Steam Reviews Scraper

Scrape Steam game reviews, ratings, and game details using the Steam public API. Extract review text, playtime, recommendations, and full game metadata.

What does Steam Reviews Scraper do?

Steam Reviews Scraper is an Apify actor that extracts reviews and game information from the Steam Store. It uses Steam's public API endpoints to collect review data including the full review text, author playtime, recommendation status, and language, along with comprehensive game details like price, developer, genres, and aggregate ratings.

This actor is ideal for game developers, market researchers, and data analysts who need to analyze player sentiment, track game reception over time, or compare reviews across different titles. It supports filtering by positive or negative reviews, searching for games by name, and processing multiple games in a single run.

The actor uses BasicCrawler with gotScraping to hit Steam's JSON API endpoints directly, making it fast and efficient with minimal resource usage.

Use Cases

• Game developers -- analyze player feedback and sentiment for your own or competitor games
• Market researchers -- study gaming trends, pricing strategies, and player reception across genres
• Data analysts -- build datasets of review text for NLP/sentiment analysis projects
• Business owners -- evaluate game quality and community reception before partnership or investment decisions

Features

• Extract reviews with full text, playtime, recommendation, and author details
• Fetch game metadata including price, developer, publisher, genres, and tags
• Filter reviews by sentiment (all, positive only, negative only)
• Search for games by name using Steam's search API
• Support for multiple input methods: URLs, App IDs, or search terms
• Proxy support with automatic rotation
• Handles pagination and large datasets automatically
• Exports to JSON, CSV, Excel, or connect via API

How much will it cost?

Steam has a public API with generous rate limits, making this actor very cost-effective.

Results	Estimated Cost
100	~$0.01
1,000	~$0.05
10,000	~$0.40

Cost Component	Per 1,000 Results
Platform compute	~$0.03
Proxy (datacenter)	~$0.02
Total	~$0.05

How to use

1. Go to the Steam Reviews Scraper page on Apify Store
2. Click "Start" or "Try for free"
3. Enter Steam App IDs (e.g., "730" for Counter-Strike 2), store URLs, or search terms
4. Choose your review filter (all, positive, or negative)
5. Set the maximum number of items
6. Click "Start" and wait for the results

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
startUrls	array	Steam store URLs to scrape	-
appIds	stringList	Steam App IDs (e.g., 730)	-
searchTerms	array	Search queries to find games	-
reviewFilter	select	Filter: all, positive, negative	all
maxItems	number	Max results to return	100
maxConcurrency	number	Parallel request limit	10
proxyConfig	object	Proxy settings	Apify Proxy

Output

The actor produces a dataset with two item types: reviews and games.

Review output

{
    "type": "review",
    "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/app/730",
    "reviewId": "123456789",
    "author": {
        "steamId": "76561198012345678",
        "profileUrl": "https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198012345678",
        "playtimeForever": 5432,
        "playtimeLastTwoWeeks": 120,
        "playtimeAtReview": 4000,
        "lastPlayed": 1700000000,
        "numGamesOwned": 150,
        "numReviews": 12
    },
    "hoursPlayed": 90.53,
    "votedUp": true,
    "text": "Great game, highly recommend!",
    "timestampCreated": "2024-01-15T10:30:00.000Z",
    "steamPurchase": true,
    "language": "english",
    "appId": "730",
    "scrapedAt": "2024-01-20T15:00:00.000Z"
}

Game output

{
    "type": "game",
    "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/app/730",
    "name": "Counter-Strike 2",
    "appId": "730",
    "price": "Free to Play",
    "releaseDate": "Aug 21, 2012",
    "developer": "Valve",
    "publisher": "Valve",
    "genres": ["Action", "Free to Play"],
    "tags": ["Multi-player", "Online Multi-Player"],
    "rating": {
        "description": "Very Positive (8/10)",
        "percentage": 87,
        "totalPositive": 7500000,
        "totalNegative": 1100000,
        "totalReviews": 8600000
    },
    "scrapedAt": "2024-01-20T15:00:00.000Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
type	string	"review" or "game"
url	string	Steam store URL
reviewId	string	Unique review ID
author	object	Author details with Steam ID and playtime
hoursPlayed	number	Total hours played (converted from minutes)
votedUp	boolean	true = positive, false = negative
text	string	Full review text
timestampCreated	string	ISO 8601 review creation date
steamPurchase	boolean	Whether purchased on Steam
language	string	Review language
name	string	Game name
appId	string	Steam App ID
price	string	Current price
releaseDate	string	Game release date
developer	string	Game developer
publisher	string	Game publisher
genres	array	Game genres
tags	array	Steam tags/categories
rating	object	Aggregate rating summary
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 scrape timestamp

Integrations

Connect Steam Reviews Scraper with other tools:

• Apify API -- REST API for programmatic access
• Webhooks -- get notified when a run finishes
• Zapier / Make -- connect to 5,000+ apps
• Google Sheets -- export directly to spreadsheets

API Example (Node.js)

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('YOUR_USERNAME/steam-reviews-scraper').call({
    appIds: ['730'],
    maxItems: 100,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

API Example (Python)

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient('YOUR_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('YOUR_USERNAME/steam-reviews-scraper').call(run_input={
    'appIds': ['730'],
    'maxItems': 100,
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items

API Example (cURL)

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USERNAME~steam-reviews-scraper/runs" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -d '{"appIds": ["730"], "maxItems": 100}'

Tips and tricks

• Start with a small maxItems (10-20) to test before running large scrapes
• Use App IDs for the fastest and most reliable results
• Filter by "positive" or "negative" to focus on specific sentiment
• Steam's API is public and generous -- datacenter proxies work fine

FAQ

Q: Does this actor require login credentials? A: No. Steam's store API is publicly accessible without authentication.

Q: How fast is the scraping? A: Approximately 500-1,000 reviews per minute, depending on concurrency settings.

Q: What should I do if I get rate limited? A: Reduce maxConcurrency to 3-5 and enable proxy rotation in Proxy Configuration settings.

Q: Can I scrape reviews for multiple games at once? A: Yes. Provide multiple App IDs, URLs, or search terms and the actor will process all of them.

Is it legal to scrape Steam?

Web scraping of publicly available data is generally legal based on precedents like the LinkedIn v. HiQ Labs case. This actor only accesses Steam's public API endpoints, which are designed for programmatic access. Always review and respect Steam's Terms of Service. For more information, see Apify's blog on web scraping legality.

Limitations

• Steam API rate limits may slow down very large scrapes (100,000+ reviews)
• Some games with age-gating may return limited data
• Review text is returned as-is (may contain formatting characters)
• Search results are limited to what Steam's search API returns (typically top ~10 matches)

Changelog

• v0.1 (2026-04-23) -- Initial release