Google Maps Reviews Scraper

Scrape Google Maps reviews for any place using a real headless browser (Playwright) through Apify residential proxy. Give it a place URL, a Google place_id, or just a name + city, and it returns the place's info and its reviews — with sort and language options.

Reviews are read from two complementary sources and merged (de-duplicated by review id):

1. the review cards rendered in the page (reliable backbone), and
2. Google Maps' own internal review payload embedded in the page (APP_INITIALIZATION_STATE — the place-details response Maps itself loads). This second source provides the full, untruncated review text plus fields the visible cards don't expose: the absolute publish date, the review language, the author's id / photo / review count / Local-Guide status, the review photos, the owner's response text + date, and the place's 1–5 star distribution.

Input

Provide at least one target (you can mix them):

Field	Type	Description
startUrls	array	Google Maps place URLs (https://www.google.com/maps/place/... or https://maps.app.goo.gl/...). Most reliable input.
searchStrings	array	name + city, e.g. Katz's Delicatessen New York. First matching place is scraped.
placeIds	array	Google place IDs (ChIJ...).
maxReviews	integer	Max reviews per place (default 100, up to 50000).
reviewsSort	select	mostRelevant, newest, highestRating, lowestRating (default newest).
language	string	UI/results language, e.g. en, pt-BR, es (default en).
proxyConfiguration	proxy	RESIDENTIAL strongly recommended (default).
timeoutSecs	integer	Per-place render timeout (default 60).

Output

One dataset item per review, each carrying the place context:

{
  "placeName": "Katz's Delicatessen",
  "placeId": "0x89c2598f7ff4aa09:0x313547e757cb8cea",
  "placeIdChIJ": "ChIJCar0f49ZwokR6ozLV-dHNTE",
  "placeUrl": "https://www.google.com/maps?cid=...",
  "placeRating": 4.5,
  "placeTotalReviews": 55724,
  "placeCategory": "Deli",
  "placeAddress": "205 E Houston St, New York, NY 10002",
  "placeStarDistribution": { "1": 1821, "2": 1422, "3": 3369, "4": 8863, "5": 40249 },
  "reviewId": "Ci9DQUlR...",
  "author": "Patric Nouaille",
  "authorUrl": "https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/117377362771329070868",
  "authorId": "117377362771329070868",
  "authorPhoto": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/...",
  "authorMeta": "3 reviews",
  "authorReviewsCount": 3,
  "authorIsLocalGuide": false,
  "rating": 5,
  "date": "2 months ago",
  "dateAbsolute": "2026-07-24T10:18:14.113Z",
  "publishedAtTimestamp": 1784888294113,
  "reviewLanguage": "en",
  "likes": 0,
  "text": "Full, untruncated review text...",
  "ownerResponse": "Thanks for visiting!",
  "ownerResponseDate": "2 months ago",
  "ownerResponseDateAbsolute": "2026-07-28T...",
  "reviewUrl": "https://www.google.com/maps/reviews/data=...",
  "photos": ["https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/...", "..."],
  "source": "embedded+dom"
}

source tells you where each review came from: embedded (Google's internal payload), dom (rendered card), or embedded+dom (both, merged).

Honesty

No fabricated data. Fields that are not on the real page come back as null (or [] for photos, 0 for likes). If Google blocks the request or serves a reduced layout, the item reports the exact reason instead of inventing results — always use a RESIDENTIAL proxy.

Note on review depth

Google does not paginate its public reviews list for automated (non-logged-in) browser sessions — its internal listugcposts pagination endpoint returns HTTP 403 to unauthenticated requests. This actor therefore returns the full set of reviews Google exposes to a logged-out visitor: the place's complete info + star distribution, and the exposed review set (the most recent/relevant reviews, with full text, photos, dates, language and owner replies). It does not download the entire multi-thousand review history. Sort order and language apply to the returned set.