Project Gutenberg Scraper - Free Ebooks & Links

Scrape Project Gutenberg's catalogue in bulk. Extract book title, authors, subjects, bookshelves, languages, copyright status, download count and direct EPUB, HTML and plain-text links to CSV/JSON. No API key.

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What does the Project Gutenberg Scraper do?

This Actor turns any Project Gutenberg search into a structured dataset. You give it across the catalogue or by author or title, it walks the result pages one after another, and it writes one clean row per book into your dataset — ready to export as JSON, CSV or Excel, or to pull straight from the Apify API.

Gutendex is the documented, keyless JSON API in front of the Project Gutenberg catalogue, and the Actor reads it directly. Every row carries the actual download URLs, so the output is a working ebook manifest rather than a list of titles. Pagination is followed automatically until it runs out of results, hits your page limit or hits your Max items cap, whichever comes first. Every row is de-duplicated across the whole run, so you are never billed twice for the same book.

There is no API key, no login and no browser involved. That keeps runs fast and cheap, and it means you can schedule the Actor without worrying about credentials expiring.

Who is it for?

• AI and NLP teams assembling public-domain text corpora.
• Publishers and educators sourcing books they can legally reproduce.
• App developers building reading or library products.
• Librarians cataloguing open collections.
• Researchers studying literature quantitatively.

Use cases

• Export the catalogue for a language and download every plain-text file.
• Rank books by download count to find what readers actually take.
• Filter by subject or bookshelf to build a themed collection.
• Assemble a public-domain training corpus with author metadata.
• Track which titles trend in the catalogue over time.

Why use this Project Gutenberg Scraper?

• 🔑 Keyless — no account, no API token, no cookies to paste.
• 📦 16 fields per book — everything the result page exposes, already typed.
• 📄 Real pagination — it walks page after page instead of returning the first screen.
• 🎯 Precise caps — Max items stops the run exactly where you want it, so the bill is predictable.
• 📊 Export anywhere — JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, plus the Apify API and integrations.
• 💸 Pay per result — you pay for rows you actually receive, with no platform fees to calculate.

What data can you extract?

Every run produces one row per book, with these fields:

Field	Type	Description
bookId	string	Project Gutenberg book ID
title	string	Book title
bookUrl	string	Project Gutenberg page for the book
authors	string	Authors, separated by a pipe
authorYears	string	Author birth and death years when published
subjects	string	Subjects, separated by a pipe
bookshelves	string	Gutenberg bookshelves, separated by a pipe
languages	string	Language codes, separated by a pipe
isCopyrighted	boolean	Whether the text is still under copyright
downloadCount	number	Number of downloads reported by Gutenberg
textUrl	string	Direct plain-text download URL
epubUrl	string	Direct EPUB download URL
htmlUrl	string	Direct HTML reading URL
query	string	Search term this row came from
page	number	Result page the book appeared on
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of extraction

Output example

{
  "authorYears": "1775-1817",
  "authors": "Austen, Jane",
  "bookId": "1342",
  "bookUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342",
  "bookshelves": "Best Books Ever Listings | Category: British Literature | Category: Classics of Literature | Category: Novels | Category: Romance | Harvard Classics",
  "downloadCount": 198164,
  "epubUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342.epub3.images",
  "htmlUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342.html.images",
  "isCopyrighted": false,
  "languages": "en",
  "page": 1,
  "query": "whole catalogue",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-17T08:44:36.715Z",
  "subjects": "Courtship -- Fiction | Domestic fiction | England -- Fiction | Love stories | Sisters -- Fiction | Social classes -- Fiction | Young women -- Fiction",
  "textUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342.txt.utf-8",
  "title": "Pride and Prejudice"
}

How to use

Option A — across the catalogue

{
  "languages": "en",
  "maxItems": 640,
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 20,
  "searchTerms": []
}

1. Open the Actor and fill in the across the catalogue field.
2. Set Max pages per search and Max items to bound the run.
3. Click Start, then export from the Output tab.

Option B — by author or title

{
  "maxItems": 160,
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 5,
  "searchTerms": [
    "dickens"
  ]
}

Paste one or more Project Gutenberg URLs into Start URLs and the Actor paginates each of them independently.

