Metacritic Scraper

Scrape review scores, ratings, and metadata from Metacritic — the web's leading review aggregation platform for games, movies, TV shows, and music albums.

What It Does

This actor provides two powerful modes:

Search Mode

Search Metacritic's catalog by title across all categories or filter by games, movies, TV, or music. Returns structured data including Metascores, release dates, platforms, genres, and more.

Detail Mode

Extract comprehensive data from any Metacritic URL including:

• Metascore (critic aggregate) and User Score
• Full critic reviews with scores, quotes, and publication names
• Full user reviews with scores and comments
• Metadata: release date, platforms, genres, publisher, developer, content rating, description

Use Cases

Gaming Data and Market Intelligence

Track review scores across the entire gaming landscape. Monitor how new releases perform critically, compare scores across platforms (PS5, Xbox, PC, Switch), and identify trends in game reception. Perfect for gaming journalists, YouTubers, and market analysts who need structured review data at scale.

Movie and TV Review Aggregation

Build dashboards that track critical reception of movies and TV shows. Compare Metascores against box office performance, identify critically acclaimed titles before they trend, or power recommendation engines with professional review data.

Sentiment Analysis and NLP Research

Access thousands of structured critic and user reviews with numeric scores. Use this data for sentiment analysis research, training NLP models on review text, or studying the correlation between professional and user sentiment across entertainment categories.

Competitive Intelligence for Publishers

Game publishers and movie studios can monitor how their titles compare against competitors. Track review trajectories over time, identify which reviewers tend to score higher or lower, and benchmark against industry averages.

Academic and Data Science Research

Study review score distributions across decades of entertainment. Analyze review inflation, platform bias, genre trends, and the relationship between critical and commercial success with clean, structured datasets.

Price and Value Analysis

Combine Metacritic scores with pricing data from other sources to calculate "value scores" — helping consumers find highly-rated titles at the best prices. Particularly useful for deal-hunting communities and budget gaming blogs.

Content Curation and Recommendation

Power content recommendation systems with professional review data. Build "best of" lists, curate genre-specific recommendations, or create personalized feeds based on user preferences aligned with critical consensus.

Portfolio and Catalog Management

Digital storefronts and subscription services can use review data to prioritize catalog acquisitions, optimize storefront placement, and identify underperforming titles that may need promotional support.

Input Configuration

Field	Type	Default	Description
action	string	search	search to find titles, detail to scrape a specific URL
query	string	—	Search term (required for search action)
url	string	—	Full Metacritic URL (required for detail action)
category	string	all	Filter: all, games, movies, tv, music
maxItems	integer	20	Max results to return (1-100, search only)

Example Inputs

Search for Games

{
    "action": "search",
    "query": "zelda",
    "category": "games",
    "maxItems": 10
}

Search Across All Categories

{
    "action": "search",
    "query": "inception",
    "category": "all",
    "maxItems": 20
}

Get Full Game Details

{
    "action": "detail",
    "url": "https://www.metacritic.com/game/the-last-of-us/"
}

Get Movie Details with Reviews

{
    "action": "detail",
    "url": "https://www.metacritic.com/movie/parasite/"
}

Example Output

Search Result

{
    "title": "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom",
    "type": "game-title",
    "url": "https://www.metacritic.com/game/the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom/",
    "metascore": 96,
    "releaseDate": "2023-05-12",
    "description": "The sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild...",
    "rating": "E10+",
    "platforms": ["Switch"],
    "genres": ["Adventure"],
    "image": "https://www.metacritic.com/a/img/resize/..."
}

Detail Result

{
    "title": "The Last of Us",
    "url": "https://www.metacritic.com/game/the-last-of-us/",
    "metascore": 95,
    "userscore": 9.2,
    "reviewCount": 98,
    "description": "Twenty years after a pandemic...",
    "releaseDate": "2013-06-14",
    "contentRating": "M",
    "image": "https://www.metacritic.com/a/img/...",
    "platforms": ["PlayStation 3"],
    "genres": ["Linear Action Adventure"],
    "publisher": ["SCEA", "SCEI", "SCEE", "SCE Australia"],
    "developer": "Naughty Dog",
    "criticReviews": [
        {
            "score": 100,
            "author": "Eurogamer Italy",
            "quote": "Despite a few issues, The Last of Us represents...",
            "date": "Jun 5, 2013",
            "type": "critic"
        }
    ],
    "userReviews": [
        {
            "score": 10,
            "author": "LeonSKennedyyy",
            "quote": "A masterpiece of interactive storytelling...",
            "date": "Mar 15, 2024",
            "type": "user"
        }
    ]
}

Supported Categories

Category	URL Pattern	Examples
Games	/game/slug/	PS5, Xbox, PC, Switch titles
Movies	/movie/slug/	Theatrical and streaming releases
TV Shows	/tv/slug/	Series and seasons
Music	/music/slug/	Albums from all genres

Pay-Per-Result Pricing

This actor uses Apify's pay-per-result model:

Event	Description
search-result	Charged per search result returned
detail-page	Charged per detail page scraped
review-extracted	Charged per individual review extracted

Technical Details

• HTTP-based scraping using httpx with browser-like headers
• JSON-LD extraction from structured data embedded in pages
• HTML parsing via BeautifulSoup4 for scores, reviews, and metadata
• Metacritic API integration for fast, reliable search results
• No browser required — lightweight and fast execution
• Respects Metacritic's standard rate limiting
• Handles redirects and URL normalization automatically

Integrations

Connect this actor with:

• Google Sheets — Export review data to spreadsheets automatically
• Slack/Discord — Get notifications when new reviews drop for tracked titles
• Webhooks — Trigger workflows when scores cross thresholds
• API — Access results programmatically via Apify API
• Datasets — Download results as JSON, CSV, or Excel

Limitations

• Results depend on Metacritic's public data availability
• User reviews may be paginated; the actor extracts the first page of reviews
• Some older titles may have limited metadata
• Rate limiting applies to prevent overloading Metacritic's servers

FAQ

Q: How often is Metacritic data updated? A: Metacritic updates scores as new reviews are published. Run the actor on a schedule to track score changes over time.

Q: Can I scrape all games/movies at once? A: Use the search action with broad queries and high maxItems, or combine multiple searches across categories. For bulk scraping, consider using Apify schedules.

Q: What's the difference between Metascore and User Score? A: Metascore (0-100) is a weighted average of professional critic reviews. User Score (0-10) is an average of user-submitted ratings on Metacritic.

Q: Does this work with Metacritic's new design? A: Yes, the actor is built for Metacritic's current Nuxt-based frontend and uses their backend API for search, ensuring compatibility with the latest site version.

🔒 Handling Metacritic Anti-Scraping

Metacritic (owned by Fandom) uses rate limiting and IP-based blocks to prevent automated access. Residential proxies help maintain reliable scraping sessions.

ThorData Residential Proxies offer 200M+ rotating residential IPs across 195 countries — ideal for scraping Metacritic scores and reviews without interruptions.

Resources

• Metacritic — Source website
• Apify SDK for Python — Actor development toolkit
• Apify Platform — Run and schedule actors