Google Sheets Import — read Google Sheet rows into JSON/CSV, reliably

Turns any Google Sheet tab into an Apify dataset (export as JSON, CSV, Excel or via API) with real numbers, booleans and dates. Built to just work: retries on Google rate limits (429) and server errors, and when something is wrong it stops with a plain message ("sheet is not shared", "tab 'X' not found, tabs are: ...") instead of failing silently or returning nothing.

For developers, analysts and ops teams who keep input lists, keywords, URLs, prices or leads in a Google Sheet and want to feed them to scrapers, automations or AI pipelines.

• No setup for public sheets: share as "Anyone with the link" and paste the URL, no credentials
• Private sheets: use your own Google service account (the key is used only in memory and never logged or stored)
• Clean data: header row to column names (duplicates and blanks fixed), numbers / booleans / dates converted, empty rows skipped, tab and range selectable

Example output (one dataset item per sheet row):

{ "Student Name": "Alexandra", "Gender": "Female", "Class Level": "4. Senior", "Home State": "CA",
  "Major": "English", "Extracurricular Activity": "Drama Club" }

Price: $0.05 per 1,000 rows saved (partial thousands round up). Example: a 2,500-row sheet costs 3 x $0.05 = $0.15; a 300-row sheet costs $0.05. Header rows, skipped empty rows and failed runs are not charged. Set a max charge per run to cap spend.

Free demo: leave the input empty and the Actor reads Google's public "Class Data" sample sheet (10 rows, not charged).

Input

Field	What it does
spreadsheet	Sheet URL or ID. A #gid= in the URL selects that tab.
serviceAccountKey	Optional. JSON key of your service account, for private sheets.
sheetName / sheetGid	Tab by name or by numeric gid. Default: the URL's gid, else the first tab.
range	A1 range such as A1:F500, A:F, 2:100. Default: whole tab.
headerMode, skipTopRows	First row is the header (default) or no header (column_1, ...); skip title rows above it.
coerceTypes, coerceNumbers, coerceBooleans, coerceDates, dateFormat	Value conversion. Empty cells are null. ZIP-style values with leading zeros and numbers over 15 digits stay text. 03/31/2026-style dates are converted only if you pick mdy or dmy.
skipEmptyRows, maxRows	Drop fully blank rows; stop after N data rows (default 10,000).

{ "spreadsheet": "https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AbC.../edit#gid=0", "headerMode": "first", "maxRows": 5000 }

Public sheet in 30 seconds

In Google Sheets click Share > General access > Anyone with the link > Viewer, copy the URL into spreadsheet, run.

Private sheet (service account, about 5 minutes)

1. In Google Cloud Console create or pick a project and enable the Google Sheets API.
2. IAM & Admin > Service Accounts > Create service account (no roles needed), then Keys > Add key > JSON.
3. Share your sheet with the account's client_email as Viewer.
4. Paste the whole JSON file into Service account key.

Output

The default dataset has one item per sheet row. Run details are in the key-value store record RESULT: source, mode (public-csv or api), tab, columns, rows in sheet, rows saved, skipped empty rows, truncatedAtMaxRows and a warning if the tab was empty.

Common problems

• "the spreadsheet is not shared publicly": set sharing to "Anyone with the link" (Viewer), or use a service account key.
• "Tab 'X' not found. Tabs in this spreadsheet: ..." (service account): fix the name or use sheetGid.
• Public sheet and tab by name: Google's name-based CSV endpoint can drop cells in columns that mix numbers and text. Use sheetGid (or the #gid= in the URL) for exact values, or use a service account key.
• 403 with a service account: share the sheet with the client_email and check the Sheets API is enabled.
• "Key creation is disabled": many Google Workspace organizations block service account keys (iam.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation). Ask your admin, or create the project with a personal Google account.
• Dates read as text: only year-first dates (2026-03-31) are converted by default; choose mdy or dmy for slash dates.

Billing and privacy

You are charged only for rows saved to the dataset. Your key stays in memory for the run and is never written to logs, the dataset or the key-value store. Use a dedicated service account with access only to the sheets you need. The Actor only reads; it never writes to your sheet.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.05 per 1,000 rows (partial thousands round up). The demo is free.

More tools from the same developer

• Google Sheets Export — export an Apify dataset to Google Sheets
• Dataset Transform — flatten, filter, rename and convert any Apify dataset, export CSV / JSON / JSONL with a link
• Dataset Merge & Dedup — merge Apify datasets and remove duplicates by the fields you choose
• Dataset Change Detector — compare two runs of any scraper: only added, removed and changed items
• RAG Chunker — split scraped pages into chunks for RAG and vector stores