# Goodreads Scraper - Books, Authors, Ratings, Reviews & Leads (`scrapesage/goodreads-scraper`) Actor

Scrape Goodreads books, authors, ratings, reviews and author leads. Get titles, ISBN/ASIN, genres, full rating breakdown, awards, descriptions, reviews and author contacts. Search by keyword or paste book/author/list/genre URLs. Monitor new releases. No login.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/scrapesage/goodreads-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Scrape Sage](https://apify.com/scrapesage) (community)
- **Categories:** Lead generation, Agents, Integrations
- **Stats:** 1 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $2.46 / 1,000 book scrapeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#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

## Goodreads Scraper — Books, Authors, Ratings, Reviews & Leads

Extract **complete Goodreads book data** — titles, series, ISBN/ISBN-13/ASIN, format, page count, publisher, publication dates, genres, full descriptions, cover images, **average rating with the full 1–5★ breakdown**, ratings & review counts, per-language review counts, literary awards, settings/places, characters and the Amazon buy link. Pull **community reviews** for any book, and turn every author into a **ready-to-contact lead** with follower counts, ratings, books, bio, personal website, socials and emails.

No login, no cookies, no browser — fast JSON extraction from Goodreads' own page data.

### Why this Goodreads scraper?

Most Goodreads scrapers only read the visible card (title, author, average rating) and stop at the search box — which Goodreads blocks. This actor pulls the **full `__APOLLO_STATE__` GraphQL cache** behind every book page and ships the **richest dataset in the category**, with built-in keyword search that works around the blocked search page.

| Data | Typical scrapers | This actor |
|---|---|---|
| Title, author, average rating | ✅ | ✅ |
| Full 1–5★ rating distribution | ❌ | ✅ |
| ISBN / ISBN-13 / ASIN | partial | ✅ |
| Format, pages, publisher, publication dates | partial | ✅ |
| Genres / shelves | partial | ✅ |
| Literary awards & Goodreads Choice Awards | ❌ | ✅ |
| Settings (places) & characters | ❌ | ✅ |
| Series & position | ❌ | ✅ |
| Per-language review counts | ❌ | ✅ |
| Community reviews (rating, text, likes, reviewer) | ❌ | ✅ opt-in |
| Author leads (followers, website, socials, emails) | ❌ | ✅ opt-in |
| Lead score (0–100) per author | ❌ | ✅ |
| Keyword search (Goodreads blocks `/search`) | ❌ | ✅ auto-complete workaround |
| Monitor mode — only new records | ❌ | ✅ |

### Use cases

- **Author & publishing lead generation** — every author becomes a scored lead with follower count, ratings, books, personal website, socials and (with enrichment) emails. Perfect for book-marketing, editing, cover-design, PR and ad agencies selling to authors.
- **Book data & catalog enrichment** — feed apps, recommendation engines and databases with clean book metadata: ISBN/ASIN, genres, page counts, publishers, covers, ratings and descriptions.
- **Market & competitive intelligence** — track ratings, the full star distribution, review volume and award status across a genre, series or comp-title set.
- **Reader sentiment & review mining** — collect community reviews (rating, full text, likes, shelves) for sentiment analysis, comp research or marketing quotes.
- **New-release & bestseller monitoring** — schedule recurring runs over a genre, list or author and capture only newly listed books with monitor mode.

### How to use

1. [Sign up for Apify](https://console.apify.com/sign-up) — the free plan is enough to try this actor.
2. Open the **Goodreads Scraper**, enter search queries or paste book/author/list/genre URLs, and click **Start**.
3. Watch results stream into the dataset table as each record is parsed.
4. **Export** as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS — or pull results programmatically via the [Apify API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2).

### Input

```json
{
    "searchQueries": ["project hail mary", "brandon sanderson"],
    "startUrls": [
        { "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1.Best_Books_Ever" },
        { "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/153394.Suzanne_Collins" }
    ],
    "bookIds": ["2767052", "9780593135204"],
    "maxBooks": 50,
    "includeReviews": true,
    "maxReviewsPerBook": 20,
    "outputAuthorLeads": true,
    "enrichAuthorWebsites": true,
    "monitorMode": false,
    "monitorKey": "default"
}
```

