🌍 REST Countries Info Scraper

🚀 Export the global country reference dataset in seconds. Pull 250+ countries with population, capital, currencies, languages, borders, flags, and demonyms. No API key, no registration, no manual CSV wrangling.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-22 · 📊 29 fields per record · 🌎 250+ countries · 🗣️ 184 languages · 💱 174 currencies

The REST Countries Info Scraper exports the community-maintained country reference catalog and returns 29 fields per record, including ISO 3166 codes, official and common names, population, capital cities, currencies, spoken languages, neighboring borders, demonyms, flags, calling codes, and continent assignments. The underlying source is one of the most widely cited open country datasets on the web.

The catalog covers every UN-recognized state, observer entities, and dependent territories, across all continents and 184 spoken languages. This Actor turns that reference into a downloadable dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML in under five minutes. Six query modes let you pull the whole world, search by name, or filter by region, language, currency, or independence status.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Trip-planning platforms, edtech publishers, fintech onboarding, BI dashboards, news desks, NGOs, GIS engineers	Country pickers, geo dropdowns, currency-aware checkouts, language fallback logic, demographic dashboards, classroom worksheets

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📋 What the REST Countries Scraper does

Six query workflows in a single run:

• 🌐 Worldwide export. Every country, territory, and dependency in one pull.
• 🔎 Search by name. Pass a full or partial country name and get matching records.
• 🗺️ Filter by region. Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania, or Antarctic.
• 🗣️ Filter by language. Restrict to countries that speak Spanish, French, Arabic, and 180+ more.
• 💱 Filter by currency. Filter by any ISO 4217 currency code, like USD, EUR, or JPY.
• 🕊️ Independent countries only. Skip observer entities and dependent territories.

Each record bundles identifiers (ISO 2, ISO 3, numeric), geography (capital, region, subregion, continents, lat/lng), demographics (population, area), culture (languages, demonyms, translations), economics (currencies, calling codes), and reference links to Google Maps and OpenStreetMap.

💡 Why it matters: every product with a country dropdown, a currency formatter, or a language selector needs this data, and most teams hand-roll it from CSVs that go stale within a year. This Actor keeps your country reference fresh on every run.

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🎬 Full Demo

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

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.
mode	enum	"all"	Query mode: all, name, region, lang, currency, or independent.
nameQuery	string	""	Full or partial country name. Used when mode is name.
region	enum	""	Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania, or Antarctic. Used when mode is region.
language	string	""	Language name like spanish. Used when mode is lang.
currencyCode	string	""	ISO 4217 code like EUR. Used when mode is currency.
fields	array	[]	Optional projection of the 35 source fields. Empty returns the full record.

Example: every country in Europe.

{
    "maxItems": 60,
    "mode": "region",
    "region": "europe"
}

Example: countries that use the Euro.

{
    "maxItems": 30,
    "mode": "currency",
    "currencyCode": "EUR"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: population, area, and currency lists reflect the upstream community dataset and are not real-time economic figures. For high-stakes financial workflows, cross-check against a primary statistical source. Demonyms and translations are crowd-sourced and may vary in regional spelling.

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📊 Output

Each country record contains 29 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🏳️ flagUrl	string	"https://flagcdn.com/w320/de.png"
🇨 commonName	string	"Germany"
🏛️ officialName	string	"Federal Republic of Germany"
🆔 cca2	string	"DE"
🆔 cca3	string	"DEU"
🔢 ccn3	string	"276"
🕊️ independent	boolean	true
🇺🇳 unMember	boolean	true
🏛️ capital	array	["Berlin"]
🌍 region	string	"Europe"
🗺️ subregion	string	"Western Europe"
🌎 continents	array	["Europe"]
👥 population	number	83240525
📐 area	number	357114
🗣️ languages	object	{"deu": "German"}
💱 currencies	object	{"EUR": {"name": "Euro", "symbol": "€"}}
👤 demonyms	object	{"eng": {"f": "German", "m": "German"}}
🤝 borders	array	["AUT","BEL","CZE","DNK","FRA","LUX","NLD","POL","CHE"]
🕒 timezones	array	["UTC+01:00"]
📍 latlng	array	[51, 9]
🌐 tld	array	[".de"]
☎️ callingCodes	array	["+49"]
🚗 drivingSide	string	"right"
📅 startOfWeek	string	"monday"
🗺️ mapsGoogle	string	"https://goo.gl/maps/..."
🗺️ mapsOpenStreetMaps	string	"https://www.openstreetmap.org/..."
🌐 translations	object	{"fra": {"official": "République fédérale d'Allemagne", "common": "Allemagne"}}
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-22T00:00:00.000Z"
⚠️ error	string | null	null

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🌍	Global coverage. 250+ countries, territories, and dependencies across all six populated continents.
🎯	Six query modes. All, by name, by region, by language, by currency, or independence-only.
🆔	Canonical codes. ISO 3166 alpha-2, alpha-3, and numeric codes for clean joins with billing, shipping, and analytics pipelines.
💱	Currency-ready. Native currency objects with code, symbol, and name make checkout and pricing logic trivial.
🗣️	Multilingual. Common-name translations into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, and more.
🔁	Always fresh. Every run pulls the latest reference data so flags, capitals, and population figures stay current.
🚫	No authentication. Public dataset. No login, no token, no rate-limit games.