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchTerms	array	[]	Search titles and authors.
languages	string	``	Comma-separated codes such as en or en,fr.
maxPagesPerSearch	integer	4	How many result pages to walk for each search.
maxItems	integer	100	Stop after this many books.
maxConcurrency	integer	2	Parallel requests.
proxyConfiguration	object	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Proxy used to fetch pages.

Tips for best results

• Leave the search term empty to walk the whole catalogue — roughly 70,000 titles.
• The API returns 32 books per page, so a 20-page run yields about 640 rows.
• downloadCount is the clearest popularity signal the catalogue publishes.
• isCopyrighted false means the text is public domain and free to reuse.
• textUrl is the cleanest format for NLP work; EPUB is better for reading apps.
• Filter by language code to build a single-language corpus.
• subjects and bookshelves are pipe-separated so they survive a CSV round trip.
• Some older records have no EPUB, so that column is legitimately empty for them.
• Schedule a monthly run; the catalogue grows slowly.
• Pair with the Open Library scraper for bibliographic metadata on the same titles.

Integrations

Send results straight into the tools you already use: Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, Airtable or any Webhook. You can also schedule the Actor to run hourly, daily or weekly and have each run append to the same dataset, which is how you build a price or availability history rather than a one-off snapshot.

API usage

Run the Actor and collect results from any language. Replace <YOUR_TOKEN> with your Apify API token.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~gutenberg-book-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"languages": "en", "maxItems": 640, "maxPagesPerSearch": 20, "searchTerms": []}'

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('logiover/gutenberg-book-scraper').call({"languages": "en", "maxItems": 640, "maxPagesPerSearch": 20, "searchTerms": []});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('<YOUR_TOKEN>')
run = client.actor('logiover/gutenberg-book-scraper').call(run_input={"languages": "en", "maxItems": 640, "maxPagesPerSearch": 20, "searchTerms": []})
for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This Actor is available through the Apify MCP server, so an AI agent can call it as a tool. Point your agent at https://mcp.apify.com and it can run the Project Gutenberg Scraper on demand — for example: "Pull the first 500 books from Project Gutenberg and summarise the price distribution." The agent receives the same structured rows you would get from the UI.

FAQ

Do I need a Project Gutenberg account or API key?

No. The Actor reads publicly available pages only. There is nothing to authenticate and no credentials to rotate.

How many books can I get in one run?

As many as the search exposes. Raise Max pages per search and Max items together; the run stops at whichever limit it reaches first.

Why did I get fewer rows than I asked for?

The search ran out of books. That is normal for narrow queries — broaden the search or add more searches to one run.

Are results de-duplicated?

Yes. Each book is emitted once per run, even when it appears on several pages, so you are never billed twice for the same record.

Why are some fields empty?

Project Gutenberg does not publish every attribute for every book. Empty means the source did not show it, not that extraction failed.

What export formats are supported?

JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML and RSS from the Output tab, plus the Apify API and any integration you connect.

How fast is it?

It is pure HTTP with no browser, so a page of results typically takes a second or two. Raise Max concurrency carefully — the source rate-limits aggressive crawling.

Can I schedule it?

Yes. Use the Apify scheduler to run it on any interval and append each run to the same dataset for time-series analysis.

Does it work behind a proxy?

It uses Apify Proxy automatically. You can switch groups or supply your own proxies in Proxy configuration.

How often does the data change?

Project Gutenberg updates continuously. Re-run whenever you need current data; the Actor always reads the live pages, never a cache.

Is the output schema stable?

Yes. Field names and types are fixed, so downstream pipelines will not break between runs.

What if the site changes its layout?

Open an issue on the Issues tab and it gets fixed. The Actor is actively maintained.

Is it legal?

This Actor reads only publicly available pages on Project Gutenberg — the same content any visitor sees without logging in. It does not bypass authentication, does not collect private data and does not attempt to defeat access controls. You are responsible for how you use the output: respect the source's terms of service, applicable copyright, and data-protection law such as GDPR where personal data is involved. Scraping public data is generally lawful in the EU and the US, but the responsibility for the downstream use of that data sits with you.

Related scrapers

• Open Library Scraper — Bibliographic metadata
• Google Books Scraper — Catalogue and ISBN lookup
• Goodreads Scraper — Reader ratings and reviews
• Internet Archive Scraper — Archive metadata