- **searchQueries** — book titles, author names or ISBNs, looked up via Goodreads' open auto-complete (each query returns its top matches, scraped in full).
- **startUrls** — Goodreads URLs: book pages (`/book/show/…`), author pages (`/author/show/…`), Listopia lists (`/list/show/…`), genre/shelf pages (`/genres/…`, `/shelf/show/…`) and series pages (`/series/…`). Lists/genres/series/authors are expanded into their books.
- **bookIds** — Goodreads numeric IDs or ISBN-10/ISBN-13.
- **maxBooks** *(default 50)* — cap on book records; reviews and author leads are additional.
- **includeReviews / maxReviewsPerBook** — also output the community reviews embedded on each book page (up to ~30 each).
- **outputAuthorLeads** *(default false)* — output one deduplicated lead record per author found.
- **enrichAuthorWebsites** *(default false)* — crawl each author's personal website (home + contact/about) for emails, phones and socials.
- **includeAuthorBooks** *(default true)* — when an author URL is given, also scrape the books on that page.
- **monitorMode / monitorKey** — emit only records new since the last run (see Monitoring).

### Output

One record per book (`type: "book"`), plus optional review records (`type: "review"`) and author lead records (`type: "author"`):

```json
{
    "type": "book",
    "bookId": "2767052",
    "title": "The Hunger Games",
    "titleComplete": "The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)",
    "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767052-the-hunger-games",
    "description": "Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death…",
    "imageUrl": "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/.../2767052.jpg",
    "primaryAuthor": "Suzanne Collins",
    "authors": [
        { "name": "Suzanne Collins", "id": "153394", "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/153394.Suzanne_Collins", "role": "Author", "followersCount": 128590 }
    ],
    "series": [{ "name": "The Hunger Games", "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/series/73758-the-hunger-games", "position": "1" }],
    "genres": ["Young Adult", "Dystopia", "Fiction", "Fantasy", "Science Fiction"],
    "format": "Hardcover",
    "numPages": 374,
    "isbn": "0439023483",
    "isbn13": "9780439023481",
    "asin": "0439023483",
    "publisher": "Scholastic Press",
    "language": "English",
    "publicationDate": "2008-10-14T07:00:00.000Z",
    "averageRating": 4.35,
    "ratingsCount": 10140474,
    "reviewsCount": 271369,
    "ratingDistribution": { "1": 133268, "2": 241455, "3": 1110224, "4": 3075882, "5": 5579645 },
    "places": ["District 12, Panem", "Capitol, Panem"],
    "characters": ["Katniss Everdeen", "Peeta Mellark"],
    "awards": [{ "name": "Locus Award", "category": "Best Young Adult Book", "year": 2009 }],
    "workId": "2792775",
    "buyUrl": "https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/...",
    "ebookPrice": 5.99,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-17T12:00:00.000Z"
}
```

Author lead record (`type: "author"`):

```json
{
    "type": "author",
    "authorId": "153394",
    "name": "Suzanne Collins",
    "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/153394.Suzanne_Collins",
    "website": "http://suzannecollinsbooks.com/",
    "followersCount": 128590,
    "averageRating": 4.35,
    "ratingsCount": 21389320,
    "bookCount": 69,
    "genres": ["Young Adult", "Science Fiction & Fantasy", "Fiction"],
    "born": "August 11, 1962",
    "emails": ["contact@suzannecollinsbooks.com"],
    "socials": { "twitter": "https://twitter.com/..." },
    "leadScore": 78,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-17T12:00:00.000Z"
}
```

Fields are `null`/omitted only when Goodreads genuinely doesn't publish them (e.g. an online-only edition has no ISBN, a translator-only contributor, an author with no website). Empty results are reported as success.

### Monitoring — get only new books, reviews & authors

Turn on **monitorMode** to remember the IDs seen in previous runs (in a named key-value store, `goodreads-monitor-<monitorKey>`) and emit only records that are **new since the last run** — new books in a genre, new reviews on a title, or newly discovered authors. Set a distinct **monitorKey** per search so different watches keep separate memory. This is fully compatible with [Apify Schedules](https://docs.apify.com/platform/schedules): the schedule triggers the run, monitor mode deduplicates the output.

### Automate & schedule

Run this actor on autopilot and pull results into your own stack:

- **[Apify API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2)** — start runs, fetch datasets, and manage schedules over REST.
- **[apify-client for JavaScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/)** and **[apify-client for Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/)** — official SDKs.
- **[Schedules](https://docs.apify.com/platform/schedules)** — run it on a cron to keep your data fresh.
- **[Webhooks](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/webhooks)** — trigger downstream actions the moment a run finishes.

