Google Maps Nearby Places

Find places near a coordinate - a lightweight alternative to full area scanning.

Give it a latitude/longitude, a category (e.g. coffee shop, pharmacy, gas station) and a search radius, and it returns up to 120 nearby places with all the details you'd expect from Google Maps: name, category, rating, review count, address, phone, website, price level, coordinates, plus code, and distance from the centre point. No login, cookies, or API key are needed — it reads public Google Maps pages.

What this actor does

Use this actor	Use Google Maps Area Scanner instead
"What's near this single point?"	"Map every business across a whole city / region"
You want a fast lookup (one search, up to 120 results)	You need to bypass Google's 120-result limit
Centre + radius is enough	You need polygon / bounding-box coverage

This actor is purpose-built for point-radius queries. For large-area coverage, use Google Maps Area Scanner.

How it works

1. Picks a Google Maps zoom level appropriate for your radius (smaller radius → tighter zoom, more local results).
2. Opens a single /maps/search/<category>/@lat,lng,zoomz URL.
3. Scrolls the result feed to load up to your Max Results cap.
4. Visits each place page and extracts the full details.
5. Filters by minimum rating and "open now" (best-effort) if requested.
6. Enforces the radius: computes the great-circle distance from your centre to each place's observed coordinates and drops anything outside radiusKm. A place with no coordinates is omitted — it cannot be verified as inside.
7. Adds a distanceFromCenter field to each surviving record, computed from the input centre.

Input

Field	Required	Default	Description
category	Yes	coffee shop	What to search for (any free-text query).
location	Yes	{lat: 40.7484, lng: -73.9857}	Centre point - Empire State Building by default.
radiusKm	No	1	Radius in km (0.1 - 10). Controls zoom level and is enforced as a hard filter — places beyond the radius are dropped.
maxResults	No	30	Cap on places returned (1 - 120).
minRating	No	-	Only keep places with totalScore ≥ minRating (1.0 - 5.0).
openNow	No	false	Keep only places Google reports as open right now. A place whose state cannot be read is dropped too, so every returned row is verified open.
language	No	en	UI language (en, es, fr, de, it, pt, ja, ko, zh, ar, ru).
proxyConfiguration	No	US RESIDENTIAL recovery	Direct access is attempted with a bounded hardcoded Apify US residential recovery path; explicit settings are respected.

Radius → Zoom level

Radius	Zoom
≤ 0.3 km	17
0.3 - 1 km	16
1 - 2 km	15
2 - 5 km	14
> 5 km	13

Output per nearby place

Each record:

{
  "name": "Stumptown Coffee Roasters",
  "categoryName": "Coffee shop",
  "totalScore": 4.5,
  "reviewsCount": 2891,
  "address": "30 W 8th St, New York, NY 10011",
  "phone": "(347) 414-7805",
  "website": "https://www.stumptowncoffee.com/",
  "priceLevel": "$$",
  "featureId": "0x89c25:0x70fba2…",
  "plusCode": "PXR4+QM New York",
  "location": {"lat": 40.7325, "lng": -73.9974},
  "distanceFromCenter": "1.8 km",
  "distanceFromCenterMeters": 1843,
  "googleMapsUrl": "https://www.google.com/maps/place/…",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-16T12:34:56+00:00"
}

Field	Type	Description
placeId	string	Canonical Google Place ID beginning with ChIJ, when Google exposes one.
featureId	string	Legacy feature/CID token (0x…:0x…), when Google exposes one.

A canonical ChIJ… token is recorded in placeId; a legacy 0x…:0x… token is recorded in featureId and is never relabelled as a Place ID. When both are observed, the canonical token takes placeId and the legacy token is still recorded as featureId. Empty fields are omitted, never returned as null.

Records whose observed coordinates fall outside radiusKm (or that have no usable coordinates) are dropped rather than emitted outside the requested area.

