Scrape github.com
The call that returns the homepage from github.com today, with the parameters, patterns and failure modes read off the request log since 14 Aug 2026. Last tested 5 Sep 2026.
Measured on Crawlbase
Success rate over every request from every account in August 2026: 94.5%. Patterns, countries and failures come from the request log since 14 Aug 2026; 18.4% of successful calls used the JavaScript token and the median answer took 1.6s.
Among the 11 tech and developer sites in the Cookbook, github.com sits at 10 of 11 by success rate; the category median is 97.8%. Its median answer of 1.6s sits at the category median of 1.9s. 8 of the 11 accept the plain token; this one does on some pages only.
The call
The most common shape of URL the accounts fetch, with the country and token that succeed most often. Replace the placeholder path with a real one from the site.
curl "https://api.crawlbase.com/?token=YOUR_TOKEN&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.github.com%2F"from crawlbase import CrawlingAPI api = CrawlingAPI({'token': 'YOUR_TOKEN'}) r = api.get('https://www.github.com/') html = r['body']
const { CrawlingAPI } = require('crawlbase'); const api = new CrawlingAPI({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' }); const r = await api.get('https://www.github.com/');
Parameters that matter
| Parameter | Set it to | Why |
|---|---|---|
country | leave unset | Most successful calls set no country (94.4%) and succeed at 98.2%. |
javascript | leave unset | Plain-token calls succeed at 98.0%, JavaScript-token calls at 86.6%. Both work; start without the browser and switch per URL pattern where the table below shows it. |
URL patterns accounts fetch
| Pattern | Share of successes | JavaScript token | Country | Query parameters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
/ | 48.8% | 21.0% | none | none |
/{slug} | 13.9% | 85.5% | none | none |
/{slug}/{slug} | 3.3% | 0.0% | none | none |
Fields you get
Fields depend on the page type. Product pages usually carry an ld+json block with name, price, currency and availability, and article pages a headline and body; check the first response you get.
What breaks, and the fix
Of the failures since 14 Aug 2026, the site answered:
Run it on a schedule
The median answer on this site is 1.6s. Push a URL list to the Crawler with a callback for anything larger than a few thousand pages a day; it paces the calls and retries what the site refuses.
Questions
Do I need a browser to scrape github.com?
It depends on the page. Plain-token calls succeed at 98.0%, JavaScript-token calls at 86.6%; the URL pattern table shows which paths accounts fetch with a browser.
How much does a github.com page cost on Crawlbase?
1 credit without a browser. github.com is in the standard tier.
Which country should I set for github.com?
None is needed: most successful calls leave it unset.
Other pages on github.com
Pages github.com lists in its own sitemaps, fetched by Crawlbase on 5 Sep 2026 and verified in 2 consecutive runs. Each row is the cheapest call that returned the page with its content.
| Page | Example | Token | Country | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Home/ | github.com/ | Plain | none | 4.0s |
Listing/collections | github.com/collections | Plain | none | 1.8s |
Article/{slug}/articles | github.com/resources/articles | Plain | none | 1.6s |
Other/{slug}/{slug}/{slug} | github.com/features/ai/github-app | Plain | none | 1.9s |