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

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('scrapesage/goodreads-scraper').call({
    searchQueries: ['project hail mary'],
    startUrls: [{ url: 'https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1.Best_Books_Ever' }],
    maxBooks: 50,
    includeReviews: true,
    outputAuthorLeads: true,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} records`);
```

### Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to 5,000+ apps — no code required:

- **[Make](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/make)** — multi-step automation scenarios.
- **[Zapier](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/zapier)** — push new records straight into your CRM or sheet.
- **[Slack](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/slack)** — get notified when a run finds something new.
- **[Google Drive / Sheets](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/drive)** — auto-export every run to a spreadsheet.
- **[Airbyte](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/airbyte)** — pipe results into your data warehouse.
- **[GitHub](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/github)** — trigger runs from commits or releases.

### Use with AI assistants (MCP)

The output is clean, LLM-ready JSON. Call this actor from Claude, ChatGPT, or any agent framework through the **[Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp)** — ask your assistant to "find the top fantasy books on Goodreads with their ratings and author contacts" and let it run this scraper for you.

### Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is **agent-ready** — AI agents can discover it, run it, and **pay for it autonomously**, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses [pay-per-event](https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/publishing/monetize/pay-per-event) pricing and [limited permissions](https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/development/permissions), so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

- **[x402](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/x402)** — an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp) — no account, no API key.
- **[Skyfire](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/skyfire)** — agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

### More scrapers from scrapesage

Build a complete **author, creator & content lead-gen stack**:

- **[Substack Scraper](https://apify.com/scrapesage/substack-scraper)** — newsletters, posts and writer/creator leads.
- **[Apple Podcasts Scraper](https://apify.com/scrapesage/apple-podcasts-scraper)** — shows, episodes, reviews and host leads.
- **[YouTube Scraper](https://apify.com/scrapesage/youtube-scraper)** — channels, videos and creator leads.
- **[Product Hunt Scraper](https://apify.com/scrapesage/product-hunt-scraper)** — launches, makers and community leads.
- **[Telegram Scraper](https://apify.com/scrapesage/telegram-scraper)** — channels, messages, media and search.
- **[Facebook Ad Library Scraper](https://apify.com/scrapesage/facebook-ad-library-scraper)** — competitor ad intelligence for book marketing.
- **[Eventbrite Scraper](https://apify.com/scrapesage/eventbrite-scraper)** — events plus organizer leads with contacts.
- **[Airbnb Scraper](https://apify.com/scrapesage/airbnb-scraper)** — short-stay listings, prices and availability.

### Tips

- **Bulk discovery**: keyword search returns each query's top auto-complete matches. For hundreds of books, paste Listopia list, genre/shelf or author URLs in `startUrls` — each is expanded into its books up to `maxBooks`.
- **Reviews**: each book page carries up to ~30 community reviews; set `maxReviewsPerBook` to control how many you keep.
- **Author emails**: turn on `enrichAuthorWebsites` — Goodreads never exposes emails, so the actor visits each author's own public website to find them.
- **Proxies**: the default Apify datacenter proxy works well; switch to Residential only if you push very high volume and hit rate challenges.
- **Cost control**: author leads are deduplicated, and website enrichment only runs for authors who actually list a website.

### FAQ

**Can I search Goodreads by keyword?** Yes. Goodreads blocks its own `/search` page to bots, so this actor uses the open book auto-complete endpoint for keyword lookups, and supports Listopia list, genre, series and author URLs for bulk discovery.

**Does it need a Goodreads login or API key?** No. Goodreads retired its public API, but this actor extracts the same (and richer) data directly from public pages — no key, login, or browser.

**What about ISBNs?** Put ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 values in `bookIds` (or as search queries) and the actor resolves them to full book records.

**Can I export to Google Sheets, CSV, or Excel?** Yes — one click in the dataset view, or automatically on every run via the [Google Drive integration](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/drive).

**How do I monitor new releases automatically?** Turn on `monitorMode`, give it a `monitorKey`, and create a [Schedule](https://docs.apify.com/platform/schedules); only books/reviews/authors new since the last run are emitted.

**Where do author emails come from?** Never from Goodreads. With `enrichAuthorWebsites` on, the actor visits the author's own public website and extracts publicly listed contact details — the same thing a visitor would see.

**Is scraping Goodreads legal?** This actor collects publicly available data only. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with applicable laws (GDPR/CCPA for personal data) and Goodreads' terms.

### Need help?

Open an issue on the actor's **Issues** tab, or visit the [Apify help center](https://help.apify.com/). Feature requests are welcome — this actor is actively maintained.

