Open Library Book Intelligence — 20M+ Books API

Search and extract book data from Open Library's database of 20+ million books — titles, authors, publishers, publication dates, ISBNs, covers, subjects, and edition info.

Built for book apps, library tools, reading platforms, publishers, and AI book recommendation engines.

What you get

• Comprehensive book metadata — title, author(s), publisher, publish year, ISBN-10/13, cover image, subjects, edition count, language
• Multiple search modes — by query, title, author, subject, or ISBN
• Full-text availability flag — find books readable online
• Publish-year filtering
• Free, official data source — Open Library / Internet Archive
• Pre-built dataset Overview in Apify Console for instant inspection

Why this actor (vs. alternatives)

	Paid book API	Build your own	This actor
Cost	Monthly subscription	Free but you maintain it	Pay-per-result
Database size	Varies	You wire up Open Library	20M+ books
ISBN + subject search	Premium tier	Manual	Built-in
Cover images	Sometimes	Manual	Included

Input

Field	Type	Description
searchType	enum	query, title, author, subject, isbn
searchQuery	string	Search term (e.g., "1984", "Tolkien", "9780451524935")
language	string	Filter by language code (e.g., eng)
publishYearStart / publishYearEnd	int	Publish-year range filter
hasFulltext	bool	Only books with full text available
maxResults	int	Maximum books to return (default 5)

Example Input

{
  "searchType": "author",
  "searchQuery": "George Orwell",
  "publishYearStart": 1940,
  "publishYearEnd": 1955,
  "maxResults": 50
}

Output (sample)

{
  "title": "Nineteen Eighty-Four",
  "authors": ["George Orwell"],
  "first_publish_year": 1949,
  "publisher": ["Secker & Warburg"],
  "isbn_13": ["9780451524935"],
  "isbn_10": ["0451524934"],
  "cover_url": "https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/...-L.jpg",
  "subjects": ["Dystopia", "Political fiction", "Totalitarianism"],
  "edition_count": 412,
  "language": ["eng"],
  "has_fulltext": true,
  "openlibrary_url": "https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1168083W",
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-28T14:00:00+00:00"
}

Use cases

• Book / reading apps — populate catalogs with rich metadata + covers
• Library systems — enrich records by ISBN or title
• Publishers — research editions, subjects, and competing titles
• AI recommendation engines — ground book recommendations in real metadata
• Academic research — analyze publication trends by subject + year
• Bookstore tools — auto-fill product pages from ISBN lookups

Pricing

Pay-Per-Event:

• $0.005 per book
• $0.00005 actor-start fee

Example runs

Use case	Books	Cost
ISBN lookup batch	50	$0.25
Author bibliography	100	$0.50
Subject research dataset	500	$2.50

Tips

• Use searchType: "isbn" for precise single-book lookups (catalog enrichment)
• Use searchType: "subject" to build topic-based reading lists
• Set hasFulltext: true to find books readable online via Internet Archive
• Cover images come in S/M/L sizes — the cover_url returns the large version

FAQ

Q: How big is the database?
A: 20+ million books from Open Library / Internet Archive.

Q: Can I look up a book by ISBN?
A: Yes — set searchType: "isbn" and pass the ISBN as searchQuery.

Q: Are cover images included?
A: Yes — cover_url provides a high-resolution cover when available.

Q: Is the data free / official?
A: Yes — sourced from Open Library, a project of the Internet Archive.

Related actors

• recipe-intelligence — recipe database
• art-museum-intelligence — museum art collections
• cocktail-intelligence — cocktail recipes

Legal & compliance

Uses Open Library's publicly available data (Internet Archive). Data is provided for open use; you remain responsible for compliant downstream use and attribution where appropriate.

Support & feature requests

Open an issue on the Actor page or contact via Apify Console messaging. Custom features welcome.