Board Game Rankings & Data Scraper

Extract board game rankings, ratings, mechanics, designers and publishers from the world's largest board game database — over 140,000 games, 50M+ ratings, and comprehensive metadata on every major title.

No API token, no authentication, no proxy required.

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🎲 What does it do?

Scrapes public board game catalog pages to collect game rankings, ratings, complexity scores, and metadata. Optionally fetches full game details including mechanics, categories, designers, publishers, and descriptions.

Use cases:

• Build a board game recommendation engine or catalog app
• Track ranking and rating trends over time for market research
• Research game mechanics distribution across top-ranked titles
• Collect publisher and designer portfolio data
• Feed board game data into retail systems, apps, or analytics pipelines
• Create training datasets for board game ML recommendation models
• Monitor the hobby market for publishers and distributors

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📦 Output fields

Field	Description	Example
gameId	Unique game ID	174430
title	Game title	"Gloomhaven"
yearPublished	Year published	2017
rank	Overall ranking	1
geekRating	Bayesian average rating	8.35
avgRating	Average user rating	8.61
numVoters	Number of ratings	65420
complexity	Complexity score (1–5)	3.86
thumbnail	Thumbnail image URL	"https://..."
image	Full image URL	"https://..."
mechanics	Game mechanics (fetchDetails)	["Deck Building", "Hand Management"]
categories	Game categories (fetchDetails)	["Adventure", "Fantasy"]
designers	Designer names (fetchDetails)	["Isaac Childres"]
publishers	Publisher names (fetchDetails)	["Cephalofair Games"]
artists	Artist names (fetchDetails)	["Alexandr Elichev"]
minPlayers	Min players (fetchDetails)	1
maxPlayers	Max players (fetchDetails)	4
minPlaytime	Min playtime in minutes (fetchDetails)	60
maxPlaytime	Max playtime in minutes (fetchDetails)	120
minAge	Minimum age (fetchDetails)	14
description	Full description (fetchDetails)	"Gloomhaven is a..."
url	Game page URL	"https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/174430"
scrapedAt	Scrape timestamp	"2026-03-16T08:00:00.000Z"

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⚙️ Input configuration

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	"rankings"	rankings · search · ids
topCount	integer	100	How many top-ranked games to scrape (mode=rankings)
searchQuery	string	""	Game title to search (mode=search)
gameIds	string[]	[]	Specific game IDs (mode=ids)
fetchDetails	boolean	false	Visit each game page for full metadata (mechanics, publishers etc.)
maxGames	integer	100	Max games to save. 0 = unlimited
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify proxy	Proxy settings

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💡 Modes

rankings — Top ranked games

{
  "mode": "rankings",
  "topCount": 200,
  "fetchDetails": false
}

search — Find games by title

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "Wingspan",
  "fetchDetails": true,
  "maxGames": 10
}

ids — Specific game IDs

Find a game's ID in its URL: .../boardgame/174430/gloomhaven → ID is 174430

{
  "mode": "ids",
  "gameIds": [174430, 162886, 266192, 167791, 224517],
  "fetchDetails": true
}

---

📊 Popular game IDs

Game	ID
Gloomhaven	174430
Brass: Birmingham	224517
Spirit Island	162886
Terraforming Mars	167791
Wingspan	266192
Twilight Imperium 4E	233078
Pandemic Legacy S1	161936
7 Wonders Duel	173346
Catan	13
Ticket to Ride	9209

---

📊 Output example

{
  "gameId": 174430,
  "title": "Gloomhaven",
  "yearPublished": 2017,
  "rank": 1,
  "geekRating": 8.35,
  "avgRating": 8.61,
  "numVoters": 65420,
  "complexity": 3.86,
  "mechanics": ["Hand Management", "Deck Building", "Cooperative Game"],
  "categories": ["Adventure", "Exploration", "Fantasy"],
  "designers": ["Isaac Childres"],
  "publishers": ["Cephalofair Games"],
  "minPlayers": 1,
  "maxPlayers": 4,
  "minPlaytime": 60,
  "maxPlaytime": 120,
  "minAge": 14,
  "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/174430",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-03-16T08:00:00.000Z"
}

---

💰 Pricing

The board game catalog has 20,000+ ranked titles.

Volume	Estimated cost
100 games (rankings only)	~$0.50
100 games + full details	~$1.50
1,000 games (rankings only)	~$5.00
1,000 games + full details	~$15.00

Tier	Price per result
Default	$0.005
Bronze	$0.0045
Silver	$0.004
Gold	$0.0035

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⚡ Performance

• CheerioCrawler — lightweight HTML parsing, no browser overhead
• No API token — uses public HTML pages, no registration required
• fetchDetails: false — rankings mode only, very fast (~100 games in 10s)
• fetchDetails: true — full metadata per game, ~3–5s additional per game

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❓ FAQ

Where do I find a game's ID? In its URL: .../boardgame/174430/gloomhaven → the number 174430 is the ID.

What is the Geek Rating? A Bayesian average that adjusts raw user ratings toward the mean based on vote count. Used for official ranking.

What is complexity? A community-voted score from 1 (light/casual) to 5 (heavy/complex). Useful for filtering games by difficulty.

Do I need a proxy? Usually not. The scraper accesses public HTML pages. Apify's default proxy is sufficient.

How many games are available? Over 140,000 total, with ~20,000 ranked by rating. Use topCount to control how many you fetch.