Goodreads Book & Reviews Scraper

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🎯 What this scrapes

Goodreads retired its official API in December 2020, leaving no supported way to pull book metadata, ratings, or review text at scale. This Actor resolves books three ways — direct book, author, or list/shelf (Listopia) URLs, free-text or ISBN search, or a shelf page you already have bookmarked — and returns full book metadata (title, author, series, genres, ISBNs, ratings, awards) plus the reviews Goodreads embeds on the page, in one PPE-priced call.

🔥 What we handle for you

• 🛡️ Browser fingerprint rotation — curl-cffi impersonates real Chrome / Firefox / Safari TLS handshakes so Goodreads sees a browser, not Python.
• 🌐 Apify Proxy on every request, escalating to residential exit IPs with no input change if a block ever shows up.
• 🔁 Retries with exponential backoff on 408 / 429 / 503 — up to 5 attempts per page, Retry-After honoured.
• 🧱 Session rotation on every block — a fresh proxy session and browser fingerprint the moment one gets flagged.
• 🧊 Clean, typed dataset rows — Pydantic-validated, ISO-8601 timestamps, stable book IDs, JSON / CSV / Excel export straight from the Apify Console.
• 💰 Pay-Per-Event pricing — you only pay for book and review rows that hit your dataset. No data, no charge.

💡 Use cases

• Catalogue enrichment — backfill title, author, series, ISBN, and cover-image metadata for a bookstore, library, or reading-app catalogue.
• Reader-sentiment research — pull a book's rating distribution and a sample of review text to gauge audience reception before an author/publisher marketing push.
• "Best of" dataset building — resolve every book on a Listopia list or shelf page into one structured dataset for recommendation or curation tools.
• Rating/review monitoring — re-run against the same book URLs on a schedule to track how average rating and ratings count move over time.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the page.
2. Add one or more Start URLs (book, author, or list/shelf pages) and/or Search queries (titles, authors, or ISBNs) — at least one of the two is required.
3. Turn on Include reviews if you want reader reviews attached, and pick Output mode (books or reviews).
4. Click Start. Output streams into the run's dataset.
5. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
startUrls	array	no*	[]	Direct book (/book/show/...), author (/author/show/...), or list/shelf (/list/show/..., /author/list/...) URLs.
searchQueries	array	no*	[]	Free-text titles/authors or ISBN-10/13, resolved via Goodreads' auto-complete search.
maxBooks	integer	no	20	Cap on total distinct books resolved, across every Start URL and Search query combined (1-500).
maxSearchResultsPerQuery	integer	no	3	Auto-complete hits expanded into a book fetch, per Search queries entry (1-20).
includeReviews	boolean	no	false	Attach the reviews Goodreads embeds on each book page.
maxReviewsPerBook	integer	no	10	Cap on reviews attached per book (1-30) — Goodreads embeds ~20-30 for anonymous visitors.
outputMode	string	no	"books"	books: one row per book, reviews nested. reviews: one row per review (requires includeReviews: true).
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Standard Apify Proxy block — escalate to RESIDENTIAL if you ever see a block.

* At least one of startUrls / searchQueries must be non-empty.

Example input

{
  "startUrls": ["https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767052-the-hunger-games"],
  "searchQueries": [],
  "maxBooks": 1,
  "maxSearchResultsPerQuery": 3,
  "includeReviews": true,
  "maxReviewsPerBook": 2,
  "outputMode": "books",
  "proxyConfiguration": {"useApifyProxy": true}
}

📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item. books mode (the default) emits one row per resolved book, with reviews nested inside; reviews mode flattens the same data into one row per individual review.

