Instructables DIY Project and Tutorial Scraper
Instructables DIY Project and Tutorial Scraper
Scrapes project metadata from Instructables.com — the canonical maker-tutorial index covering electronics, woodworking, 3D printing, sewing, cooking, and everything in between.
Returns one record per project. No step body text, no downloadable files — just metadata. Title, author, category, difficulty, step count, materials list, favorites, views, comments. The stuff you actually need to analyze or index a project corpus.
The site has 370k+ published projects across eight categories. The scraper covers all of them, with an optional category filter and sort order.
What You Get
| Field | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
project_id |
string | URL slug (e.g. DIY-Wooden-Bookshelf) |
title |
string | Project title |
author_username |
string | Instructables screen name |
author_url |
string | Author profile URL |
category |
string | Top-level category (circuits, workshop, craft, cooking, living, outside, design) |
channel |
string | Sub-category (e.g. arduino, woodworking, knitting-and-crochet) |
difficulty |
string | Project type (e.g. "Step by Step") |
step_count |
integer | Number of steps |
materials_summary |
string[] | Materials/supplies list |
favorites_count |
integer | Community favorites |
views_count |
integer | Total views |
comments_count |
integer | Comment count |
is_featured |
boolean | Editor-featured project |
contest_entered |
string | Contest name if the project was entered |
published_at |
string | Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD) |
thumbnail_url |
string | Cover image URL |
project_url |
string | Full project URL |
Input
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
maxItems |
integer | 10 | Maximum projects to return. Leave empty for no limit. |
category |
string | (all) | Filter by category: circuits, workshop, craft, cooking, living, outside, design, teachers. |
sortBy |
string | Newest | Sort order: Newest, Views, or Favorites. |
Usage
Broad corpus export
Leave category empty. Set sortBy: Newest and a high maxItems to pull a recent cross-craft sample. The corpus spans electronics through woodworking to cooking — broad enough for most content intelligence or dataset use cases.
Focused category pull
Set category: circuits and sortBy: Views to get the most-viewed electronics projects. Same for workshop, craft, etc. The category filter maps to Instructables' top-level taxonomy.
Dataset research
Run with maxItems: 5 to preview the field shape before committing to a full corpus pull. The output is consistent across categories.
How It Works
The scraper calls Instructables' internal Typesense search API (/api_proxy/search) — the same endpoint their front-end uses for project listing pages. For each project, it also calls /json-api/showInstructableModel to retrieve step count, materials, and difficulty. No browser required.
The Typesense API key is a scoped key embedded in the page context at startup. The scraper fetches it once at run start and reuses it for all listing requests.
Limits and Notes
- Robots.txt crawl delay: 1 second. The scraper paces itself accordingly.
- Rate limits: Instructables does not publish official rate limits. The scraper is conservative by default.
- Materials: Some projects have empty supplies sections — that's the site content, not a scraper issue.
materials_summaryreturns an empty array in those cases. - Copyright: This scraper returns metadata only. Step-by-step instructional text and downloadable files are creator-owned — they are intentionally excluded.
Pricing
Pay-per-result via OrbTop PPE. Standard profile: $0.10/start + $0.001/project at free tier.
Built by OrbTop.
