What it does

This Actor collects word suggestions from the Datamuse API by relationship type and returns each one as a flat row with its score, tags, and optional definition.

• 🔗 18 relationship types: means like, sounds like, rhymes, synonyms, antonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, holonyms, meronyms, triggers, and more.
• 📖 Optional definitions: append dictionary definitions to every word in the result set.
• 🏷️ Part-of-speech tags: include tags for grammatical category, syllable count, word frequency, and pronunciation.
• 🎯 Contextual filters: bias results by topic, or require a specific word to appear immediately before or after the target.
• 🗂️ Part-of-speech restriction: limit results to nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs only.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Datamuse data

📝 Generate a keyword universe for a blog post.

A content strategist enters a seed topic like 'productivity' with the 'means like' query and collects 500 semantically related terms to build a content brief.

🎤 Find multi-syllable near rhymes for a lyric.

A songwriter uses the 'near rhymes' query with a seed word, filters by syllable count via the tags, and exports a CSV of usable slant rhymes.

🧠 Build a lexical knowledge graph for an NLP model.

An NLP researcher runs the Actor repeatedly with 'hypernyms' and 'holonyms' queries to collect hierarchical word relationships for a custom taxonomy.

🔎 Solve a crossword or word puzzle with wildcards.

A puzzle enthusiast uses the 'spelled like' query with a pattern like 'c?t*' to get every matching word, complete with definitions to verify the clue.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key needed	The Datamuse API is free and public. This Actor handles the HTTP requests and pagination for you.
Structured output	Every word is a flat row with a score, the word itself, and optional definition and linguistic tags.
Batch collection	Set a high maxItems value and collect thousands of related words in one run instead of clicking through pages.
Wildcard support	Use '?' and '*' patterns with the 'spelled like' query to solve crosswords or find words by letter pattern.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets Datamuse the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	Datamuse Word Finder Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When Datamuse changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor with a single seed word or wildcard pattern, then narrow results by topic, left/right context, and part of speech before they reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "queryType": "means_like",
  "seedWord": "happy"
}

A larger pull:

{
  "maxItems": 200,
  "queryType": "means_like",
  "seedWord": "happy"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.005 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$0.50
1,000 results	$5.00
10,000 results	$50.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Datamuse Word Finder Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Datamuse through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/datamuse-words-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check that your seed word is spelled correctly and is a real English word. For wildcard queries with 'spelled like', verify your pattern uses '?' and '*' correctly. Also try removing optional filters like topic, context, or part of speech to broaden the search.

Why are the definitions missing for some words?

The Datamuse API does not have definitions for every word in its database. If a word lacks a definition, the 'defs' field will be empty. This is expected behavior for less common or newly added terms.

Why did I get fewer results than my maxItems setting?

The Datamuse API returns only the words that exist in its database for your query. If there are only 47 near rhymes for 'orange', setting maxItems to 100 will still return only 47 results. The Actor stops when the API has no more words to return.

Why are the part-of-speech tags showing 'Unknown'?

Not all words in the Datamuse database have complete tag information. If a tag value is unavailable, it may appear as an empty string or be omitted. This is more common for rare or specialized vocabulary.

The Actor is running slowly for a large maxItems value.

The Datamuse API has a maximum page size of 100 words per request. Collecting 10,000 words requires 100 sequential API calls. There is no way to speed this up as it is a limitation of the underlying free API.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need a Datamuse API key?	No. The Datamuse API is free and public. This Actor makes requests directly to the public endpoint with no authentication required.
What is the difference between 'means like' and 'synonyms'?	'Means like' returns words that are semantically related, including near-synonyms and contextually similar terms. 'Synonyms' returns strict synonym pairs from the WordNet database.
How do I find words that start with a specific letter pattern?	Use the 'spelled like' query type and enter a wildcard pattern. Use '?' for a single unknown character and '' for any number of characters. For example, 'th' returns all words starting with 'th'.
Can I get definitions for the returned words?	Yes. Enable the 'Include definitions' checkbox in the input. Each word in the result will have a 'defs' field with dictionary definitions when available.
What do the part-of-speech tags look like?	When 'Include part-of-speech tags' is enabled, each word gets a 'tags' field containing up to four values: the grammatical part of speech (e.g., 'n' for noun), the number of syllables, the word frequency rank, and a pronunciation string.
How do I bias results toward a specific topic?	Fill in the optional 'Topic Word' field. The Datamuse API will favor words that are contextually related to that topic when returning results.
Can I find words that typically appear before or after another word?	Yes. Use the 'Left Context' field to specify a word that immediately precedes the target, or 'Right Context' for a word that follows it. These map to the Datamuse 'lc' and 'rc' parameters.
What is a hypernym or hyponym?	A hypernym is a broader category word (e.g., 'animal' is a hypernym of 'dog'). A hyponym is a more specific word (e.g., 'poodle' is a hyponym of 'dog'). Use these query types to build taxonomies.
How many words can I collect in one run?	You can set the 'Maximum words' field up to 1,000,000. The actual number returned depends on how many matching words exist in the Datamuse database for your query.
What is the 'score' field on each word?	The score is a normalized value between 0 and 100 that indicates how strongly the word matches your query. Higher scores mean a closer match.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Datamuse. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.