Books Scraper - Open Library + Google Books, No Key

Search Open Library or Google Books by keyword, title, subject or ISBN and get one row per book: title, subtitle, authors, publisher, year, ISBN, page count, subjects, rating, language and a cover image. Both catalogues come out in the same shape, so you can switch between them without rewriting anything downstream.

The two are not equivalent. Open Library answers with no key and no setup. Google Books carries the description and the retail price, and to use it reliably you need a free Google key of your own, which takes about two minutes to create.

Input	A search query, or isbn:9780132350884
Output	One row per unique book: title, authors, publisher, year, ISBN, pages, subjects, rating, language, cover, link. Google adds description and price
Ceiling	1,000 books per run
Account needed	None for Open Library. Google Books wants your own free key
Price	$1.00 per 1,000 books, flat on every plan. The free plan's $5 a month covers about 5,000

🔍 What Books Scraper does

It runs one search against the catalogue you pick and pages through the results until it has as many unique books as you asked for.

Open Library is the default and the one to start with. No key, no account, nothing to set up. Rows come back with the subjects list, the rating and vote count, the cover and the work page URL. Open Library holds no blurb and no price, so description and price are null on every row from it.

Google Books adds the publisher's description and, where the book is sold through Google, a price object with the amount, currency and a buy link. Without a key those calls run on an anonymous allowance shared by everyone using it, which is usually spent, so the run switches to Open Library and writes one uncharged notice row telling you it did. Put your own key in googleApiKey and the call runs on your own allowance instead.

Books arrive deduplicated: by ISBN where there is one, by title plus first author where there is not. A record with no title is dropped before it is counted or charged.

📋 What data you get from each book

What you get	Field
Which catalogue answered, and its id for the book	source, sourceId
Title, subtitle and authors	title, subtitle, authors
Publisher and publication date	publisher, publishedDate, year
ISBN and page count	isbn, pageCount
Subjects or categories	categories
Average rating and how many people rated it	averageRating, ratingsCount
Language	language
Cover image and the book's page	coverImage, url
Google only: the description and the price with a buy link	description, price

▶️ How to scrape book data

1. Open Books Scraper and click Try for free.
2. Leave Source on Open Library for your first run.
3. Type into Search query. A subject like machine learning works as well as a title.
4. Set Max books, then click Start.
5. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML.

For Google Books, create a free API key in the Google Cloud console, switch on the Books API for that project, and paste the key into Google Books API key.

💰 How much does it cost to scrape book data?

$1.00 per 1,000 books. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers, and the same price whichever catalogue answered. On the free plan, the $5 Apify gives you each month covers about 5,000 books.

You are billed per unique book row. Duplicates dropped along the way, records with no title, the fallback notice row and every diagnostic row are not charged. Set a maximum cost on the run and it stops when it gets there.

📥 What you give it

{
  "source": "openlibrary",
  "query": "clean code",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Field	Default	What it is
query	none, the form starts with clean code	Required. Keywords, a title, a subject, or isbn:9780132350884. An API call has to send its own.
source	openlibrary	openlibrary or googlebooks. Send it explicitly when you call from the API rather than relying on the form to fill it in.
maxItems	100	1 to 1,000 unique books. Paging is automatic.
googleApiKey	none	Your own free Google Books key. Only read when source is googlebooks. Stored as a secret field and never written to the log.
notionConnector	none	Optional. Writes every delivered row into your Notion.
notionParentId	none	Optional. The Notion data source to write into. Leave it empty and the pages are created privately in your workspace.
proxyConfiguration	off	Optional network setting. Off is right for a normal run, and it makes no difference to the Google allowance.

Never paste a key into a published Apify task. Task inputs are readable by anyone who opens the page. Put it in the run input, or supply it per call.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a run on 2 October 2026:

{
  "ok": true,
  "source": "openlibrary",
  "sourceId": "/works/OL17618370W",
  "title": "Clean Code",
  "subtitle": "A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship",
  "authors": ["Robert C. Martin"],
  "publisher": "Prentice Hall",
  "publishedDate": "2008",
  "year": 2008,
  "isbn": "9780136083221",
  "pageCount": 444,
  "categories": ["Agile software development", "Reliability", "Computer software", "Computer software, development", "Coding theory"],
  "averageRating": 4.44,
  "ratingsCount": 43,
  "language": "eng",
  "description": null,
  "coverImage": "https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/8065615-L.jpg",
  "url": "https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17618370W",
  "price": null
}