# Actor input Schema

## `searchQueries` (type: `array`):

Keywords to look up via Goodreads' book auto-complete (e.g. "project hail mary", "stephen king", "9780593135204"). Each query returns the top matching books, which are then scraped in full. For bulk discovery, prefer Listopia list, genre or author URLs in Start URLs.

## `startUrls` (type: `array`):

Goodreads URLs to scrape. Supports book pages (/book/show/…), author pages (/author/show/…), Listopia lists (/list/show/…), genre/shelf pages (/genres/… or /shelf/show/…) and series pages (/series/…). List/genre/series/author pages are expanded into their books.

## `bookIds` (type: `array`):

Goodreads numeric book IDs (e.g. 2767052) or ISBN-10/ISBN-13 (e.g. 9780439023481). Each is fetched as a full book record.

## `maxBooks` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of book records to scrape across all queries and URLs. Reviews and author leads are additional and not counted against this limit.

## `includeReviews` (type: `boolean`):

Also output the community reviews embedded on each book page (rating, full text, date, likes, comments, shelf, reviewer). Up to ~30 per book.

## `maxReviewsPerBook` (type: `integer`):

How many reviews to output per book when Include reviews is on (the book page carries up to ~30).

## `outputAuthorLeads` (type: `boolean`):

Also output one deduplicated lead record per author found across the scraped books — name, Goodreads profile, follower count, ratings, books, bio, personal website, genres and a 0-100 lead score. Ideal for book-marketing / publishing outreach.

## `enrichAuthorWebsites` (type: `boolean`):

For author leads that list a personal website, crawl it (home + /contact + /about, max 3 pages) for contact emails, phone numbers and social links. Goodreads never exposes emails — this is the only way to get them.

## `includeAuthorBooks` (type: `boolean`):

When an author page is given as a Start URL, also scrape the books listed on that page (up to Max books).

## `monitorMode` (type: `boolean`):

Remember IDs seen in previous runs (in a named key-value store) and emit only books/reviews/authors that are new since the last run. Works alongside Apify Schedules for hands-off monitoring.

## `monitorKey` (type: `string`):

Names the monitor store so different searches keep separate memory (e.g. "fantasy-new-releases"). Reuse the same key across scheduled runs to keep deduplicating against the same history.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Proxy settings. Goodreads is reachable on Apify datacenter proxies (the default); switch to Residential if you hit rate challenges at high volume.

## `urlsFromFile` (type: `string`):

Paste a list of URLs (one per line), OR one link to a .txt/.csv file, Google Sheet or Google Drive file containing them. Lets you import many Start URLs at once instead of typing each. Google Sheet/Drive share links are handled automatically.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "searchQueries": [
    "project hail mary"
  ],
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767052-the-hunger-games"
    }
  ],
  "maxBooks": 50,
  "includeReviews": false,
  "maxReviewsPerBook": 20,
  "outputAuthorLeads": false,
  "enrichAuthorWebsites": false,
  "includeAuthorBooks": true,
  "monitorMode": false,
  "monitorKey": "default",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

All scraped Goodreads records (books, reviews and author leads) as JSON items in the default dataset.

# 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 = {
    "searchQueries": [
        "project hail mary"
    ],
    "startUrls": [
        {
            "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767052-the-hunger-games"
        }
    ],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true
    },
    "urlsFromFile": ""
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("scrapesage/goodreads-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 = {
    "searchQueries": ["project hail mary"],
    "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767052-the-hunger-games" }],
    "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": True },
    "urlsFromFile": "",
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("scrapesage/goodreads-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 '{
  "searchQueries": [
    "project hail mary"
  ],
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767052-the-hunger-games"
    }
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  },
  "urlsFromFile": ""
}' |
apify call scrapesage/goodreads-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,scrapesage/goodreads-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/9YMjuhnRZNTQzcS3s/builds/8f85o2BWUSscr0szG/openapi.json