# Bible Scraper (bible-api.com) - Verses & Passages (`ninhothedev/bible-scraper`) Actor

$0.35/1K 🔥 Fast Bible scraper! Verses & passages in many translations — book, chapter, verse & text. No key. JSON, CSV, Excel or API in seconds. List references & pull thousands of verses for apps & NLP ⚡

- **URL**: https://apify.com/ninhothedev/bible-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [ninhothedev](https://apify.com/ninhothedev) (community)
- **Categories:**
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.35 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Bible Scraper (bible-api.com) — Verses & Passages, Multiple Translations

Scrape **Bible verses and passages** straight from [bible-api.com](https://bible-api.com) and get **clean, structured JSON** — one dataset item per verse, with book, chapter, verse number, verse text, and translation. No API key, no login, no scraping headaches.

Feed it a list of references — single verses (`John 3:16`), whole chapters (`Psalm 23`), or ranges (`Genesis 1:1-3`) — pick a translation, and export to JSON, CSV, or Excel.

***

### ✨ Features

- 📖 **Verses & passages** — single verses, full chapters, and verse ranges.
- 🌍 **Multiple translations** — WEB (default), KJV, ASV, BBE, and more public-domain versions.
- 🧾 **One clean item per verse** — perfect for datasets, spreadsheets, and NLP.
- 🧹 **Cleaned text** — newlines collapsed, whitespace normalised, capped at 4000 chars.
- 🔑 **No API key / no login** — datacenter-proxy friendly, cheap to run.
- ⚡ **Fast & batched** — concurrent requests in batches of 50.
- 📤 **Export anywhere** — JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or via the Apify API.

***

### 🚀 Input

| Field | Type | Description |
|-------|------|-------------|
| `mode` | select | Scraping mode. Currently `passages` (one item per verse). |
| `references` | array | References to fetch, e.g. `["John 3:16", "Psalm 23", "Genesis 1:1-3"]`. |
| `translation` | string | Translation id: `web` (default), `kjv`, `asv`, `bbe`, `oeb-us`, `clementine`, … |
| `maxItems` | integer | Max verses to output (default `500`, max `5000`). |

#### Example input

```json
{
  "mode": "passages",
  "references": ["John 3:16", "Psalm 23", "Genesis 1:1-3"],
  "translation": "web",
  "maxItems": 500
}
```

***

### 📤 Output

Each dataset item is a single verse:

```json
{
  "reference": "John 3:16",
  "book": "John",
  "chapter": 3,
  "verse": 16,
  "text": "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.",
  "translation": "World English Bible",
  "translation_id": "web",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-18T00:00:00+00:00"
}
```

***

### 💰 Pricing

This actor is lightweight and datacenter-friendly. Expect roughly **~$0.5 per 1,000 verses** depending on platform usage — a few clicks to scrape whole chapters. You only pay for Apify platform compute; bible-api.com itself is free and key-less.

***

### 🎯 Use cases

- **Religious apps** — power Bible-verse features, daily-verse widgets, and study tools.
- **NLP datasets** — build clean, verse-level corpora for language models and analysis.
- **Study & reference tools** — cross-reference passages across translations.
- **Content & publishing** — pull verses for newsletters, blogs, sermons, and social posts.

***

### 🆚 Comparison

| | Bible Scraper | Manual copy-paste | Raw API calls |
|---|---|---|---|
| Structured per-verse JSON | ✅ | ❌ | ⚠️ needs parsing |
| Multiple translations | ✅ | ⚠️ | ✅ |
| Batch many references | ✅ | ❌ | ⚠️ DIY |
| Cleaned text | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Export CSV/Excel/JSON | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| No code required | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |

***

### 🔗 Related actors

- [Quran Scraper](https://apify.com/ninhothedev/quran-scraper)
- [Wikipedia Scraper](https://apify.com/ninhothedev/wikipedia-scraper)
- [PoetryDB Scraper](https://apify.com/ninhothedev/poetrydb-scraper)
- [Project Gutenberg Scraper](https://apify.com/ninhothedev/project-gutenberg-scraper)

***

### ⚖️ Legal & data source

Data comes from the free, public [bible-api.com](https://bible-api.com), which serves public-domain and openly licensed Bible translations. Please respect the source's terms and use responsibly.

**Keywords:** bible scraper, bible api, bible verses, scripture scraper, kjv scraper, world english bible, bible passages, verse api, scripture dataset, bible json, religious text scraper, nlp bible dataset

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

Scraping mode. Currently only 'passages' is supported: each reference is fetched and returned as one dataset item per verse.

## `references` (type: `array`):

List of Bible references to fetch. Accepts single verses, chapters, and ranges (e.g. 'John 3:16', 'Psalm 23', 'Genesis 1:1-3'). Each reference is URL-encoded automatically.

## `translation` (type: `string`):

Bible translation id passed to bible-api.com. Common values: 'web' (World English Bible, default), 'kjv' (King James Version), 'asv', 'bbe', 'oeb-us', 'clementine', 'almeida', 'rccv'.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of verses (dataset items) to output across all references. Use this to cap large chapter ranges.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "passages",
  "references": [
    "John 3:16",
    "Psalm 23",
    "Genesis 1:1-3"
  ],
  "translation": "web",
  "maxItems": 500
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `overview` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "references": [
        "John 3:16",
        "Psalm 23",
        "Genesis 1:1-3"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("ninhothedev/bible-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "references": [
        "John 3:16",
        "Psalm 23",
        "Genesis 1:1-3",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("ninhothedev/bible-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "references": [
    "John 3:16",
    "Psalm 23",
    "Genesis 1:1-3"
  ]
}' |
apify call ninhothedev/bible-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,ninhothedev/bible-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/a0ADFECXdWBLhjCjy/builds/5e9mdN5xQjvMW8SmE/openapi.json