IMDb Search Scraper

Search IMDb for movies, TV shows and people using IMDb's own public suggestion API — the same endpoint that powers the autocomplete in IMDb's search box. No API key, no login, no scraping HTML.

Give it a query like breaking bad or tom hanks and get back clean, structured rows: the IMDb id, title/name, type, year, the "stars / known for" line, the poster/headshot image, and the canonical imdb.com URL.

$2.50 per 1,000 results ($0.0025 each), with no run-start fee. Flat rate — no volume tiers, no plan gates — and you are charged only for result rows actually returned.

What you get per result

Field	Notes
id	IMDb id, e.g. tt0903747 (title), nm0000158 (person), co... (company).
kind	title, person, company, or other — derived from the id prefix.
title	The title or person name.
category	IMDb's type label, e.g. feature, TV series, video game, video. Null for people.
year	Release year (titles). Null when not applicable.
yearRange	Run span for series, e.g. 2008-2013. Null when not applicable.
starsOrKnownFor	Main cast for a title, or the "known for" line for a person (e.g. Producer, Cast Away (2000)).
rank	IMDb popularity rank (lower = more popular).
image	Poster / headshot URL. Null when IMDb has no image.
url	Canonical IMDb URL: imdb.com/title/{id}/ or imdb.com/name/{id}/.

Input

Field	Notes
query	A single search term — a movie, show, or person name.
queries	An array of terms searched in one run; results are merged and de-duplicated by id. Use this to get more than ~8 results.
type	all (default), titles (ids starting tt), or people (ids starting nm).
maxItems	Cap on the number of de-duplicated rows returned (default 50).

Important: no pagination

The IMDb suggestion API returns a fixed ~8 results per query and has no pagination. If you set maxItems higher than that, the actor simply returns what's available (and logs it). To get more results, pass several related terms in queries — each is fetched separately and the rows are de-duplicated by IMDb id.

Output

One dataset row per de-duplicated result, flagged ok: true. Pricing is pay-per-result — you are only charged for genuine result rows. Nothing is charged for:

• empty/invalid input (a single ok: false row with errorCode: "BAD_INPUT"),
• no results for the query (NO_RESULTS),
• rate limits or network errors (RATE_LIMITED / NETWORK).

Pricing

Event	When	Price
Result returned	Each de-duplicated title, person or company row	$0.0025 ($2.50 / 1,000)

No run-start fee. Because the suggestion API caps each query at roughly 8 results, a single-query run costs about $0.02, and a 20-term queries run tops out near $0.40. A run that returns only a diagnostic row costs nothing at all.

Proxy

The suggestion API is a public, no-auth endpoint with no anti-bot, so no proxy is required and the default runs without one (saving proxy credits). Only enable Apify Proxy if you hit IP rate limits at very high volume.

Troubleshooting

• Got a NO_RESULTS row with type set? The suggestion API may have returned only other kinds (e.g. all titles when you asked for people). Try type: "all".
• Want more than ~8 rows? That's the API's per-query cap — add more terms to queries.

Examples

{ "query": "breaking bad", "maxItems": 10 }

{ "query": "tom hanks", "type": "people" }

{ "queries": ["inception", "the matrix"], "type": "titles" }