Imgur Scraper

Imgur Scraper lets you search, crawl, and export millions of posts, memes, and image/video galleries from Imgur with detailed metadata. It supports keyword search, tags, user galleries, and comment threads so you can build rich datasets for analytics, content research, or automation workflows. Use this Imgur scraper to reliably collect structured information at scale without dealing with fragile manual copy-paste.

     

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Introduction

Imgur Scraper is a high-performance data collection tool that automates browsing through Imgur search results, tag pages, user profiles, and individual posts. It extracts structured data such as titles, views, scores, tags, media info, and nested comments into a clean JSON dataset.

This project solves the pain of manually scrolling and saving memes or post metadata, or relying on incomplete/unofficial endpoints. It is ideal for developers, data scientists, content marketers, and researchers who need detailed Imgur data for trend analysis, dashboards, recommendation systems, or moderation tools.

Imgur content mining at scale

• Supports keyword-based search with sorting and filtering options across Imgur.
• Handles tag pages, user galleries, and individual post URLs in a single unified workflow.
• Optionally fetches full comment threads and replies for deeper engagement analysis.
• Allows limiting by page range and max items to control crawl scope and cost.
• Provides extension hooks so you can transform or enrich every record with custom logic.

Features

Feature	Description
Keyword search scraping	Search Imgur for any keyword and collect matching posts with sorting and filtering options.
Tag page scraping	Crawl posts from one or more tag URLs and build datasets around specific topics or communities.
User gallery scraping	Fetch all posts from any public Imgur user profile without artificial limits.
Comment extraction	Optionally include full comment threads and replies for each post, including engagement counts.
Detailed post metadata	Capture views, favorites, scores, vote counts, tags, media details, and account information.
Pagination control	Configure endPage and maxItems to limit how many pages and items are scraped.
Proxy support	Use a proxy configuration to reduce blocking risk and keep scraping stable over long runs.
Custom mapping hooks	Use extendOutputFunction and customMapFunction to attach custom fields or transform records before saving.

---

What Data This Scraper Extracts

Field Name	Field Description
type	Entity type, e.g., "post" for standard post records.
id	Unique Imgur post identifier.
accountId	Unique identifier of the author account.
title	Post title or headline as shown on Imgur.
description	Text description or caption of the post (can be empty).
numberOfViews	Total view count of the post.
numberOfUpvotes	Number of upvotes received.
numberOfDownvotes	Number of downvotes received.
numberOfPoints	Net points score (upvotes minus downvotes or platform-computed score).
numberOfImages	Number of media items (images/videos) attached to the post.
numberOfComments	Total number of comments on the post (top-level and replies).
numberOfFavorites	Number of times the post has been favorited.
virality	Calculated virality score based on engagement and reach.
score	Overall score metric used for ranking or “most viral” lists.
isInMostViral	Boolean indicating whether the post appears in “Most Viral” feeds.
isAlbum	Boolean flag indicating if the post is an album containing multiple media items.
isMature	Boolean indicating if the post is marked as mature content.
coverId	Identifier of the cover image used for the post/album.
createdAt	ISO timestamp when the post was created.
updatedAt	ISO timestamp when the post was last updated (may be null).
url	Canonical URL of the Imgur post/gallery.
platform	Source platform label, such as "api" or similar.
account	Nested object with account details for the author.
account.id	Unique ID of the author account.
account.username	Author’s username.
account.avatarUrl	URL of the author’s avatar image.
account.createdAt	ISO timestamp when the user account was created.
tags	Array of tags (strings) assigned to the post.
media	Array of media objects (images, GIFs, videos) attached to the post.
media.mime_type	MIME type of the media file (e.g., video/mp4).
media.url	Direct media URL.
media.ext	File extension derived from the media type.
media.width	Media width in pixels.
media.height	Media height in pixels.
media.size	File size in bytes.
media.title	Media title if applicable.
media.description	Media-specific description if available.
media.isAnimated	Indicates whether the media is animated (GIF/video).
media.isLooping	Indicates whether the media is looping.
media.duration	Duration of the media in seconds (for video).
media.has_sound	Boolean flag indicating if the media includes audio.
comments	Array of top-level comment objects with nested replies.
comments.id	Unique identifier of the comment.
comments.parent_id	ID of the parent comment (0 for top-level comments).
comments.comment	Text content of the comment.
comments.account_id	Account identifier of the commenter.
comments.post_id	ID of the related post.
comments.upvote_count	Number of upvotes on the comment.
comments.downvote_count	Number of downvotes on the comment.
comments.point_count	Net score of the comment.
comments.vote	Current vote state if available.
comments.platform_id	Numeric platform identifier.
comments.platform	Platform label (e.g., "android").
comments.created_at	ISO timestamp when the comment was created.
comments.updated_at	ISO timestamp when the comment was last updated.
comments.deleted_at	Timestamp if the comment was deleted (otherwise null).
comments.next	Reference to next comment chunk/thread if present.
comments.comments	Array of nested reply comments associated with the parent comment.

