MyAnimeList Scraper

Scrape MyAnimeList — the world's largest anime and manga database — via the Jikan unofficial REST API. Get anime, manga, characters, voice actors, season charts, top rankings, and public user lists in one click. No login, no API key, no proxy required.

What you get

• Anime data — title, type, episodes, score, rank, members, synopsis, studios, producers, genres, themes, demographics, broadcast schedule, opening / ending themes, streaming services, related entries, external links.
• Manga data — title, chapters, volumes, score, members, authors, serialization magazines, genres, themes, related works.
• People & characters — voice actors, directors, characters, with biography, image, favorites count, and (for people) full voice-acting role history.
• Top charts — ranked anime / manga by score, popularity, currently airing / publishing, upcoming, or most favorited.
• Seasonal charts — current season, upcoming season, or any specific past season (year + season).
• Public user data — profile, statistics, favorites, anime / manga lists with ratings and progress.
• URL auto-router — paste a MyAnimeList URL and the scraper picks the right endpoint.

Modes

Mode	Description
searchAnime	Search anime by query, with type / status / rating / genre / sort filters
byAnime	Anime detail by MAL ID(s) — full payload with relations, themes, streaming, external links
searchManga	Search manga by query and filters
byManga	Manga detail by MAL ID(s)
topAnime	Top anime chart (filter: airing / upcoming / by-popularity / favorite)
topManga	Top manga chart (filter: publishing / upcoming / by-popularity / favorite)
seasonNow	Current season's anime
seasonUpcoming	Next season's anime
season	Anime from a specific season (e.g. winter 2018)
searchPerson	Search people / voice actors
byPerson	Person detail by MAL ID(s) — incl. voice-acting roles
searchCharacter	Search characters by name
byCharacter	Character detail by MAL ID(s)
userProfile	Public MAL user profile + stats + favorites
userAnimeList	Public user's anime list (filter by status: watching / completed / on-hold / dropped / plan-to-watch)
userMangaList	Public user's manga list
byUrl	Paste any MyAnimeList URL — the scraper auto-routes to the right endpoint

Filters

• Type — anime: TV / Movie / OVA / Special / ONA / Music / CM / PV / TV Special. Manga: Manga / Novel / Light Novel / One-shot / Doujin / Manhwa / Manhua.
• Status — anime: airing / complete / upcoming. Manga: publishing / complete / hiatus / discontinued / upcoming.
• Rating — G / PG / PG-13 / R-17+ / R+ / Rx (anime only).
• Genres — numeric genre IDs (1=Action, 2=Adventure, 4=Comedy, 8=Drama, 10=Fantasy, 22=Romance, 24=Sci-Fi, 36=Slice of Life, etc. — see Jikan genres list).
• Order by + sort — score / scored-by / rank / popularity / members / favorites / start-date / episodes / chapters / volumes; ascending or descending.
• Score range — minScore / maxScore (0–10).
• SFW — exclude adult content (default on).
• Top filter — airing / upcoming / by-popularity / favorite (top* modes).
• List status — watching / completed / on-hold / dropped / plan-to-watch / reading / plan-to-read (user list modes).

Example input — daily test

{
    "mode": "topAnime",
    "filter": "bypopularity",
    "sfw": true,
    "maxItems": 10
}

Returns 10 most popular anime of all time, ranked by member count, ready in seconds.

Example output (truncated)

{
    "recordType": "anime",
    "malId": 16498,
    "url": "https://myanimelist.net/anime/16498/Shingeki_no_Kyojin",
    "title": "Shingeki no Kyojin",
    "titleEnglish": "Attack on Titan",
    "titleJapanese": "進撃の巨人",
    "type": "TV",
    "episodes": 25,
    "status": "Finished Airing",
    "score": 8.57,
    "scoredBy": 3066318,
    "rank": 126,
    "popularity": 1,
    "members": 4358107,
    "favorites": 188982,
    "synopsis": "Centuries ago, mankind was slaughtered to near extinction…",
    "season": "spring",
    "year": 2013,
    "imageUrl": "https://cdn.myanimelist.net/images/anime/10/47347l.jpg",
    "studios": ["Wit Studio"],
    "genres": ["Action", "Award Winning", "Drama", "Suspense"],
    "themes": ["Gore", "Military", "Survival"],
    "demographics": ["Shounen"],
    "scrapedAt": "2025-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
}

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. Jikan is the unofficial REST mirror of MyAnimeList; it is open and free.

How fresh is the data? Jikan caches MAL data for ~6–24 hours per record.

Are there rate limits? Yes — Jikan caps at 3 req/sec, 60 req/min. The scraper sleeps ~1.2s between requests and retries with Retry-After honor on 429s, so you never hit limits.

Can I get private user lists? No. Only public profiles are exposed by Jikan. If a user has set their list to private, the scraper returns nothing for that user.

What's the difference between score and userScore? score is the global MAL community average (0–10). userScore (in user-list-entry records) is what an individual user rated the show / manga.

Why are some fields missing? The actor follows an "omit-empty" policy — fields that the upstream API doesn't populate are excluded entirely from the record (rather than emitting null).

Limitations

• Jikan does not expose private MAL features (private lists, friend connections, club moderation).
• Some legacy /full endpoints return slightly older data than the search endpoint due to caching.
• Voice-acting roles are capped at the first 50 entries per person to keep payloads manageable.