Goodreads Scraper

Extract structured metadata from public Goodreads book pages. Search by title, author, ISBN, or keyword, or provide direct Goodreads book URLs.

What it returns

Each dataset item contains the book title, canonical Goodreads URL, authors, ISBN when exposed, average rating, ratings and review counts, page count, publication date, popular shelves, and the originating search term. Set includeDescription to also fetch public book pages and collect descriptions and richer publication metadata.

Input

• searchTerms — one title, author, or keyword per line. Defaults to The Hobbit. Use bookUrls for ISBN-specific lookups.
• bookUrls — optional direct public URLs such as https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5907.The_Hobbit.
• maxResultsPerSearch — 1–50 books per search, default 10.
• includeDescription — fetch detail pages for descriptions and richer metadata, default false.
• requestDelayMs — 500–10,000 ms between requests, default 1,200 ms.

Example:

{
  "searchTerms": ["The Hobbit", "Ursula Le Guin"],
  "bookUrls": ["https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5907.The_Hobbit"],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 10,
  "includeDescription": true,
  "requestDelayMs": 1200
}

Respectful-use and limitations

This Actor accesses publicly available Goodreads pages only. It does not log in, bypass CAPTCHAs, access private shelves, or use Goodreads API credentials. Goodreads can change its HTML, rate-limit automated requests, or return no results; those cases are recorded in the SUMMARY key-value record rather than represented as fabricated book data. Use conservative limits and respect Goodreads terms and applicable law.

For AI agents

Use this Actor for public book discovery, catalog enrichment, reading-list research, and rating/shelf analysis. Do not use it for private user data or as a substitute for authoritative bibliographic verification. Each result has a stable bookUrl for source review.

Pricing

Pay Per Event: $0.001 per unique Goodreads book record returned. Apify platform usage is charged separately according to the run's memory and proxy usage. Empty or blocked runs do not charge result events.