TV Show Scraper — Episodes, Cast & Ratings (TVMaze)

Scrape TV shows, their episodes, and cast into one unified dataset — using the free, public TVMaze API. No login, no proxies, no browser. Just clean, structured TV data.

Search by show name, or look up specific shows by TVMaze ID or IMDb ID, then optionally pull every episode and the full cast.

What you get

Show rows (recordType: "show"):

Field	Description
showId	TVMaze show ID
name	show title
type	Scripted / Reality / Animation, etc.
language	primary language
genres	list of genres
status	Running / Ended / To Be Determined
runtime	typical episode runtime (minutes)
premiered / ended	ISO dates
rating	average user rating (0–10)
network	broadcast network or streaming channel
country	network country code
imdbId / tvdbId	external IDs
officialSite / url	official site + TVMaze page
image	poster image
summary	plain-text synopsis
updatedAt	ISO timestamp of the last TVMaze update

Episode rows (recordType: "episode", when Include episodes is on): episodeId, showId, showName, season, number, name, airdate, runtime, rating, url, summary.

Cast rows (recordType: "castMember", when Include cast is on): showId, showName, person, character, personId, characterId, self, voice, url, image.

Input

{
  "search": ["breaking bad"],
  "showIds": ["169"],
  "imdbIds": ["tt0903747"],
  "includeEpisodes": false,
  "includeCast": false
}

• search — show names to search on TVMaze.
• showIds — TVMaze IDs (the number in tvmaze.com/shows/<id>).
• imdbIds — IMDb IDs, e.g. tt0903747.
• includeEpisodes — also fetch every episode of each show.
• includeCast — also fetch the cast of each show.

Provide at least one of search, showIds, or imdbIds. Shows found across multiple sources are de-duplicated by TVMaze ID.

Sample output

One dataset row (a show; episode and cast rows are added when those options are on):

{
  "recordType": "show",
  "showId": "526",
  "name": "The Office",
  "type": "Scripted",
  "language": "English",
  "genres": ["Comedy"],
  "status": "Ended",
  "runtime": 30,
  "premiered": "2005-03-24T00:00:00.000Z",
  "ended": "2013-05-16T00:00:00.000Z",
  "rating": 8.5,
  "network": "NBC",
  "country": "US",
  "imdbId": "tt0386676",
  "tvdbId": "73244",
  "officialSite": "http://www.nbc.com/the-office",
  "url": "https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/526/the-office",
  "image": "https://static.tvmaze.com/uploads/images/original_untouched/481/1204342.jpg",
  "summary": "Steve Carell stars in The Office, a mockumentary-style glimpse into the daily interactions of the workers at Dunder Mifflin…",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-12T21:37:54.000Z"
}

Why it's reliable & cheap

Every request hits the public TVMaze JSON API — no headless browser, no anti-bot walls, no API key. Transient errors (rate limits, 5xx, network blips) are retried automatically, and an unreachable or unknown source is reported and skipped — one bad source never fails the whole run.

Use cases

• Media & entertainment datasets — build a catalog of shows, ratings, and air dates
• Recommendation & discovery — genres, cast overlap, network line-ups
• Research & analytics — ratings trends, episode counts, network comparisons
• Enriching an IMDb/TVDB pipeline — resolve shows across external IDs

Data courtesy of the TVMaze API (licensed CC BY-SA).

FAQ

Do I need an API key or login? No. It uses the free, public TVMaze API — no key, no account, no proxy.

Is it free to try? Yes — click Try for free and run the prefilled search (breaking bad) in seconds.

How do I get episodes and cast? Turn on Include episodes and Include cast — both come from a single request per show.

Can I look up a show by IMDb ID? Yes — pass imdbIds (e.g. tt0903747) or TVMaze showIds.

Is this allowed? TVMaze offers a public API for exactly this; its data is licensed CC BY-SA (attribution included in the output docs).

Pricing

Pay per result — $5 per 1,000 shows. Episodes and cast are included with each show at no extra charge. Runs that return nothing cost nothing.