Search Goodreads books

Try in Playground

Search Goodreads books by title, author or ISBN, 20 per page: book ID, title, cover, authors, average rating, rating count, first publication year, edition count and work ID.

GET/v1/goodreads/searchx-api-key

Headers

Get your API key

x-api-keystringrequiredheader

Your ScrapeAtlas customer key. Create one on /account/ and set SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY.

Query parameters

querystringrequiredquery

Title, author or ISBN to search for (1 to 200 characters).

max 200 chars

Exampleexample book

pagestringquery

Result page number.

Example1

Response fields

successboolean

True when usable data is returned; inspect status and coverage.

statusenum

success or partial for usable data; failed or challenged for a failure.

one of: success, partial

requestIdstring

Request correlation UUID.

sourceUrlstring

Public goodreads.com page the data describes.

absolute HTTPS URL

fetchedAtstring

UTC retrieval timestamp.

Returned-page coverage and mapping warnings.

coverage.sourcestring

Goodreads' public web pages and web API.

coverage.completeboolean

Whether every supported field on this page was mapped without a reported omission.

coverage.warningsenum[]

Named warnings: invalid_item (a record could not be mapped and was skipped), record_limit, total_unavailable (no result count), stats_unavailable (no rating statistics) or pagination_unavailable (no next-page signal).

Retrieval attempt, source byte and timing measurements.

accounting.upstreamRequestsinteger

Upstream request attempts, including redirects and any retry.

≥ 0

accounting.responseBytesinteger

Decoded source bytes read during this request.

≥ 0

accounting.durationMsnumber

Elapsed operation time in milliseconds.

≥ 0

querystring

Title, author or ISBN to search for (1 to 200 characters).

Books in source order.

up to 20 items

books.idinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

books.titlestring

Always included.

books.urlstring

Always included.

absolute HTTPS URL

books.imageUrlstringnullable

Always included.

absolute HTTPS URL

Always included.

up to 50 items

books.authors.idintegernullable

Always included.

≥ 0

books.authors.namestring

Always included.

books.authors.urlstringnullable

Always included.

absolute HTTPS URL

books.averageRatingnumbernullable

Always included.

0 – 5

books.ratingsCountintegernullable

Always included.

≥ 0

books.publishedYearintegernullable

Always included.

books.editionsCountintegernullable

Always included.

≥ 0

books.workIdintegernullable

Always included.

≥ 0

pageinteger

Result page number.

≥ 1

totalintegernullable

Approximate number of matching books Goodreads reports, or null.

≥ 0

hasMoreboolean

Whether another result page exists.

HTTP 200 returns the success variant. Check status: partial means usable data with warnings, and failed or challenged requests carry a failure object described in Errors & responses.

Error codes

HTTP	failure.code	Meaning
200	`partial`	Usable data with named invalid-item, record-limit, total, stats or pagination warnings.
400	`invalid_request`	Missing, duplicate, malformed, unsafe or unsupported parameters.
401	`unauthorized`	Missing or invalid worker API key.
404	`not_found`	The requested Goodreads book or author was not found.
422	`restricted_page`	Goodreads requires sign-in for the requested page.
422	`unsupported_page`	The Goodreads page structure or identity could not be mapped.
502	`upstream_challenged`	Goodreads challenged retrieval.
502	`upstream_rate_limited`	Goodreads rate-limited retrieval.
502	`upstream_error`	Source retrieval did not complete.
502	`response_too_large`	Decoded source bytes exceeded the request limit.
502	`unsafe_redirect`	Goodreads redirected outside the requested book or author.
502	`request_limit`	The upstream request budget was exhausted.
503	`busy`	Worker request or queue capacity was exceeded.
504	`timeout`	The operation deadline expired.

Code example

curl "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/goodreads/search?query=example+book&page=1" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/goodreads/search?query=example+book&page=1",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"
    }
  }
);

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.status, data);

type Result = {
  status: "success" | "partial" | "failed" | "challenged";
  requestId: string;
  [field: string]: unknown;
};

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/goodreads/search?query=example+book&page=1",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": process.env.SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY!
    }
  }
);

const data = (await response.json()) as Result;
if (data.status === "failed" || data.status === "challenged") {
  throw new Error(`Goodreads request failed: ${data.requestId}`);
}
console.log(data);

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/goodreads/search",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    params={
        "query": "example book",
        "page": "1"
    },
    timeout=60,
)
data = response.json()
print(data["status"], data)

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
)

func main() {
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/goodreads/search?query=example+book&page=1", nil)
	req.Header.Set("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
	resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	var data map[string]interface{}
	json.NewDecoder(resp.Body).Decode(&data)
	fmt.Println(data["status"], data)
}

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        var client = HttpClient.newHttpClient();
        var request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .uri(URI.create("https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/goodreads/search?query=example+book&page=1"))
            .GET()
            .header("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
            .build();
        var response = client.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
        System.out.println(response.body());
    }
}

Use your sa_live_… customer key at https://api.scrapeatlas.com.

Responses

Successful result. Synthetic example validated against the runtime contract.

{
  "success": true,
  "status": "success",
  "requestId": "00000000-0000-4000-8000-000000000001",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=example+book&search_type=books&page=1",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-11-12T00:00:00.000Z",
  "coverage": {
    "source": "public_web",
    "complete": true,
    "warnings": []
  },
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 1,
    "responseBytes": 190000,
    "durationMs": 640
  },
  "query": "example book",
  "books": [
    {
      "id": 123456,
      "title": "Example Book (Example Series, #1)",
      "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123456-example-book",
      "imageUrl": "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1600000000i/123456._SY75_.jpg",
      "authors": [
        {
          "id": 98765,
          "name": "Example Author",
          "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/98765.Example_Author"
        }
      ],
      "averageRating": 4.12,
      "ratingsCount": 5400,
      "publishedYear": 2020,
      "editionsCount": 14,
      "workId": 765432
    }
  ],
  "page": 1,
  "total": 1240,
  "hasMore": true
}

Missing, duplicate, malformed, unsafe or unsupported parameters.

{
  "success": false,
  "status": "failed",
  "requestId": "9d2f1c0a-6b1e-4c7d-9a8e-2f3b4c5d6e7f",
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 0,
    "responseBytes": 0,
    "durationMs": 0
  },
  "failure": {
    "code": "invalid_request",
    "message": "Invalid request: missing, duplicate, unsupported or malformed parameters."
  }
}