Goodreads Scraper

Scrape book data from Goodreads — the world's largest book recommendation site with 125M+ members and 3.5B+ shelved books. Search books, extract full book details (ratings, reviews, genres, ISBN, page count), and browse complete author catalogs.

No API key needed. Goodreads shut down their public API in December 2020. This actor scrapes publicly available HTML pages, making it the only reliable way to programmatically access Goodreads data.

Features

Search Books

Find books by title, author, keyword, or ISBN. Returns up to 200 results with pagination support.

Output fields: bookId, title, author, avgRating, ratingsCount, url, coverUrl

Book Details

Get comprehensive metadata for any book — perfect for building databases, comparison tools, or recommendation engines.

Output fields: bookId, title, titleComplete, authors, description, avgRating, ratingsCount, ratingsDistribution (1-5 star breakdown), reviewsCount, numPages, format, publisher, publishDate, language, isbn, isbn13, asin, genres, series (with position), awards, coverUrl, url

Author Catalog

Browse an author's complete book list with ratings. Great for building author profiles or finding all books in a series.

Output fields: authorName, bio, imageUrl, booksCount, books (with bookId, title, avgRating, ratingsCount, url, coverUrl)

Input Examples

Search for books

{
    "action": "search",
    "query": "project hail mary",
    "maxItems": 10
}

Get full book details

{
    "action": "book",
    "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44767458-dune"
}

You can also pass just the book ID:

{
    "action": "book",
    "url": "44767458"
}

Get author's books

{
    "action": "author",
    "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/58.Frank_Herbert",
    "maxItems": 50
}

Output Examples

Search Result

{
    "bookId": 44767458,
    "title": "Dune (Dune, #1)",
    "author": "Frank Herbert",
    "avgRating": 4.29,
    "ratingsCount": 1646394,
    "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44767458-dune",
    "coverUrl": "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1555447414i/44767458.jpg"
}

Book Detail

{
    "bookId": 44767458,
    "title": "Dune",
    "titleComplete": "Dune (Dune, #1)",
    "authors": ["Frank Herbert"],
    "description": "Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides...",
    "avgRating": 4.29,
    "ratingsCount": 1646396,
    "ratingsDistribution": [25620, 54369, 199561, 504821, 862025],
    "reviewsCount": 84029,
    "numPages": 658,
    "format": "Hardcover",
    "publisher": "Ace",
    "publishDate": "2019-10-01",
    "language": "English",
    "isbn": "059309932X",
    "isbn13": "9780593099322",
    "asin": "059309932X",
    "genres": ["Science Fiction", "Fiction", "Fantasy", "Classics"],
    "series": [{"title": "Dune", "position": "1"}],
    "awards": [
        {"name": "Hugo Award", "category": "Best Novel", "designation": "WINNER"},
        {"name": "Nebula Award", "category": "Best Novel", "designation": "WINNER"}
    ],
    "coverUrl": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1555447414i/44767458.jpg",
    "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44767458-dune"
}

Author Result

{
    "authorName": "Frank Herbert",
    "bio": "Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. was an American science fiction author...",
    "imageUrl": "https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1234567890p5/58.jpg",
    "booksCount": 10,
    "books": [
        {
            "bookId": 44767458,
            "title": "Dune (Dune, #1)",
            "avgRating": 4.29,
            "ratingsCount": 1646394,
            "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44767458-dune",
            "coverUrl": "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1555447414i/44767458.jpg"
        }
    ]
}

Use Cases

Book & Publishing Industry

• Market research: Track ratings and review counts for books in any genre to identify trends
• Competitive analysis: Compare your book's performance against similar titles
• ISBN database building: Create comprehensive book databases with ISBNs for inventory management
• Publisher catalogs: Extract complete publisher or imprint catalogs with metadata

Content & Media

• Book recommendation engines: Build recommendation systems using genre, rating, and series data
• Reading list curation: Programmatically create themed reading lists by searching and filtering
• Book review aggregation: Collect rating distributions and review counts for content sites
• Podcast/blog research: Quickly gather data on books for episode prep or article research

Data Analysis & Academic

• Literary analysis: Study genre trends, rating patterns, and publishing timelines at scale
• Author productivity research: Analyze author output, series structures, and career trajectories
• Award tracking: Build databases of award-winning literature across categories
• Reading habit studies: Analyze rating distributions to understand reader preferences

E-commerce & Libraries

• Bookstore inventory enrichment: Add descriptions, ratings, and genres to product catalogs
• Library metadata: Enrich library systems with page counts, genres, and series info
• Price comparison tools: Combine with bookstore scrapers using ISBN matching
• Used book grading: Prioritize acquisition based on Goodreads popularity and ratings

Social & Community

• Book club tools: Search and compare books to help groups pick their next read
• Author fan sites: Build comprehensive author profiles with complete bibliographies
• Series trackers: Map series structures with book order and completeness
• Reading challenges: Create challenge databases with genre diversity and page count tracking

Input Schema

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
action	string	Yes	"search"	One of: search, book, author
query	string	No	—	Search term (for search action)
url	string	No	—	Goodreads URL or numeric ID (for book/author actions)
maxItems	integer	No	20	Max results to return (1-200)

Technical Details

• No browser needed: Uses lightweight HTTP requests with BeautifulSoup parsing — fast and cost-effective
• Two parsing strategies: Search/author pages use classic HTML parsing; book detail pages extract structured data from Next.js __NEXT_DATA__ Apollo state
• Pagination: Automatically paginates through search and author results up to maxItems
• Rate limiting: Respectful single-threaded requests with standard timeouts
• Pay per result: Supports Apify's pay-per-result billing via Actor.charge()

Limitations

• Goodreads may rate-limit or block requests if used too aggressively — keep maxItems reasonable
• Book pages use Goodreads' Next.js frontend; if they change the data structure, book detail parsing may need updates
• Author bios may be truncated on the listing page
• Search results are limited to what Goodreads returns (max ~100 pages of 10 results)

Changelog

v1.0 (2026-03-20)

• Initial release
• Search books by title/author/keyword
• Full book detail extraction with 20+ fields
• Author catalog browsing with pagination
• Pay-per-result billing support