Books Scraper (Google Books + Open Library)

Books Scraper (Google Books + Open Library)

Search books across two free, public catalogs — Google Books and Open Library — and get clean, normalized records. No login, no anti-bot. Open Library needs no key at all; Google Books works best with your own free API key (see below).

> Google Books quota. Keyless Google Books calls are metered against one *shared* Google > project (project_number 624717413613) used by every anonymous caller worldwide, and its > daily quota is usually already spent — so it answers 429 from every IP, and a proxy does > not help. Supply your own free key in googleApiKey to use your own quota, or leave the > source on Open Library. If Google Books is selected without a key and hits that quota, the > actor falls back to Open Library automatically and records why in an uncharged row.

What it does

Pick a source, give it a query, and the actor paginates through the API, deduplicates the results, and returns a normalized record per book. The output schema is identical for both sources, so you can switch sources without changing your downstream code.

Input

Output (normalized for both sources)

{
  "ok": true,
  "source": "googlebooks",
  "sourceId": "...",
  "title": "Clean Code",
  "subtitle": "A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship",
  "authors": ["Robert C. Martin"],
  "publisher": "Pearson Education",
  "publishedDate": "2009",
  "year": 2009,
  "isbn": "9780136083252",
  "pageCount": 464,
  "categories": ["Computers"],
  "averageRating": 4.5,
  "ratingsCount": 12,
  "language": "en",
  "description": "…",
  "coverImage": "https://…",
  "url": "https://…",
  "price": { "amount": 29.99, "currency": "USD", "buyLink": "https://…" }
}

• description is populated for Google Books; Open Library search results do not include it (null).
• price is Google Books only; it is null for Open Library and for Google Books volumes that are not for sale.
• isbn prefers ISBN-13 when available, otherwise falls back to ISBN-10 / the first identifier.
• Any field can be null when the source doesn't provide it. In practice subtitle, publisher, isbn, pageCount, averageRating, ratingsCount, language, and coverImage are commonly missing on some records. title is always present (records without a title are skipped).

Pricing

$1.00 per 1,000 books ($0.001 each), with no run-start fee. Flat rate — no volume tiers, no plan gates — and you are charged only for books actually returned.

Charged per book returned (ok: true rows only). Diagnostic rows (ok: false — e.g. NO_RESULTS, BAD_INPUT, NETWORK, RATE_LIMITED) are never charged. An empty result set or invalid input produces an uncharged diagnostic row, not a charge.

*From 24 August 2026 a $0.005 run-start fee applies in addition to the per-book price; the $0.001 per book is unchanged.*

Troubleshooting

• Empty dataset / NO_RESULTS — the query matched no books for the chosen source. Try a broader query or switch source. You are not charged.
• RATE_LIMITED — the public API throttled the run. The actor backs off and retries automatically; re-run later, or enable the optional proxy if it persists.
• BAD_INPUT — query was empty or source was invalid; a diagnostic row explains what to fix (you are not charged).

Sources

• Google Books API — https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1/volumes
• Open Library Search API — https://openlibrary.org/search.json