Field	How to read it
source	The catalogue that actually answered, which is not always the one you asked for. Read this rather than assuming.
isbn	ISBN-13 where the record has one, then ISBN-10, then whatever other identifier is listed.
categories	Open Library subjects, capped at 25 per book. Google returns its own shorter category list.
averageRating, ratingsCount	The catalogue's own ratings. null on a book nobody rated there.
description	Google only. Always null on an Open Library row.
price	Google only, and only when the book is on sale there: {amount, currency, buyLink}. Otherwise null.
coverImage	A cover URL, built rather than fetched, so an occasional one will not load.

🧾 Reading the output

Real book rows carry ok: true. Anything with ok: false is a note or a problem, and none of those are charged.

Row	How to spot it	Billed
A book	ok: true and a title	yes
The fallback notice	ok: false, errorCode: "RATE_LIMITED", first row of the dataset	no
A diagnostic	ok: false and any other errorCode	no

Code	What it means
BAD_INPUT	The query was blank, or source was not one of the two names.
NO_RESULTS	The search ran and the catalogue had nothing. The row carries total and usedSource.
RATE_LIMITED	Google Books was not available keyless, so the run finished on Open Library. Your books are in the rows after it.
BLOCKED	Google refused the call outright. If you supplied a key, check that the Books API is switched on for that Google project.

A run that opens with what looks like an error is usually a run that worked, because the RATE_LIMITED notice is written before the books.

If Google Books returns nothing at all with a key set, suspect the key before the query. A key Google will not accept reads back as a search with no matches, not as a key error.

💡 What people use it for

• Filling in a reading list or a library catalogue that only has titles, using ISBN as the join key.
• Pulling everything under a subject, like every book Open Library files under machine learning, to see what exists before buying.
• Building a price and description list for a shortlist of titles through Google Books.
• Checking page counts and publication years across a set of editions before choosing one.

🚧 What it does not do

• No reviews and no review text. Ratings and vote counts only.
• No editions list. One row per work, not one per printing, so the ISBN you get is a representative one rather than the specific edition on your shelf.
• No full text, no excerpts, no tables of contents.
• Open Library rows have no description and no price. That is the catalogue, not a setting you can change.
• Google Books keyless is not dependable. Expect the fallback unless you supply a key.
• Covers are links, not files. The image stays on the catalogue's servers.
• Search quality is the catalogue's. A loose query returns loosely related books, and those rows are charged like any other, so keep maxItems low while you find the right wording.

🧭 Which reference scraper do you need?

If you want	Use
Wikipedia search results or article text	Wikipedia Scraper
Wikidata Q-ids, aliases and claims, by name or by ID	Wikidata Scraper
Book metadata by keyword, title or ISBN	This one
Goodreads ratings and rating counts from a book search	Goodreads Books Scraper
Books, audio, film and software held on archive.org	Internet Archive Scraper
Papers with readable abstracts and citation counts	OpenAlex Scraper
Wikipedia, arXiv and OpenAlex searches as tools for an AI agent	Research MCP Server

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need an API key to get book data?

Not for Open Library. For Google Books, yes in practice. It is free and takes a couple of minutes in the Google Cloud console.

Can I search by ISBN?

Yes. Put isbn:9780132350884 in the query. That works on Google Books.

Why does my row say openlibrary when I picked Google?

The run fell back, and the notice row at the top of the dataset says so. Add your own key to stay on Google.

How do I avoid paying for the same book twice across runs?

Dedupe on isbn, falling back to title plus the first entry in authors, which is what the run does internally.

Why did I get fewer books than I asked for?

The catalogue ran out of matches, or duplicates were removed. You pay for what arrived.

Can I call it from code or connect it to an AI assistant?

Yes. The API tab has ready-made code for Python, JavaScript and the command line. For Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP client, connect https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,dami_studio/books-scraper. Either way the run happens on your Apify account at the same price.

Is it legal to scrape book data?

Open Library and Google Books both publish this data through open APIs meant to be read, and book metadata is not personal data. Apify's write-up on the legality of web scraping is a good starting point, and we are not lawyers.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the query, the source you picked and the run ID. The errorCode on the diagnostic row usually names the problem by itself.