Google Sheets Sync

Send the results of any Apify Actor straight to Google Sheets, and keep them up to date without duplicates.

• ➕ Append new rows at the bottom.
• 🔁 Replace the whole tab with fresh data.
• 🔑 Upsert by key. Update rows that already exist (matched by a column such as url or id) and add only the new ones. Perfect for daily price trackers and lead lists.
• 📥 Read a sheet back into an Apify dataset, including public sheets without any setup.

Why use this Google Sheets integration?

• No duplicates. Upsert mode updates existing rows instead of adding copies, and keeps the columns you added by hand (notes, statuses) untouched.
• Your layout is kept. Existing columns never move. New fields are added as new columns on the right.
• Built for large datasets. Rows are added in batches under Google's recommended request size, instead of rewriting the whole sheet each run.
• Doesn't break on Google's limits. When Google's per-minute quota is reached, the Actor waits and retries automatically using Google's recommended backoff.
• Safe with scraped data. Values are written as plain text by default, so text that starts with = can never run as a formula in your sheet.
• Clear errors. If something is wrong, for example the sheet isn't shared, the run tells you exactly what to fix.

How to send Apify data to Google Sheets

1. Create a Google service account key (one time, about 3 minutes)

1. Open Google Cloud Console and create a project (or pick one).
2. Go to APIs & Services → Library, search for Google Sheets API, and click Enable.
3. Go to APIs & Services → Credentials → Create credentials → Service account. Give it any name and click Done.
4. Open the new service account, go to Keys → Add key → Create new key → JSON. A .json file downloads.
5. Open the file in a text editor and copy everything.

Your key is stored encrypted on Apify and is only used to talk to Google.

2. Share your spreadsheet with the service account

In Google Sheets, click Share and add the service account's email (it looks like name@project.iam.gserviceaccount.com, shown in the key file as client_email) as an Editor.

3. Run the Actor

1. Paste the spreadsheet URL and the service account key.
2. Choose a mode.
3. Enter the dataset ID you want to send (shown on any run's Storage tab), or paste raw JSON data.
4. Click Start.

Run it automatically after another Actor

Open the Actor whose results you want in Sheets, go to Integrations → Add integration → Apify Actor, choose Google Sheets Sync, and set Dataset ID to {{resource.defaultDatasetId}}. Every time that Actor finishes, its results go to your sheet.

Input example

{
    "mode": "upsert",
    "spreadsheet": "https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/your-sheet-id/edit",
    "sheetName": "Prices",
    "datasetId": "{{resource.defaultDatasetId}}",
    "keyColumns": ["url"],
    "omitFields": ["html"],
    "serviceAccountKey": "{ ...contents of your key file... }"
}

Output

After each run, the Output tab shows a summary:

{
    "mode": "upsert",
    "spreadsheetTitle": "Competitor prices",
    "sheetName": "Prices",
    "appended": 12,
    "updated": 188,
    "columns": 9,
    "duplicatesInInput": 0,
    "apiRequests": 6,
    "spreadsheetUrl": "https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/your-sheet-id/edit#gid=0"
}

In Read mode, each sheet row becomes a dataset item, using the header row as field names.

How nested data is written

Nested objects become columns joined with /, the same as Apify's CSV export (address/city). Lists of plain values are joined with commas (tags: "red, blue"), and lists of objects are written as JSON text.

Use it from AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor)

AI assistants can run this Actor as a tool through Apify's MCP server. Add this server URL to any MCP client:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=rsiddiq95/google-sheets-sync

Then just ask, for example: "Read all rows from this public Google Sheet and summarise them: Agent runs cost the same per result as runs from the console.

Pricing

You pay a small fee per row written or read. See the Pricing tab for current prices.

Limits

• Google allows up to 20 million cells per spreadsheet, and 50,000 characters per cell. Longer values are shortened and marked [truncated].
• Google allows 60 write requests per minute per service account. The Actor batches rows, so most runs need only a few requests, and it waits automatically when the quota is reached.
• Upsert reads the whole tab to find matching rows, so it works best for tabs under a few hundred thousand rows.

Works well with

• Google Ads Transparency Scraper: keep a live sheet of competitors' Google ads and ad copy (upsert by creativeId).
• Google Trends Scraper: log search interest for your keywords to a sheet every week.

FAQ

Can I write formulas or dates? Turn on Let Google interpret values. Text like 2026-01-31 becomes a date and =SUM(A:A) becomes a formula. Leave it off for scraped data.

Can I read a sheet without a key? Yes. If the sheet is shared as Anyone with the link, choose Read mode and turn on Public sheet.

My run says it has no access. Share the spreadsheet with the client_email from your key file as an Editor, then run again.