Examples

Example: pharmacies near a coordinate

{"category":"pharmacy","location":{"lat":40.7484,"lng":-73.9857},"radiusKm":2,"maxResults":50}

Example: open restaurants with a rating filter

{"category":"restaurants","location":{"lat":40.7128,"lng":-74.0060},"radiusKm":1,"maxResults":30,"minRating":4,"openNow":true}

Example: Japanese convenience stores

{"category":"コンビニ","location":{"lat":35.6762,"lng":139.6503},"radiusKm":2,"maxResults":50,"language":"ja"}

Use cases

• Find nearby businesses around a single point.
• Compare local points of interest by category and rating.
• Feed a small-radius location search into a downstream workflow.

FAQ

How many places can I get per run? Up to 120 - that's the cap Google Maps enforces on a single search. For larger coverage, switch to Google Maps Area Scanner.

Do I need a proxy? No login or cookies are needed. The actor has a bounded hardcoded Apify US RESIDENTIAL path so a datacenter response cannot silently become a false empty result; an explicit {"useApifyProxy": false} is available for direct-only diagnostics.

Why is the zoom level tied to my radius? Google Maps biases search results toward the visible map area at the chosen zoom. A tight zoom (17) over a 5 km radius would miss everything far from centre; a loose zoom (13) over 0.3 km would pull in too many irrelevant distant places. The mapping in the table above is the sweet spot.

Does openNow always work? It is strict, not best-effort. Google Maps shows "Open" / "Closed" / "Opens at X" on most place pages but not all. Only places observed open are returned; a place whose state cannot be read is dropped, because a row without isOpenNow cannot be audited against the filter. An openNow run can therefore return noticeably fewer rows than an unfiltered run — and can return none.

Why are some fields missing on some records? Not every business on Google Maps has a phone number, website, price level, or plus code. We omit empty fields rather than emitting null, so the output JSON stays clean.

How accurate is distanceFromCenter? It's computed with the haversine formula from your input centre to the place's extracted lat/lng - accurate to a few metres for typical urban queries.

Please use this public data lawfully, in line with Google's terms and applicable law.

🗺️ Complete Google Maps Scraper Suite

This actor is part of a comprehensive Google Maps data extraction toolkit by crawlerbros. All actors run cookielessly on the free Apify plan with bounded direct, retry, and residential recovery paths, and return clean, structured data.

Actor	What it does
🏢 Google Maps Business Scraper	Extract business data - name, address, phone, website, rating, reviews, hours, amenities
⭐ Google Maps Reviews Scraper	Scrape reviews with reviewer Local Guide level, photos, mentioned items, owner replies
📸 Google Maps Photos Scraper	Extract all photos from any place - max-resolution URLs, contributor info, categories
🕐 Google Maps Business Hours Scraper	Full 7-day hours, timezone, current local time, next open/close, holiday hours
📊 Google Maps Popular Times Scraper	Busy hours histogram for all 7 days + current busyness + typical visit time
📧 Google Maps Email Extractor	Find business emails + social media links by crawling websites
🗺️ Google Maps Area Scanner	Geographic grid scanning - bypass the 120-place limit with bounding box / circle / polygon
💼 Google Maps Leads Scraper	B2B lead generation with email + phone enrichment, US states + global countries
🤖 Google Maps MCP Server	Unified MCP server combining search + reviews for AI assistants
🧭 Google Maps Directions Scraper	A→B routing - distance, duration, traffic, route alternatives for driving/walking/transit
📍 Google Maps Geocoding Scraper	Bidirectional geocoding - address ↔ coordinates, with address components
🔗 Google Maps Similar Places Scraper	"People also search for" / related place discovery - competitor & alternative finder
🍽️ Google Maps Menu Scraper	Restaurant menu items, prices, descriptions, photos
📋 Google Maps Place List Scraper	Extract Google's curated "Top X in Y" lists - best hotels/restaurants/things to do
🌍 Google Maps Timezone Scraper	IANA timezone + current local time from coordinates