IRCC Processing Times Tracker

Open-source dataset of Canada visa processing times, scraped daily from IRCC and served as structured JSON.

Built for r/CanadaVisitorVisa — a community helping people navigate the Canadian visitor visa process.

What's in the data

Metric	Value
Countries	212
Visa categories	7 (visitor, super visa, study, work, child dependent, child adopted, refugees)
Update frequency	Daily at 10 AM ET
Source	Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)
Format	JSON

Quick access

Latest processing times (all countries):

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aafre/ircc-processing-times/main/scraper/data/latest.json

Country name mapping:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aafre/ircc-processing-times/main/scraper/data/countries.json

Historical data for a specific country (e.g. India):

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aafre/ircc-processing-times/main/scraper/data/history/IN.json

Sample output

From scraper/data/latest.json:

{
  "last_updated": "2026-04-03T14:37:56Z",
  "ircc_last_updated": "March 31, 2026",
  "processing_times": {
    "IN": {
      "name": "India",
      "visitor-outside-canada": 28,
      "supervisa": 191,
      "study": 21,
      "work": 49,
      "raw": {
        "visitor-outside-canada": "28 days",
        "supervisa": "191 days",
        "study": "3 weeks",
        "work": "7 weeks"
      }
    }
  }
}

Values are normalized to days. Original IRCC text is preserved in raw.

How it works

A Python scraper runs daily via GitHub Actions:

1. Loads the IRCC processing times page using Playwright
2. Fetches the official data-ptime-en.json endpoint from within the browser context
3. Parses and normalizes time strings ("3 weeks" → 21 days)
4. Stores to SQLite (historical record) and exports JSON files
5. Commits updated data back to this repo

Running locally

cd scraper
uv venv .venv && source .venv/Scripts/activate  # or .venv/bin/activate on Linux/Mac
uv pip install httpx playwright
playwright install chromium

python -m src.scrape           # full run
python -m src.scrape --dry-run # fetch + parse only, no storage
python -m pytest tests/ -v     # run tests

Project structure

scraper/           Python scraper + GitHub Actions workflow
  src/             Source code (fetchers, parser, db, exporter)
  data/            JSON output (latest.json, countries.json, history/)
  tests/           Unit tests

devvit-app/        Reddit Devvit app for r/CanadaVisitorVisa
  src/main.tsx     Dashboard custom post + timeline submission form

.github/workflows/ Daily scraping automation

Data source & attribution

All processing time data is sourced from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) via their official Check processing times page. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by IRCC or the Government of Canada.

License

MIT