# BGG Reviews Scraper - Board Game Ratings & Comments (`coolinbex/bgg-reviews-scraper`) Actor

Scrape BoardGameGeek reviews, ratings and game stats via BGG's official public XML API. Input by BGG id, URL, or game name. Get reviewer, rating, comment text, plus rank/weight/average. No login or API key. Export JSON, CSV, or Excel. For publishers, retailers, and reviewers.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/coolinbex/bgg-reviews-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [coolinbex](https://apify.com/coolinbex) (community)
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $6.00 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## BGG Reviews Scraper — Board Game Ratings & Comments

Extract **BoardGameGeek reviews and ratings** in bulk — reviewer, star rating, full
comment text, plus per-game stats (average rating, BGG rank, complexity weight) — using
BGG's own official public XML API. No login, no cookies, no API key, and no browser
automation, so there's nothing fragile to break.

### What this actor does

- Accepts any mix of **BGG numeric id** (`174430`), **boardgamegeek.com URL**
  (`https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/174430/gloomhaven`), or **plain game name**
  (`"Gloomhaven"`, auto-resolved via BGG's search API).
- Paginates reliably using BGG's own `totalitems` count (no cursor guesswork, no
  loop-detection hacks needed — the API tells you exactly how many pages exist).
- Outputs one clean, flat record per review/rating plus a per-game stats summary
  (average rating, Bayes average, BGG rank, complexity weight, total ratings).
- Retries transient network/5xx/429/202 (queued) responses with backoff, and fails fast
  on permanent errors instead of wasting compute.
- Works entirely off BGG's public API — no proxies needed.

### Who this is for

- **Publishers & Kickstarter creators** tracking sentiment on their own games.
- **Retailers & distributors** gauging demand and reception before stocking a title.
- **Board game reviewers & YouTubers** researching a game before covering it.
- **Data scientists** building recommendation or sentiment datasets from tabletop data.

### Input

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `games` | array of strings | **Required.** BGG ids, boardgamegeek.com URLs, or game names. |
| `maxCommentsPerGame` | integer | Max reviews/ratings to collect per game. Default `200`. |
| `mode` | `ratingcomments` | `comments` | `ratingcomments` (default) only returns comments that include a numeric rating. `comments` returns every comment, rating may be blank. |
| `includeGameStats` | boolean | Push one extra per-game stats summary record. Default `true`. |
| `requestDelayMs` | integer | Delay between requests. Default `1000` (BGG asks API consumers to keep request rates conservative). |

#### Example input

```json
{
  "games": ["174430", "https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/224517/brass-birmingham", "Wingspan"],
  "maxCommentsPerGame": 300,
  "mode": "ratingcomments"
}
```

### Output

One dataset item per review:

```json
{
  "gameId": "174430",
  "gameName": "Gloomhaven",
  "username": "alice",
  "rating": 10,
  "comment": "Amazing game, best of the year.",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-16T10:00:00.000Z"
}
```

Plus one stats summary per game:

```json
{
  "type": "GAME_SUMMARY",
  "gameId": "174430",
  "gameName": "Gloomhaven",
  "yearPublished": 2017,
  "usersRated": 52341,
  "average": 8.62,
  "bayesAverage": 8.42,
  "averageWeight": 3.87,
  "numComments": 9000,
  "owned": 80000,
  "overallRank": 2,
  "reviewsScrapedThisRun": 300,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-16T10:00:00.000Z"
}
```

Download results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or push them straight to your own database via
Apify's integrations.

### Notes

This actor reads only publicly available review text and public usernames via BGG's
official `thing` endpoint — the same data visible to anyone on the game's BGG page. Use
responsibly and in line with BGG's terms of use and applicable data-protection law in
your jurisdiction. Not affiliated with or endorsed by BoardGameGeek/Geekdo.

# Actor input Schema

## `games` (type: `array`):

Board games to scrape reviews/ratings for. Each entry can be a numeric BoardGameGeek id (e.g. 174430), a boardgamegeek.com game URL, or a free-text game name (e.g. "Gloomhaven") which will be auto-resolved to its id.

## `maxCommentsPerGame` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of reviews/ratings to collect for each game.

## `mode` (type: `string`):

"Rating + comment" returns comments that always include a numeric rating (recommended - this is the standard review dataset). "All comments" returns every comment, including ones left without a rating (rating will be blank for those).

## `includeGameStats` (type: `boolean`):

If enabled, pushes one extra summary record per game with its average rating, Bayes average, BGG rank, complexity weight, and total number of users who rated it.

## `requestDelayMs` (type: `integer`):

Polite delay between consecutive BoardGameGeek API requests. BGG asks API consumers to keep request rates conservative, so this defaults higher than a typical scraper.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "games": [
    "174430",
    "224517"
  ],
  "maxCommentsPerGame": 200,
  "mode": "ratingcomments",
  "includeGameStats": true,
  "requestDelayMs": 1000
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `reviews` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "games": [
        "174430",
        "224517"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("coolinbex/bgg-reviews-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "games": [
        "174430",
        "224517",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("coolinbex/bgg-reviews-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "games": [
    "174430",
    "224517"
  ]
}' |
apify call coolinbex/bgg-reviews-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,coolinbex/bgg-reviews-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/iHgi2abOhlohpt7rM/builds/B6duQhsai9Sgd8Ad3/openapi.json