Polarsteps Trip Scraper: Steps, Photos, GPS Track & GPX

What does Polarsteps Trip Scraper do?

Polarsteps Trip Scraper exports everything a Polarsteps trip contains. You get one row per step, roughly one per travel day, with its story, date, place, weather, photos and videos in full resolution and, if you want them, the comments. The rest of the trip comes as files: the GPS track recorded by the app, the routes between steps with their transport mode, the planned itinerary, and a GPX and a GeoJSON file ready for a map.

It works on public trips, on private trips through their share link (the ?s=... link from the app, no login needed) and on whole profiles (every public trip of a traveler). It reads the same JSON API as the Polarsteps website, over plain HTTP, so it is fast. There is no official Polarsteps API: this is the closest thing to one.

The GPS track most tools miss

Polarsteps stopped sending the tracker points in recent versions of its API. A tool that asks for the latest version gets the steps and an empty track, with no error. Measured on 17 October 2026 on a public trip:

Polarsteps API version	Steps	GPS track points
51 to 64	188	7,424
65 and later	188	0

This Actor asks for version 62, the one the Polarsteps website uses, and gets the full track. If Polarsteps retires that version, it steps down to the next one that still answers.

Why scrape Polarsteps?

• Back up your own trips. The official data export is a zip of folders that nothing can open. This gives you one readable table per trip, a line per step, with links to every photo in full resolution.
• Put a trip on a map. Load the GPX in Google Earth, Komoot, Strava or Garmin, or the GeoJSON in QGIS, Mapbox, Leaflet or kepler.gl.
• Build a travel blog or a site. Pull a trip's steps, texts and photos into WordPress, Notion, Airtable or your own page, and schedule the run to keep it in sync while you travel.
• Research travel and mobility. Routes with transport modes, time spent per place and country sequences, from trips that travelers chose to publish.
• Plan from real trips. Planned itineraries, stops, nights and the spots travelers recommend.

On Apify you also get scheduling, an API for every run, webhooks, and integrations with Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets and more.

What data can Polarsteps Trip Scraper extract?

Each dataset row is one step:

Field	What it holds
tripName, tripUrl, stepNumber, tripStepCount	The trip the step belongs to, and its position in it
name, description, url	Step title, the story written by the traveler, public page
startTime, endTime, timezone	When the step happened
locality, region, country, countryCode, lat, lon	Where
weatherCondition, temperatureC	Weather recorded by Polarsteps
photoCount, videoCount, mainPhotoUrl	Media counts and the first photo
media[]	Every photo and video: full resolution URL, thumbnails, width, height, video duration
spots[]	Places the traveler recommends, with category, tip and address
comments[]	Text, date, author username and name (when comments are switched on)
tripFileUrl, gpxUrl, geojsonUrl	Links to the trip files

The trip file trip-<id>.json holds the trip summary (dates, distance, views, likes, countries, traveler), the GPS track (time, latitude, longitude, place of every point), the routes with transport mode and decoded path, and the planned itinerary.

How to scrape a Polarsteps trip

1. Open the trip on polarsteps.com or in the app and copy its link. For a private trip, tap Share in the app and copy the link that ends with ?s=....
2. Paste it in Trip URLs. To get every public trip of someone, put their username in Profiles instead.
3. Pick what to include: GPS track, routes, planned itinerary, comments.
4. Click Start.
5. Download the trips as JSON, CSV or Excel from the Output tab, and the GPX and GeoJSON files from the run's key-value store.

How much does it cost to scrape Polarsteps?

You pay per step: $0.01 per step, so $1 for a 100-step trip, plus $0.005 when the run starts. The GPS track, routes, planned itinerary, comments and the GPX, GeoJSON and trip files are included. Private trips without a valid link and unknown trips are not charged.

A trip of 90 steps and 3,000 GPS points takes a few seconds. A four-year world trip of 548 steps, 11,000 photos and 47,000 GPS points takes under a minute without comments, and about 13 minutes with the comments of its 385 commented steps. To cap the cost of a run, set a maximum charge in the run options: the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

Input

See the Input tab for every option. The only required thing is at least one trip link or one username.

