ParseForge
Stanford Online Courses Scraper
parseforge/stanford-online-courses-scraper
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Scrapes Stanford Online continuing education and professional development courses by keyword. Returns each course as a flat row with title, description, and catalog metadata.
- Total users
- 2
- Monthly active
- 1
- Total runs
- 95
- Bookmarked
- 0
- Rating
- Not rated yet
- Last modified
- 9 days ago
Overview
Stanford Online Courses Scraper
Scrape Stanford Online continuing education courses by keyword, up to a million per run. Each course comes with its title, description, and catalog metadata. No login or API key. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.
Stanford Online's catalog of professional and continuing education courses is spread across multiple pages and lacks a public API. This actor reads the public course listings directly, filters them by your search keyword, and returns each match in one fixed schema.
| Who uses it | What they scrape Stanford Online for |
|---|---|
| Continuing education advisors | Build a current catalog of Stanford professional development courses for their advisees. |
| Corporate learning managers | Monitor new Stanford Online courses relevant to their team's upskilling roadmap. |
| Edtech market analysts | Track Stanford's continuing education catalog size and topic coverage over time. |
What it does
This Actor collects Stanford Online continuing education courses by keyword and returns each one as a flat row.
- 🔍 Keyword search: Filter the entire Stanford Online catalog by course title or subject keyword.
- 📦 Bulk collection: Collect up to a million course records in a single run for complete catalog snapshots.
- 📄 Flat row output: Every course is returned as a clean, flat row ready for spreadsheets or databases.
Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.
What you can do with Stanford Online data
📋 Build a course catalog.
A continuing education advisor runs the actor with no keyword to pull the full Stanford Online catalog into a searchable internal database.
🎯 Find specific upskilling courses.
A corporate learning manager searches for 'machine learning' to find Stanford Online courses for their engineering team's professional development plan.
📊 Monitor catalog changes.
An edtech analyst runs the actor weekly to track new additions and removals in Stanford's continuing education offerings.
Why choose this scraper
| What you get | |
|---|---|
| No API needed | Reads the public Stanford Online catalog directly, no registration or API key required. |
| Keyword filtering | Collect only the courses that match your subject or title search term. |
| Scalable collection | Set a high maximum to pull the entire catalog in one run. |
How it compares
No other Store actor targets Stanford Online the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.
| Stanford Online Courses Scraper | Build it in-house | By hand | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | Run it now, zero config | Days of engineering | None, but hours per pull |
| When Stanford Online 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 course title or subject keyword, and the filter runs as each course is read so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.
A first run with the defaults:
{
"maxItems": 10
}
A larger pull:
{
"maxItems": 200
}
Pricing
Pay-per-result: $0.021 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.
| Results collected | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| 100 results | $2.10 |
| 1,000 results | $21.00 |
| 10,000 results | $210.00 |
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
- Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
- Open the Stanford Online Courses Scraper.
- Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
- 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 Stanford Online 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/stanford-online-courses-scraper"
Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.
Troubleshooting
Why am I getting no results?
Check your search query spelling. Try a broader keyword or leave the search query empty to see all available courses. Stanford Online may also have temporarily changed their page structure.
The actor returns fewer courses than expected.
Increase the maximum items setting. If the number is still lower than expected, Stanford Online may have fewer courses matching your keyword than anticipated.
Some course fields are empty in the output.
Not all courses in the Stanford Online catalog have every metadata field populated. Empty fields reflect missing data on the source page.
The actor fails to start or times out.
Stanford Online's website may be temporarily slow. Try reducing the maximum items or retry the run after a few minutes.
FAQ
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Do I need a Stanford account to scrape courses? | No. This actor reads the public Stanford Online course catalog, so no login or account is required. |
| Can I scrape all Stanford Online courses at once? | Yes. Leave the search query empty and set a high maximum items number to collect the entire catalog in one run. |
| What data does each course row contain? | Each row includes the course title, description, and other catalog metadata as shown in the sample output above. |
| Can I filter by subject area? | Yes. Use the search query field with a subject keyword like 'engineering' or 'data science' to filter the catalog. |
| How many courses can I collect per run? | You can set the maximum up to 1,000,000 courses, which is more than the entire Stanford Online catalog. |
| What export formats are supported? | You can export your dataset to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify platform. |
| Does this actor scrape degree programs or only continuing education? | This actor scrapes the Stanford Online continuing education and professional development catalog, not degree-granting programs. |
| Can I schedule this actor to run automatically? | Yes. Use Apify's scheduler to run the actor daily, weekly, or on any custom interval to track catalog changes. |
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 Stanford University. 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.
Input
| Field | Type | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| searchQuery | string | Optional keyword (subject, topic) to filter the catalog. | not set |
| maxItems | integer | How many courses to collect per run. | 10 |
Pricing
from $19.00 per 1,000 results
| Charged for | What it is | Price each |
|---|---|---|
| result | Single result item delivered to the dataset. | $0.019 to $0.021 |
Tiered: the lower figure is the price on a higher Apify plan. Billing and the free credit live on Apify.
API
One POST returns the dataset directly. Same shape for every scraper in the library, so swapping the slug is the only change.
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/parseforge~stanford-online-courses-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"helloWorld": 123
}' Examples
Input that runs as-is.
{
"helloWorld": 123
} Reviews
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Issues
We build and maintain this scraper, so a problem with it comes to us. Report it on the Apify listing and the thread stays attached to the scraper where the next person can find it: open an issue.
Broken and urgent, or you would rather not post in public? Write to parseforge@protonmail.com and it reaches the people who wrote it.