Project Gutenberg Scraper

Search and download from Project Gutenberg's library of 75,000+ free ebooks — public-domain classics, poetry, philosophy, and more. Search by keyword, browse by topic or language, filter by author era or copyright status, and get direct download links (EPUB, Kindle/MOBI, PDF, plain text, HTML) plus full bibliographic metadata. No auth, no proxy, no cost add-ons.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (keyword / topic / language / era / copyright / format filters) and byIds (fetch specific books by their Project Gutenberg ID numbers)
• Rich filters: free-text search, subject/bookshelf topic, language, copyright status, author's era (including BCE years for classical authors), available file format
• Sort: most popular (by download count), or by Gutenberg ID ascending/descending
• Download links: direct URLs for every format the book is available in
• Empty fields are omitted — every record only contains what could actually be found

Output per book

• gutenbergId — Project Gutenberg ID number
• gutenbergUrl — the book's page on gutenberg.org
• title
• authors[] — { name, birthYear, deathYear }, primaryAuthor
• translators[]
• summary — auto-generated synopsis (where available)
• subjects[], bookshelves[]
• languages[] — ISO 639-1 codes
• copyright — true (copyrighted), false (public domain in the USA); omitted if unknown
• mediaType
• downloadCount
• readOnlineUrl, epubUrl, mobiUrl, pdfUrl, plainTextUrl, coverImageUrl, metadataUrl — only included when that format actually exists for the book
• recordType: "book", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search or byIds
searchQuery	string	shakespeare	Search title / author name
topic	string	–	Key phrase to search in subjects/bookshelves
languages	array	–	One or more language codes
copyrightStatus	string	any	any / publicDomain / copyrighted / unknown
sortBy	string	popular	popular / ascending / descending
authorYearFrom	int	–	Only authors alive on/after this year (negative = BCE)
authorYearTo	int	–	Only authors alive on/before this year
mimeType	string	any	Only books available in this format
gutenbergIds	array	–	Gutenberg ID numbers (mode=byIds)
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap (1–500)

Example: search by keyword

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "sherlock holmes",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: browse a topic in a given language

{
  "mode": "search",
  "topic": "science fiction",
  "languages": ["en"],
  "sortBy": "popular",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: classical (BCE) authors only

{
  "mode": "search",
  "authorYearTo": -1,
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: fetch specific books by ID

{
  "mode": "byIds",
  "gutenbergIds": ["2701", "1342", "84"]
}

Use cases

• Ebook apps / readers — bulk-import public-domain titles with ready-to-use EPUB/MOBI links
• NLP / text-mining research — source large volumes of plain-text classics for corpus building
• Recommendation engines — feed subject/bookshelf taxonomy into a recommender
• Digital libraries & archives — mirror or index public-domain collections
• Education — curate reading lists by era, language, or topic
• Content sites — surface classic literature with legal, direct download links

FAQ

What's Project Gutenberg? The oldest digital library, offering over 75,000 free ebooks — mostly older works whose U.S. copyright has expired. See gutenberg.org.

Are these books really free to use? Public-domain titles (the vast majority) can be freely copied, shared, and reused. Titles marked copyright: true retain some rights — check metadataUrl for details.

What formats are available? Most books have HTML, EPUB, and plain text at minimum. Many also have Kindle/MOBI. PDF and cover images are available for a smaller subset — the actor only includes a link when that format actually exists for the book.

How is "popular" determined? By total number of downloads recorded by Project Gutenberg — a good proxy for how well-known a title is.

What do authorYearFrom / authorYearTo do? They filter to books with at least one author alive within that year range — useful for finding books from a specific literary era. Use negative numbers for BCE (e.g. -499 for authors alive around 500 BCE, useful for classical texts like Homer or Plato).

Can I search in a specific language? Yes — set languages to one or more ISO 639-1 codes (e.g. en, fr, de). Leave empty to search all languages.

Is there a rate limit? No API key or login required; the actor uses small delays between pages to be a good citizen.

How fresh is the data? Project Gutenberg adds new public-domain digitizations regularly; this actor always fetches live.