Field	Type	Notes
book_id	string	Goodreads numeric book ID.
work_id	string | null	Goodreads work ID.
title / title_complete	string	Title, and title with series suffix.
url	string	Canonical book page URL.
author_name / author_url	string | null	Primary author.
series_name / series_position	string | null	Series title and position within it.
genres	array	Genre tags.
format / num_pages / publisher / isbn / isbn13 / asin / language	mixed	Edition metadata.
publish_date / original_publish_date	string | null	ISO dates for this edition / the original work.
description	string | null	Book blurb, HTML stripped.
image_url	string | null	Cover image URL.
average_rating / ratings_count / text_reviews_count	number/int | null	Work-level rating stats.
ratings_count_distribution	array	Rating histogram, index 0 = 1★ … index 4 = 5★.
awards	array	Awards won.
reviews	array	Embedded reviews (books mode) — populated only when includeReviews: true.
reviews_returned_count	integer	How many reviews were actually attached.
source_query	string | null	The Start URL or Search queries entry that resolved this book.
scraped_at	string	ISO 8601 UTC timestamp when the row was fetched.

Example output

{
  "book_id": "2767052",
  "work_id": "2792775",
  "title": "The Hunger Games",
  "title_complete": "The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)",
  "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767052-the-hunger-games",
  "author_name": "Suzanne Collins",
  "author_url": "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/153394.Suzanne_Collins",
  "series_name": "The Hunger Games",
  "series_position": "1",
  "genres": ["Young Adult", "Dystopia", "Fiction", "Science Fiction"],
  "format": "Hardcover",
  "num_pages": 374,
  "publisher": "Scholastic Press",
  "isbn": "0439023483",
  "isbn13": "9780439023481",
  "asin": null,
  "language": "English",
  "publish_date": "2008-10-14",
  "original_publish_date": "2008-09-14",
  "description": "Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun...",
  "image_url": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1586722975i/2767052.jpg",
  "average_rating": 4.35,
  "ratings_count": 10190318,
  "ratings_count_distribution": [133754, 242196, 1113954, 3090721, 5609693],
  "text_reviews_count": 273383,
  "awards": ["Georgia Peach Book Award (WINNER)", "Buxtehuder Bulle (WINNER)"],
  "reviews": [
    {
      "review_id": "kca://review:goodreads/amzn1.gr.review:goodreads.v1.-GjjHy9iBCConbkcwszIsw",
      "reviewer_name": "Jayson",
      "reviewer_url": "https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/22106879-jayson",
      "reviewer_followers_count": 4318,
      "rating": 4,
      "review_text": "(A-) 83% | Very Good. Notes: A Pax Romana parallel, where odds are ever mostly misses...",
      "like_count": 693,
      "comment_count": 68,
      "has_spoiler": false,
      "created_at": "2020-09-18T02:33:35Z",
      "updated_at": "2026-05-22T05:01:56Z"
    }
  ],
  "reviews_returned_count": 1,
  "source_query": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767052-the-hunger-games",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-20T00:00:00Z"
}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
apify-actor-start	$0.01	One-off warm-up charge per run
apify-default-dataset-item	$0.002	Per book or review row written to the dataset — $2.00 / 1 000 results

No subscription, no minimum, no card required to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

🚧 Limitations

Reviews are capped at what Goodreads server-embeds for anonymous visitors — observed ~20-30 per book, further capped by maxReviewsPerBook (max 30). Full review-corpus pagination beyond that page requires a logged-in session and is out of scope. Authenticated actions (shelving, following, posting reviews), quotes/Q&A/giveaways, and non-English or localized Goodreads domains are also out of scope for v1.

❓ FAQ

Do I need a Goodreads account or API key?

No. Goodreads retired its official API in December 2020; this Actor reads the same public book, author, and list pages a signed-out visitor sees — no login, no key.

How many reviews can I get per book?

Up to the ~20-30 reviews Goodreads server-embeds on the book page for anonymous visitors, capped further by maxReviewsPerBook. The full review corpus beyond that page requires a logged-in session and is out of scope.

What's the difference between books and reviews output mode?

books mode emits one row per book with its reviews nested inside. reviews mode flattens the same data into one row per individual review — turn on includeReviews for either mode to actually fetch review content.

Can I search by ISBN instead of title?

Yes — searchQueries accepts ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 codes as well as free-text titles/authors; both resolve through Goodreads' own auto-complete search.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report.

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