GeoNames Place Search Scraper

What it does

Scrapes geographic place data from the GeoNames API, one of the largest geographical databases available. Search for mountains, cities, landmarks, and other geographic features worldwide. Returns detailed information including coordinates, population, country, administrative divisions, and feature classifications. The API uses a free username-based authentication system with generous rate limits for registered users.

This Apify actor automates the collection of data from a public API or website, extracting structured information and saving it directly into an Apify dataset. It handles pagination automatically where applicable, supports configurable result limits, and includes robust error handling with timeouts on all HTTP requests. The actor is designed for reliability: it validates inputs, applies sensible defaults, and produces a fallback record when no results are found, so your downstream workflows never receive an empty dataset. Built on the Apify SDK with native Node.js 20 fetch for lightweight, fast execution without browser overhead.

Why use it

Manually collecting data from web APIs and websites is tedious and error-prone. This actor eliminates that burden by running in the cloud on the Apify platform, where it can be scheduled, integrated with webhooks, or chained with other actors. Whether you are conducting research, building a knowledge base, monitoring data sources, or feeding data into an analytics pipeline, this actor gives you structured, ready-to-use JSON output with zero browser overhead. It uses lightweight HTTP requests instead of a full browser, which makes it fast and cost-effective. Every request includes a 120-second timeout to prevent hanging, and all string fields are null-checked for data consistency.

Input parameters

• searchQuery (string, required): Place name or geographic feature to search for. Default: "mountain".
• geonamesUsername (string, optional): GeoNames API username. Get a free one at geonames.org. Default: "demo" (has strict rate limits).
• maxResults (integer, optional): Maximum number of results to return. Default: 100. Range: 1-1000.

All inputs are validated at startup with sensible defaults applied when values are missing. The actor will log warnings for any misconfigured options and continue with safe defaults rather than failing outright.

Output data

Each item in the output dataset contains the following fields:

• geonameId: Unique GeoNames identifier
• name: Place or feature name
• countryName: Full country name
• countryCode: ISO country code
• adminName1: First-level administrative division (state/province)
• population: Population count
• latitude: Geographic latitude
• longitude: Geographic longitude
• featureCode: GeoNames feature code
• featureType: Human-readable feature type description

All string fields are null-checked; missing values are stored as null rather than undefined.

Example output

{
    "geonameId": 3120624,
    "name": "Mount Everest",
    "countryName": "Nepal",
    "countryCode": "NP",
    "adminName1": "Province No. 1",
    "population": 0,
    "latitude": 27.9881,
    "longitude": 86.9253,
    "featureCode": "MT",
    "featureType": "mountain"
}

Pricing

This actor is priced on a usage basis:

• $0.01 per result returned in the dataset.
• $0.005 per actor start (fixed platform fee).

For example, scraping 500 results would cost approximately $5.005. Apify provides free monthly credits for new users, so you can try the actor at no charge. Actual costs depend on the number of results, API response times, and memory allocation. You can control costs by setting the maxResults parameter to limit the number of results collected per run. For high-volume use cases, consider running the actor on a schedule during off-peak hours to optimize platform resource usage.

More scrapers from brave_paradise

Check out other useful scrapers built by brave_paradise:

• OpenAQ Air Pollution Data Scraper
• Open-Meteo Historical Weather Scraper
• NASA FIRMS Active Fire Data Scraper

Visit the brave_paradise profile on Apify to see the full catalogue of actors.