Google Scholar Lite - Cheap Bulk Academic Papers API

Search Google Scholar for academic papers in bulk and get clean, structured JSON: title, authors, journal, publication year, citation count, result snippet, and links to the paper and its PDF or HTML full text. Search many queries at once, filter by year range, and export thousands of papers. Pay per paper from $1.50 per 1,000, with no setup or per-run fee.

This is the Lite option: fast bibliometric search for literature reviews, citation discovery, and research datasets. It talks to a structured scholarly search API instead of driving a slow, breakable headless browser, so it is quick and reliable. If you need full PDF text extraction, author profiles (h-index, full publication lists), or citation-network walking, this is not the tool - see the comparison below.

What you get

One clean row per paper:

• Title and result snippet
• publicationInfo line (authors, journal or venue, year)
• Publication year
• citedBy citation count
• link to the paper, plus pdfUrl / htmlUrl full-text links when available
• A stable result id and the searchTerm it was found for

What you do NOT get

• Full PDF text extraction
• Author profile expansion (h-index, all-publications lists)
• Citation-network walking (who-cites-whom graphs)
• Semantic enrichment or de-duplication against external databases

Need those? Our more robust Google Scholar API is the full-featured companion: it adds author profiles (h-index, full publication lists), citation lookups, and co-author network expansion. This Lite Actor is the fast, cheap complement for everyone who just needs the paper data in bulk.

Use cases

• Build a literature-review shortlist across dozens of queries in one run
• Track citation counts for a topic or research group over a year range
• Assemble bibliometric datasets for analysis or AI training pipelines
• Discover the most-cited recent papers in a field, then follow the PDF links
• Monitor a research area by re-running the same queries on a schedule

When to use this actor

This Lite Actor is the bulk, low-cost option. When you need deeper research features, our more robust Google Scholar API is the companion to reach for.

	This Actor (Lite)	Google Scholar API (premium)
Best for	Bulk paper search, literature reviews, datasets	Deep author and citation research
Paper search with year filters	Yes	Yes
Author profiles, h-index, citation graphs	Not included	Included
Full PDF text	Not included	Often included
Pricing	Pay per paper, from $1.50 / 1,000	See its store page

Rule of thumb: bulk paper discovery -> this Lite Actor; deep author and citation research -> the premium Google Scholar API.

Pricing

Pay-per-result: you are charged only for the papers returned. The per-paper price scales down with your Apify plan:

Plan	Per paper	Per 1,000 papers
Free	$0.0015	$1.50
Bronze	$0.0013	$1.30
Silver	$0.0011	$1.10
Gold	$0.0009	$0.90

No per-run fee, no setup fee, no monthly minimum. You only pay for the papers you receive.

Input

Field	Type	Description
searchTerms	array of strings	One or more search queries, e.g. transformer attention mechanism. Each is searched independently. Required.
yearFrom	integer	Optional earliest publication year, e.g. 2020.
yearTo	integer	Optional latest publication year, e.g. 2026.
maxResultsPerSearch	integer	Papers per search query. Minimum 10, default 100.
language	string	Optional two-letter language code, e.g. en, es, de. Default en.

Example input

{
  "searchTerms": ["transformer attention mechanism", "diffusion models"],
  "yearFrom": 2020,
  "yearTo": 2026,
  "language": "en",
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 100
}

Sample output

{
  "searchTerm": "transformer attention mechanism",
  "position": 1,
  "title": "Transformer architecture and attention mechanisms in genome data analysis: a comprehensive review",
  "link": "https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/12/7/1033",
  "publicationInfo": "SR Choi, M Lee - Biology, 2023 - mdpi.com",
  "snippet": "... the transformer architecture and the attention mechanism in specific application of transformers and attention methods ...",
  "year": 2023,
  "citedBy": 293,
  "htmlUrl": "https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/12/7/1033",
  "id": "LY1VJ0g70YsJ"
}

Papers that expose a PDF include a pdfUrl field pointing at the full text.

How to get started

1. Open Google Scholar Lite on the Apify Store.
2. Enter one or more searchTerms (add yearFrom / yearTo to focus the range).
3. Set maxResultsPerSearch, then run the Actor.
4. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull it from the API.

Prefer code? See johnvc's GitHub for setup guides and code examples.

Run from the API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/johnvc~google-scholar-lite-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchTerms":["transformer attention mechanism"],"yearFrom":2020,"yearTo":2026,"maxResultsPerSearch":50}'

🔌 Use this API from Claude (MCP)

This Actor is compatible with the Model Context Protocol (MCP), so AI agents can call it as a tool. Add it through the hosted Apify MCP server using this Actor-specific URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,johnvc/google-scholar-lite-api

If you run agents from Claude Code (free trial) or Claude Cowork (free trial), add the Apify MCP server and call this Actor directly with requests like "find the 50 most-cited papers on diffusion models since 2021."

Setup walkthrough:

Apify MCP integration docs: https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp

MCP setup, step by step

Visual setup guides for each client (source and more assets: ApifyPublicData on GitHub):

Claude Cowork Desktop

Claude Code

Claude (website)

Cursor

ChatGPT

FAQ

Does it return full PDF text? No. It returns the paper's metadata plus a pdfUrl link when one is available. Follow the link to fetch the PDF yourself.

Does it return author profiles or h-index? No. For author profiles, citation lookups, and co-author expansion, use our premium Google Scholar API.

How many papers per search? Set maxResultsPerSearch (minimum 10, default 100). Results come in pages of about 10 and a search stops early when the topic runs out of papers, so you only pay for what exists.

Why did I get fewer results than I asked for? maxResultsPerSearch is a ceiling, not a guarantee. Niche or tightly year-filtered queries simply have fewer matching papers.

Can I search many topics at once? Yes. Pass multiple searchTerms; each is searched independently and tagged with its source term in the output.

Can I filter by year? Yes. Set yearFrom and/or yearTo to bound the publication years.

Last Updated: 2026.06.02