ISBN Lookup, Book Metadata & Cover Finder

Look up book details from ISBNs and get clean book metadata, cover image URLs, and source links. This Apify Actor is built for fast, low-cost ISBN enrichment without paid APIs.

It works as an ISBN lookup, book metadata scraper, and book cover finder for catalogs, spreadsheets, ecommerce listings, libraries, research lists, and publishing workflows.

What You Get

For each ISBN, the Actor can return:

• Book title and author
• Publisher and publication date
• ISBN-10 and ISBN-13
• Book description
• Page count and language
• Categories or subjects when available
• Cover image URL
• Goodreads ratings when available
• Source links and confidence score

The Actor returns one clean dataset item per ISBN.

Why Use This Actor

• Enrich book catalogs from ISBNs
• Find missing book cover URLs
• Validate ISBN lists
• Add titles, authors, publishers, and dates to spreadsheets
• Build book datasets without paying for metadata APIs
• Run cheap batch ISBN lookups on Apify

No Paid Book APIs

This Actor does not use Google Books API, Open Library API, ISBNdb API, WorldCat API, paid APIs, LLMs, Playwright, or Puppeteer.

It uses lightweight scraping of public book pages only. This keeps runs simple, fast, and affordable.

Input

Use isbns for every run. For one book, provide a list with one ISBN:

{
  "isbns": ["9780441172719"],
  "maxItems": 1
}

This is also the recommended quick daily test input. It runs a single ISBN lookup, keeps compute use low, and is suitable for an Apify schedule or store smoke test.

For multiple books, add more ISBNs to the same list:

{
  "isbns": [
    "9780441172719",
    "9780143127741",
    "978-0-452-28423-4"
  ]
}

Other options:

• maxItems limits how many ISBNs are processed
• includeCovers returns cover image URLs
• includeDescription returns book descriptions
• proxyConfiguration enables Apify Proxy if you choose to use it

Output

Successful results are compact and only include fields that were found:

{
  "input": "9780441172719",
  "normalizedInput": "9780441172719",
  "status": "success",
  "isValidIsbn": true,
  "isbn10": "0441172717",
  "isbn13": "9780441172719",
  "title": "Dune",
  "authors": ["Frank Herbert"],
  "publisher": "Ace Books",
  "publishedDate": "1987",
  "pageCount": 535,
  "language": "English",
  "description": "Set on the desert planet Arrakis...",
  "coverImages": {
    "large": "https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/15166231-L.jpg"
  },
  "sourceLinks": {
    "openLibrary": "https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22597282M/Dune",
    "goodreads": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44767458-dune"
  },
  "ratings": {
    "goodreadsAverage": 4.29,
    "goodreadsRatingsCount": 1663898,
    "goodreadsReviewsCount": 85540
  },
  "sourcesUsed": ["openLibrary", "goodreads"],
  "confidence": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-07T14:36:29.934Z"
}

If an ISBN is valid but no metadata is found:

{
  "input": "9799999999990",
  "normalizedInput": "9799999999990",
  "status": "not_found",
  "isValidIsbn": true,
  "isbn13": "9799999999990",
  "sourcesUsed": [],
  "confidence": 0,
  "warnings": [
    "ISBN is valid but no metadata was found from available sources."
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-07T14:36:31.131Z"
}

If an ISBN is invalid:

{
  "input": "12345",
  "normalizedInput": "12345",
  "status": "failed",
  "isValidIsbn": false,
  "errors": [
    {
      "step": "isbn_validation",
      "message": "Invalid ISBN checksum or length."
    }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-07T14:36:30.357Z"
}

Status Values

• success means enough metadata was found.
• partial means some metadata was found, but the record is incomplete.
• not_found means the ISBN is valid, but no public-page metadata was found.
• failed means the ISBN is invalid or could not be processed.

Data Sources

The Actor currently uses public pages from:

• Open Library ISBN pages
• Goodreads public book/search pages

Amazon search is supported internally as an optional fallback, but it is not enabled by default because it is often blocked and can be unreliable.

Cost And Speed

This Actor is designed to be cheap:

• No browser automation
• No image downloads
• No full HTML storage
• Modest concurrency
• Short retries and timeouts
• One dataset item per ISBN

Limitations

Public websites can change HTML, block requests, or return incomplete metadata. Goodreads ratings and cover images may not always be available. This Actor is optimized for fast and affordable ISBN enrichment, not exhaustive bibliographic coverage.

FAQ

Can I look up only one ISBN?

Yes. Enter it as a list with one item, for example ["9780441172719"].

Can the ISBNs include hyphens or labels?

Yes. Each list item is normalized before validation, so hyphens, spaces, and labels like ISBN-13: are removed.

Does it validate ISBN checksums?

Yes. It validates ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 checksums and converts between ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 when possible.

Does it download book covers?

No. It returns cover image URLs only.

Does it use official APIs?

No. It uses public web pages only.