TMDB Scraper - Movies, TV Shows, Ratings & Trending

What is TMDB Scraper?

TMDB Scraper is a tool that lets you scrape movies, TV shows and people from The Movie Database (TMDB): title, original title, overview, poster and backdrop images, release or first-air date, rating, vote count, popularity and genres. Search by title, browse by genre and year, or get this week's trending titles. Add your free TMDB API key, click Start, and download the results as Excel, CSV or JSON.

This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.

• 🎬 Three ways in: search by title or name, discover by genre, year and sort order, or this week's trending
• 🖼️ Ready-to-use images: poster, backdrop and profile image links
• 🌍 Your language: titles and overviews in en-US, de-DE, fr-FR, ja-JP and more
• 💸 Free to try: the $5 of free usage every Apify account gets each month covers about 10,000 movies, shows or people

What can TMDB Scraper do?

• Search TMDB movies by title
• Search TMDB TV shows and people by name, or all three at once
• Find movies by genre and release year, such as action movies of 2024
• Get the best-rated movies by genre, sorted by rating, popularity, release date or revenue
• Get this week's trending movies, TV shows and people on TMDB
• Get movie poster and backdrop image links
• Get movie and TV titles and overviews in another language
• Export TMDB data to Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML or XML

What data can you extract from TMDB?

🎬 Title and original title	📝 Overview	🆔 TMDB ID
⭐ Rating (vote average)	🗳️ Vote count	📈 Popularity
📅 Release or first-air date	🏷️ Genre IDs	🌐 Language code
🖼️ Poster image	🌄 Backdrop image	🔞 Adult flag
🌍 Origin country (TV)	👤 Known-for titles (people)	📸 Profile image (people)

Before you start: get your free TMDB key

1. Create a free account at themoviedb.org.
2. Open Settings > API (themoviedb.org/settings/api) and request an API key (choose the developer option and fill in the short form).
3. Copy either of the two keys on that page: the short API Key or the long API Read Access code. Both work.
4. Paste it into the TMDB API Key field of this actor. Apify stores it encrypted.

TMDB's own terms apply to your use of its data; read them on the same settings page.

How to scrape TMDB movies and TV shows

1. Create a free Apify account (no credit card needed).
2. Open TMDB Scraper and paste your TMDB API Key.
3. Pick a Search Type: search (movies, TV, people or all), discover, or trending.
4. Type a Search Query for the search types, or set Genre, Release Year and Sort By for discover. Set Max Results and click Start.
5. When the run finishes, open the Titles view (movies and shows) or the People view in the Output tab, or download the results as Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML or XML.

How much does it cost to scrape TMDB?

You pay $0.50 per 1,000 results (each movie, TV show or person is one result). Apify platform usage is included in this price, so there is nothing else to pay for the run. TMDB does not charge for its API key.

For example, 1,000 movies cost $0.50 on the Free plan, and a search that returns 20 results costs $0.01.

Every Apify account gets $5 of free usage each month. See the Pricing tab for details.

⬇️ Input

Setting	What it does
TMDB API Key	Your free TMDB API Key or long read access code (required)
Search Type	multi (movies, TV and people), movie, tv, person, discover or trending
Search Query	Title or name, for the search types
Release Year	Four-digit year (first-air year for TV), for movie and TV search and for discover
Genre	Genre name, for discover, such as Action or Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Language	Language of titles and overviews (default en-US)
Sort By	Sort for discover: popularity, rating, release date or revenue, up or down
Max Results	How many results to return (default 20, up to 100)
Include Adult Content	Include adult titles (off by default)

Example: search everything for a title.

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_TMDB_API_KEY",
  "searchType": "multi",
  "query": "Inception",
  "maxResults": 20
}

Example: best-rated action movies of 2024.

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_TMDB_API_KEY",
  "searchType": "discover",
  "genre": "Action",
  "year": "2024",
  "sortBy": "vote_average.desc",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Example: this week's trending titles, in German.