---

Example Output

Example:

[
  {
    "type": "post",
    "id": "JBTJqu2",
    "accountId": "22440270",
    "title": "holiday",
    "description": "",
    "numberOfViews": 8578,
    "numberOfUpvotes": 23,
    "numberOfDownvotes": 5,
    "numberOfPoints": 18,
    "numberOfImages": 1,
    "numberOfComments": 6,
    "numberOfFavorites": 1,
    "virality": 3475.255272505103,
    "score": 18.5435,
    "isInMostViral": false,
    "isAlbum": true,
    "isMature": false,
    "coverId": "dK9p4A1",
    "createdAt": "2019-07-13T03:20:56Z",
    "updatedAt": null,
    "url": "https://imgur.com/gallery/JBTJqu2",
    "platform": "api",
    "account": {
      "id": "22440270",
      "username": "IsNice",
      "avatarUrl": "https://i.imgur.com/YLvWS5K_d.png?maxwidth=290&fidelity=grand",
      "createdAt": "2015-07-19T10:05:29Z"
    },
    "tags": [
      "storytime",
      "funny",
      "awesome"
    ],
    "media": [
      {
        "mime_type": "video/mp4",
        "url": "https://i.imgur.com/dK9p4A1.mp4",
        "ext": "mp4",
        "width": 960,
        "height": 540,
        "size": 87699,
        "title": "",
        "description": "",
        "isAnimated": true,
        "isLooping": true,
        "duration": 9,
        "has_sound": false
      }
    ],
    "comments": [
      {
        "id": 1681576587,
        "parent_id": 0,
        "comment": "https://youtu.be/q-qqrGtlHkg",
        "account_id": 3708825,
        "post_id": "JBTJqu2",
        "upvote_count": 2,
        "downvote_count": 0,
        "point_count": 2,
        "vote": null,
        "platform_id": 4,
        "platform": "android",
        "created_at": "2019-07-13T03:45:15Z",
        "updated_at": "2019-07-13T04:05:31Z",
        "deleted_at": null,
        "next": null,
        "comments": [
          {
            "id": 1681616815,
            "parent_id": 1681576587,
            "comment": "http://i.imgur.com/D5veJQj.gif",
            "account_id": 85975675,
            "post_id": "JBTJqu2",
            "upvote_count": 2,
            "downvote_count": 0,
            "point_count": 2,
            "vote": null,
            "platform_id": 4,
            "platform": "android",
            "created_at": "2019-07-13T05:28:37Z",
            "updated_at": "2019-07-13T18:44:25Z",
            "deleted_at": null,
            "next": null,
            "comments": []
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
]

---

Directory Structure Tree

imgur-scraper/
├── src/
│   ├── main.js
│   ├── crawler.js
│   ├── extractors/
│   │   ├── postExtractor.js
│   │   ├── commentExtractor.js
│   │   └── mediaExtractor.js
│   ├── mappers/
│   │   ├── extendOutputFunction.example.js
│   │   └── customMapFunction.example.js
│   ├── utils/
│   │   ├── logger.js
│   │   ├── pagination.js
│   │   └── requestQueue.js
│   └── config/
│       └── inputSchema.json
├── data/
│   ├── input.example.json
│   └── sample-output.json
├── tests/
│   ├── crawler.test.js
│   └── mapping.test.js
├── .env.example
├── package.json
├── package-lock.json
├── README.md
└── LICENSE

---

Use Cases

• Content researchers use it to collect large volumes of memes and visual posts, so they can analyze cultural trends, formats, and engagement over time.
• Data scientists use it to build training datasets of images, GIFs, and associated text, so they can power recommendation models or computer vision projects.
• Marketing teams use it to monitor how specific tags, campaigns, or topics perform on Imgur, so they can refine creative strategies and targeting.
• Community managers use it to audit user-generated content and comment behavior, so they can detect spam, abuse, or high-value contributors.
• Developers use it to integrate Imgur post data into dashboards, automation scripts, or internal tools without relying on brittle manual export methods.

---

FAQs

Q1: What types of Imgur URLs are supported? This scraper supports search result URLs, tag pages, user profile/gallery URLs, and individual post/gallery URLs. You can mix them freely in startUrls, and the tool will automatically detect and handle each type.

Q2: Do I have to enable comment scraping? No. Comment scraping is controlled by the includeComments boolean flag. When set to true, the scraper will fetch all available comments and replies for each post, which increases runtime and resource usage. If you only need post-level metrics, leave it set to false for faster runs.

Q3: How can I limit how many posts are collected? You can use the endPage parameter to stop after a certain number of result pages per URL and the maxItems parameter to cap the total number of posts across the whole run. Combining both lets you fine-tune scope and avoid overshooting your target volume.

Q4: Can I customize the output format? Yes. With extendOutputFunction and customMapFunction, you can inject custom JavaScript that receives each page or item and returns a transformed object. This makes it easy to normalize fields, add derived metrics, or drop unnecessary properties before saving.

---

Performance Benchmarks and Results

Primary Metric: On a typical mid-range server with a stable network connection, the scraper can collect around 100 detailed Imgur posts (including media metadata) in roughly 2 minutes when comment scraping is disabled.

Reliability Metric: With a properly configured proxy setup and reasonable throttling, success rates above 95% per run are common, even when crawling multiple pages of search results and user galleries.

Efficiency Metric: By prioritizing lightweight list pages first and then scheduling detail requests, the scraper maintains high throughput while keeping average memory and CPU usage modest, suitable for continuous or scheduled runs.

Quality Metric: For public posts, the scraper consistently retrieves complete metadata, tags, and media information for more than 98% of successfully requested items, providing a robust foundation for analytics and machine learning pipelines.

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