{
    "tripUrls": ["https://www.polarsteps.com/clarkrtwtravel/11306874-clark-family-2024-around-the-world-trip"],
    "profiles": ["takemeeverywhere"],
    "maxTripsPerProfile": 3,
    "includeTrackPoints": true,
    "includeComments": false
}

Trip links can be the trip page, a private share link, the link of any step of the trip, or the bare trip ID.

Output

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel. One row per step, shortened here:

{
    "tripId": "11306874",
    "tripName": "Clark Family 2024 Around the World Trip",
    "tripUrl": "https://www.polarsteps.com/clarkrtwtravel/11306874-clark-family-2024-around-the-world-trip",
    "stepNumber": 1,
    "tripStepCount": 93,
    "name": "Bloomington",
    "description": "Fully packed and ready to go...",
    "startTime": "2024-05-25T12:13:44.650000+00:00",
    "locality": "Bloomington",
    "country": "USA",
    "countryCode": "US",
    "lat": 40.483433,
    "lon": -88.91467,
    "weatherCondition": "partly-cloudy-day",
    "temperatureC": 25.0,
    "photoCount": 4,
    "mainPhotoUrl": "https://polarsteps.s3.amazonaws.com/user_images/steps/full_res/...",
    "media": [{"type": "photo", "url": "https://polarsteps.s3.amazonaws.com/...", "width": 2631, "height": 3508}],
    "tripFileUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/<storeId>/records/trip-11306874.json",
    "gpxUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/<storeId>/records/trip-11306874.gpx",
    "geojsonUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/<storeId>/records/trip-11306874.geojson"
}

The trip file, shortened:

{
    "tripId": "11306874",
    "name": "Clark Family 2024 Around the World Trip",
    "startDate": "2024-05-25T05:00:00+00:00",
    "endDate": "2024-08-04T04:59:59+00:00",
    "totalKm": 73450.7,
    "stepCount": 93,
    "countryCount": 13,
    "trackPoints": [{"time": "2024-05-25T05:46:25+00:00", "lat": 40.426905, "lon": -88.878988, "locality": "Bloomington", "countryCode": "US"}],
    "routeSegments": [{"transportMode": "flight", "toStepId": "103606406", "coordinates": [[41.98008, -87.89111], [37.61741, -122.38283]]}],
    "plannedSteps": [{"name": "Bloomington", "plannedDate": "2024-08-03T05:00:00+00:00", "nights": null}]
}

The Steps view of the dataset shows the trip as a table, one line per step with its photo, ready to read or paste in a spreadsheet.

Tips and advanced options

• Very long trips. When the trip file would pass 8.5 MB (years of travel, tens of thousands of GPS points), the GPS track and then the routes go to their own files, linked in splitFields of the trip file. Nothing is dropped.
• Steps only. Switch off the GPS track and routes for a lighter trip file. The GPX and GeoJSON files keep the full track anyway.
• Comments are slower. Polarsteps limits how fast comments can be read, so a trip with hundreds of commented steps takes several minutes. They cost nothing extra.
• Keep a live trip in sync. Schedule the Actor every day on an ongoing trip and send the result to your site with a webhook or an integration.

FAQ

Can it scrape a private Polarsteps trip?

Yes, if you have its share link. In the Polarsteps app, open the trip, tap Share and copy the link with ?s=.... Without that link a private trip answers "private" and is not charged.

Does it download the photos?

It gives the full resolution URL of every photo and video, plus two thumbnail sizes. Feed those URLs to any downloader to save the files.

Do I need a Polarsteps account or cookies?

No. Public trips and share links are read without any login.

Is there an official Polarsteps API?

No public one. This Actor reads the JSON API behind polarsteps.com, the same one the website uses.

Is it legal to scrape Polarsteps?

Our Actors are ethical and do not extract any private user data, such as email addresses, gender, or location. They only extract what the user has chosen to share publicly. We therefore believe that our Actors, when used for ethical purposes by Apify users, are safe. However, you should be aware that your results could contain personal data. Personal data is protected by the GDPR in the European Union and by other regulations around the world. You should not scrape personal data unless you have a legitimate reason to do so. If you're unsure whether your reason is legitimate, consult your lawyers.

Comments only carry the author's public username and name, never their picture or home town.

Something is missing or broken?

Open an issue in the Issues tab and it gets fixed. To call the Actor from your code, see the API tab.

This Actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Polarsteps.