🌍 REST Countries Reference Data Scraper

🚀 Pull rich reference data on every country worldwide: capital, currency, flag, languages, region, timezone, and 30+ more fields per country.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-07 · 📊 40 fields per record · 250 countries · capital, currencies, languages, region, demonyms, calling code, TLD, area, population, flags, coat-of-arms, timezones, borders, IDD

The REST Countries Reference Data Scraper pulls rich metadata on every country in the world from the REST Countries open dataset. Output includes official + common names, capital, currencies, languages, region/subregion, calling code, top-level domain, area, population, flag image, coat-of-arms, timezones, borders, IDD codes, demonym, FIFA code, and 20+ other fields.

The dataset covers all 250 countries and territories. Filters run server-side, so a single run can isolate every country in Europe, every nation that uses the Euro, every Spanish-speaking country, or every country whose capital starts with a specific letter.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Travel platforms, e-commerce checkout, education tools, SaaS product UIs, journalists, ML pipelines	Country-dropdown UIs, currency conversion lookups, telephone-code autocomplete, learning-app fact cards, geo-aware product features

---

📋 What the REST Countries Reference Data Scraper does

Five filtering workflows in a single run:

• 🌐 All countries. Default mode pulls every recognized country and territory.
• 🔍 Lookup by name. Search by full or partial country name in any language.
• 🆔 Code lookup. ISO-2 or ISO-3 codes; multi-country runs supported.
• 🌎 Region + subregion. Africa / Americas / Asia / Europe / Oceania filtering.
• 💱 Currency or language. Filter by currency code or by spoken language.

💡 Why it matters: clean, server-side filtering and fresh data on every run.

---

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

---

⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan up to 1,000,000.
mode	string	"all"	all, name, code, region, subregion, currency, language, capital.
value	string	""	Lookup value for the chosen mode.

Example: all 250 countries.

{
    "maxItems": 250,
    "mode": "all"
}

Example: every Euro-zone country.

{
    "maxItems": 50,
    "mode": "currency",
    "value": "EUR"
}

---

📊 Output

Each record contains 40 fields. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🏳️ flagPng	string	"https://flagcdn.com/w320/de.png"
🏷️ flagEmoji	string	"🇩🇪"
📛 name	string	"Germany"
📛 nameOfficial	string	"Federal Republic of Germany"
🆔 cca2	string	"DE"
🆔 cca3	string	"DEU"
🆔 ccn3	string	"276"
🏛️ capital	string	"Berlin"
🌎 region	string	"Europe"
🌎 subregion	string	"Western Europe"
💱 currenciesText	string	"Euro (EUR)"
🗣️ languagesText	string	"German"
📞 callingCode	string	"+49"
🌐 tld	string	".de"
👥 population	number	83000000
📐 areaKm2	number	357114
🕒 timezones	array	["UTC+01:00"]
🛂 borders	array	["AUT","BEL","CZE","DNK","FRA","LUX","NLD","POL","CHE"]
🗺️ capitalLat	number	52.52
🗺️ capitalLng	number	13.41

📦 Sample records

---

✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🌐	All 250 countries. Recognized states plus territories with full metadata.
🆔	Multiple ID systems. ISO-2, ISO-3, ISO numeric, FIFA, IOC, CIOC.
💱	Currency + language joins. Direct mapping for product localization.
⚡	Fast. 250 countries in under 30 seconds.
🆓	No auth. Open dataset, no API key required.

---

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ This Actor	$5 free credit	250 countries	Live per run	name, code, region, currency, language	⚡ 2 min
Hand-curated CSVs	Free	Stale, partial	Manual	Limited	🐢 Maintenance
Country code APIs (paid)	$20+/month	Often US-centric	Live	Yes	🐢 Account
Wikipedia scraping	Free	All	Live	DIY	🐢 Days

---

🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Find the REST Countries Reference Data Scraper on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick filters and maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start.
5. 📥 Download. Grab results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

---

💼 Business use cases

🛒 E-commerce + SaaS Country-dropdown UIs with flag emoji Currency conversion lookups Phone-code autocomplete on signup Tax-region routing	✈️ Travel Apps Country fact cards in itinerary builders Capital + timezone in trip planners Border-country recommendations Calling code per destination
🎓 Education Geography quiz apps Lecture material with current data Reproducible coursework with versioned snapshots Civic literacy datasets	📰 Journalism + Research Country-context boxes for stories Sourcing demographic facts Corpus-building for global news Population + GDP-class joins

---

🔌 Automating REST Countries Reference Data Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval.

---

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows.

🎓 Research and academia Cross-country panel data construction Reproducible reference snapshots Course materials Translation studies (alt names)	🎨 Personal and creative Personal travel dashboards Side projects with country data Trivia apps and games Hobbyist visualization projects
🤝 Non-profit and civic Cultural-literacy outreach Civic education resources NGO geography datasets Open-data contributions	🧪 Experimentation Prototype localization features Test country-aware product flows Train geo-classification models Build map overlays

---

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

---

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick a mode (all, name, code, region, subregion, currency, language, or capital) and supply the relevant value. The Actor queries the public REST Countries dataset and emits one record per country.

📊 How many fields per record?

40, including official + common names, ISO codes, capital, currencies, languages, region, calling code, TLD, population, area, flag, coat-of-arms, timezones, borders, demonym, and more.

🌐 Is this the v3 dataset?

Yes. Uses the v3.1 REST Countries dataset, the current canonical version.

🏳️ Are flags + coats-of-arms included?

Yes. Both PNG and SVG URLs are returned for each record.

🔄 How fresh is the data?

Live per run. The REST Countries dataset is community-maintained and updates regularly.

⚖️ Is this data free to use commercially?

Yes. The REST Countries project publishes under the Mozilla Public License which permits commercial reuse.

🔁 Can I schedule runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules for any cron interval.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free plan covers preview runs (10 records). A paid plan unlocks higher item counts and scheduling.

🆘 What if a run fails?

Apify retries transient errors. Partial datasets are preserved.

🆔 Why are some country codes missing?

CIOC, FIFA, and IOC codes only exist for sovereign states recognized by the relevant body. Territories and dependencies often have null.

---

🔌 Integrate with any app

REST Countries Reference Data Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications
• Airbyte - Pipe data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits
• Google Drive - Export datasets to Sheets

---

🔗 Recommended Actors

• 🌐 GeoNames Places + Postal Codes - 12M+ places with admin hierarchy, lat/lng, alternate names
• 🌍 Public Holidays Worldwide - Public holidays for 100+ countries by year
• 🌏 World Bank Funded Projects - World Bank-financed development projects 1947 to present
• 🌍 Open-Meteo Weather - Global weather forecasts and 80 years of historical climate
• 📚 Wikidata Entity Search - 100M+ open knowledge-graph entities

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

---

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

---

⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the REST Countries project, its maintainers, or any sovereign nation. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open data is collected.