📊 Accurate country reference data underpins every signup form, currency converter, shipping calculator, and dashboard in modern software.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ REST Countries Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	250+ worldwide	Live per run	name, region, language, currency, independent	⚡ 2 min
Statistical office bulk downloads	Free	One country at a time	Annual	None	🐢 Days
Commercial geo data feeds	$200+/month	Global	Daily	Many	⏳ Hours
Hand-built CSVs from Wikipedia	Free	Whatever you typed	Never	None	🕒 Painful

Pick this Actor when you want broad global coverage, fast filtering, and a reference dataset you don't have to maintain.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the REST Countries Info Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a query mode, fill in the matching field, and set maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your dataset.
5. 📥 Download. Grab results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

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

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💼 Business use cases

✈️ Travel & Trip Planning Country pickers with native names and flags Currency-aware budgeting tools Visa-and-border feature lookups Capital-city geo enrichment for itineraries	🎓 Edtech & Reference Classroom worksheets with verified country facts Quiz-app question banks with flags and capitals Geography curriculum data feeds Language-coverage maps for ESL platforms
📊 BI Dashboards & Analytics Country reference table for sales pipelines Population-weighted market analyses Region rollups for executive dashboards Currency-converted revenue normalization	💳 Fintech & Onboarding ISO-3166 dropdowns for KYC flows Calling-code prefixes for SMS verification Country-of-residence checks for compliance Currency lists for cross-border payments

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🔌 Automating REST Countries Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 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. Hourly, daily, or weekly refreshes keep downstream databases in sync automatically.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Country reference data powers far more than commercial workflows. The same records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Demographic comparisons across regions Geospatial coursework with verified codes and coordinates Reproducible studies with cited, versioned dataset pulls Open-data exercises on global statistics	🎨 Personal and creative Hobby projects, flag-quiz apps, and trivia bots Travel maps and bucket-list dashboards Wallpaper packs and infographic content Language-learning side projects
🤝 Non-profit and civic Aid-program coverage maps by country Civic transparency around international cooperation Investigative journalism on cross-border issues OpenStreetMap and open-knowledge contributions	🧪 Experimentation Train country-classification or NER models Validate localization hypotheses with real data Prototype agent pipelines that resolve geo entities Seed mock data with realistic country references

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

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

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick a query mode, fill in the matching field, click Start, and the Actor pulls structured records straight from the public country reference catalog. No browser automation, no captchas, no setup.

📏 How accurate is the data?

Country codes, capitals, and continents are stable and well-vetted. Population and area reflect the upstream community catalog and lag behind official statistical office figures by months or quarters. For high-stakes economic work, cross-check against a primary statistical source.

🔁 How often is the dataset refreshed?

The community catalog is updated continuously. Every run of this Actor fetches the latest data so your dataset reflects current records as of run time.

🗣️ How many languages and currencies does it cover?

The catalog tracks 184 spoken languages and 174 currencies across 250+ countries, territories, and dependencies.

🤝 Does it include borders and neighbors?

Yes. Every country record includes a borders array of neighboring countries by ISO 3 code. Useful for routing, logistics, and trade-flow analysis.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

The underlying catalog is published under a permissive open-data license. Review the downstream terms of your specific use case, but raw country reference data is generally public.

💼 Can I use this data commercially?

Yes. The catalog is published under an open license that permits commercial use. You are responsible for complying with the license and with any downstream regulatory requirements in your own product.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan to use this Actor?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small pulls (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts the limit and gives you access to scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

🔁 What happens if a run fails or gets interrupted?

Apify automatically retries transient errors. If a run still fails, inspect the log in the Runs tab, fix the input, and re-run. Partial datasets from failed runs are preserved so you never lose progress.

🏳️ Does it include flags and map links?

Yes. Every record includes a hosted flag image URL plus Google Maps and OpenStreetMap deep links for the country.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

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

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

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Refresh country dropdowns in your product backend, or push updates into a CRM.

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🔗 Recommended Actors

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• 🌍 GBIF Biodiversity Scraper - Global biodiversity occurrence records
• 🌐 OpenSky Flights Scraper - Live air-traffic positions worldwide

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

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

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