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_TMDB_API_KEY",
  "searchType": "trending",
  "language": "de-DE",
  "maxResults": 100
}

⬆️ Output

You get one row per movie, TV show or person. mediaType tells them apart. You can view the rows as a table in Apify Console or download them as Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML or XML.

{
  "itemId": 27205,
  "mediaType": "movie",
  "title": "Inception",
  "originalTitle": "Inception",
  "overview": "Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: \"inception\", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.",
  "posterUrl": "https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/qzb0slJerd5bQgJxteJ5oAmfp09.jpg",
  "backdropUrl": "https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/8ZTVqvKDQ8emSGUEMjsS4yHAwrp.jpg",
  "popularity": 112.45,
  "voteAverage": 8.364,
  "voteCount": 37140,
  "language": "en",
  "releaseDate": "2010-07-15",
  "adult": false,
  "genreIds": [28, 878, 12]
}

TV shows carry firstAirDate and originCountry instead of releaseDate; people carry knownFor, knownForTitles and profileUrl.

How can I use TMDB data?

• Movie and TV apps: build catalogs, watchlists and recommendation lists with posters and ratings
• Data enrichment: add posters, ratings and release dates to your own list of titles
• Trend tracking: see what is trending this week for content, marketing or research
• Datasets: build lists of films and shows by genre and year for analysis
• Localized catalogs: get titles and overviews in your audience's language

Scrape more entertainment and knowledge data

Actor	What it gets
YouTube Search Scraper - Videos, Channels & Playlists	YouTube search results, such as trailers and reviews, with views, durations and upload dates
YouTube Channel Scraper - Search Channels by Keyword	YouTube channels by keyword with subscribers, video and view counts
Wikidata Scraper - Entities, Labels & Descriptions	Wikidata entities for films, people and studios, with labels, descriptions and Wikipedia links
Reddit Scraper - Posts, Comments, Users, Subreddits & Search	Reddit posts and comments, such as movie and TV discussions
Google News Scraper - Full Article Text, Alerts & RSS	Google News articles by keyword with full text

❓FAQ

How much does TMDB Scraper cost?

$0.50 per 1,000 movies, TV shows or people, platform usage included. See the cost section above and the Pricing tab.

Do I need a TMDB account?

Yes. TMDB gives every developer a free personal API key and asks that requests are made with it. Creating the account and key is free and takes a few minutes (see Before you start above). Your key stays yours and is stored encrypted.

My run failed with "TMDB rejected the API key"?

Copy the key again from themoviedb.org/settings/api. Either the API Key (32 characters) or the long read access code (starting with eyJ) works.

How many results can I get per run?

Up to 100 per run. For more, run several searches, for example one per genre or year.

Which genres can I use?

TMDB's genre names, such as Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Family, Fantasy, History, Horror, Music, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller, War and Western for movies, and Action & Adventure, Kids, News, Reality, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Soap, Talk and War & Politics for TV. A name TMDB does not know stops the run with the list of valid names.

Can I get full details such as cast, runtime or budget?

Not with this actor. It returns the search, discover and trending results with the fields above.

How fresh is the data?

Each run reads TMDB live. Trending covers the current week.

Can I connect TMDB Scraper to other tools or AI agents?

Yes. Start runs and download results with the Apify API or the Python and JavaScript clients, send results to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets or Slack with Apify integrations and webhooks, or let AI assistants and agents run it through the Apify MCP server at mcp.apify.com.

Is it legal to scrape TMDB?

This actor reads TMDB with your own free API key, under TMDB's terms of use, which you accept when you create the key. It only returns public catalog data. People results can still contain personal data, which may be protected by laws such as GDPR, so only use it for a legitimate reason and ask a lawyer if you are unsure. You can read more in Is web scraping legal?

TMDB Scraper is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by TMDB (The Movie Database).

Something isn't working?

Open the Issues tab and tell us your input (without your key) and what you expected.

⭐ Your feedback

Have an idea or found a problem? Tell us on the Issues tab. If TMDB Scraper saved you time, a short review on the Reviews tab helps other people find it.