Goodreads Book Scraper

Extract book data from Goodreads: title, author, rating, review count, genres, pages, publication date, ISBN, description. Search by keyword, browse by genre, or scrape list URLs. Perfect for publishing research, book recommendation engines.

reviewsCount, genres, isbn, pageCount, publishDate and description are only filled in when you set enrichWithDetails: true, which fetches each book's own page (slower, and one extra request per book). Search results alone carry title, author, rating, ratings count, cover image and URL.

Use cases

• Research a genre's rating and review distribution before publishing
• Build a book recommendation dataset
• Track competitor titles' rating and review growth
• Source metadata for a reading-list or catalogue app
• Analyse what makes bestsellers in a category

Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
searchUrl	string	No	—	Custom Goodreads URL to scrape (overrides other parameters)
query	string	No	"fiction"	Search term to find books on Goodreads
genre	string	No	—	Browse books by genre slug (e.g., 'fiction', 'mystery', 'romance')
listUrl	string	No	—	Goodreads list URL to scrape (e.g., https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1.Best_Books_Ever)
maxResults	integer	No	20	Maximum number of books to scrape
enrichWithDetails	boolean	No	false	Fetch each book's detail page for extra data (genres, ISBN, description, page count). Slower but provides richer data.

Example input

{
  "query": "fiction",
  "maxResults": 20,
  "enrichWithDetails": false
}

Output

Each dataset item looks like this — real output from an actual run of this Actor:

{
  "title": "Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology (Never Whistle at Night, #1)",
  "author": "Shane Hawk",
  "rating": 3.83,
  "ratingsCount": 35340,
  "reviewsCount": null,
  "description": "",
  "pageCount": null,
  "publishDate": null,
  "isbn": null,
  "genres": [],
  "imageUrl": "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1685990593i/75293507._SX300_.jpg",
  "goodreadsUrl": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75293507-never-whistle-at-night",
  "series": "Never Whistle at Night",
  "seriesNumber": 1
}

Field	Type
title	string
author	string
rating	number
ratingsCount	number
reviewsCount	null
description	string
pageCount	null
publishDate	null
isbn	null
genres	array
imageUrl	string
goodreadsUrl	string
series	string
seriesNumber	number

The dataset also ships a preset table view (Books), so the key columns are readable straight away in Apify Console, and exportable to JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML.

How to run it

In Apify Console — open the Actor, fill in the input form, click Start, then download the results from the Dataset tab.

With the JavaScript client

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('cloud9_ai/goodreads-book-scraper').call({
  "query": "fiction",
  "maxResults": 20,
  "enrichWithDetails": false
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

With the Python client

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')

run = client.actor('cloud9_ai/goodreads-book-scraper').call(run_input={
  "query": "fiction",
  "maxResults": 20,
  "enrichWithDetails": False
})

for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(item)

With the API — POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cloud9_ai~goodreads-book-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN with the input JSON as the body.

Notes and limits

• No API key, account, or login is needed — just the input above.
• maxResults caps how much a single run collects, which is also what caps the run's cost.
• Requests are paced and failed requests are retried automatically, so runs stay inside the source's rate limits.
• Only publicly available data is collected. How you use the output is your responsibility, including the source's terms of use and any applicable data-protection law.

Support

Found a bug, or need a field that isn't in the output? Open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor in Apify Console. Issues there are read and answered.

License

Apache-2.0