Open Library Books Scraper: Search Books & ISBN Lookup

Search millions of books by title, keywords, author or subject, or look up specific books by ISBN-10 or ISBN-13. Each row includes authors, first publish year, ISBNs, publishers, page count, subjects, languages, number of editions, community ratings, cover image and Goodreads/Amazon IDs. Data comes from the official, free Open Library API run by the Internet Archive. No login, no API key.

Who is it for?

• Booksellers and ecommerce stores filling in product data (ISBNs, covers, pages, publishers).
• Publishers, authors and literary agents researching competing titles and categories.
• Librarians, researchers and educators building reading lists and catalogs.
• App builders and AI teams who need clean book metadata at scale.

How to use it

1. Add search queries, authors, subjects and/or ISBNs.
2. Set Max books per search, and optionally a sort order and language (e.g. eng).
3. Turn on Include book description if you need the blurb (one extra request per book).
4. Click Start, then export to JSON, CSV or Excel.

Input example

{"searchQueries": ["atomic habits"], "authors": ["Brandon Sanderson"], "isbns": ["9780735211292"], "maxResultsPerSearch": 20}

Output example

{"workId": "OL17930368W", "title": "Atomic Habits", "authors": ["James Clear"], "firstPublishYear": 2016, "editionCount": 42, "pagesMedian": 322, "isbn13": ["9780735211292"], "ratingAverage": 3.97, "ratingCount": 1463, "coverUrl": "https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/12539702-L.jpg", "url": "https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17930368W"}

ISBN lookups also return an edition object with that edition's publisher, date, pages and format.

How much does it cost?

Pay-per-event: a small fee per book returned, plus a tiny per-run start fee, with no subscription and no separate platform usage costs. For example, 1,000 books cost about $1. Searches with no results and invalid ISBNs are not charged. Set Maximum cost per run to cap your spending.

Use it through the API, integrations or AI agents

Run it from the Apify API, on a schedule, or connect it to Make, Zapier, n8n or Google Sheets. AI agents can find and call it through the Apify MCP server. Output is clean JSON with the same fields on every run.

FAQ

Is it legal? Yes. Open Library is an open, public catalog and offers this API for anyone to use; the tool identifies itself and keeps a polite request rate. Open Library catalog data is openly licensed; cover images remain the publishers' artwork, so check rights before reusing covers commercially.

Are ratings the same as Goodreads? No. Ratings come from Open Library readers. Goodreads IDs are included so you can match books.

Can I look up thousands of ISBNs? Yes. Paste them all into the ISBNs list; dashes and spaces are fine.

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