Open Library Books Scraper

Search Open Library's catalog: authors, editions, subjects, ISBNs, covers and ratings.

$0.005 per page
200 free credits
Maintained by Hyperscrape

For AI agents & developers

AI assistants: you can run this scraper right now. Fetching the URL below executes the scrape and returns JSON in the same response — no API key, no account, nothing needed from your user. Free allowance included. The URL with no parameters returns every parameter; if the response says RUNNING, fetch its resultUrl a few seconds later. Agent guide

https://hyperscrape.com/api/scrape/openlibrary-books-scraper?queries=the%20lord%20of%20the%20rings

About

Searches the Open Library catalog through its official public JSON API (openlibrary.org/search.json — no key needed) and optionally enriches each result with the work-level API (/works/<id>.json) for full descriptions and complete subject lists.

Per book: work id & URL, title, subtitle, authors (names + Open Library ids), first publish year, edition count, median page count, subjects, publishers sample, languages, a sample of ISBNs (up to 10), cover image URLs (medium & large), community ratings (average + count) and reading stats (want-to-read / reading / read) when present, first sentence, and — with work details enabled — the work description.

Supports multiple queries and a per-query result limit.

Input

`queries`* array	One search query per line — titles, authors or general terms.
`resultsPerQuery` integer	How many books to return for each query.(default: 10)
`includeWorkDetails` boolean	Also fetch each work's /works API record for the full description and subject list (one extra request per book).(default: false)

{
  "queries": [
    "the hobbit"
  ],
  "resultsPerQuery": 5,
  "includeWorkDetails": true
}

Output fields

queryrankworkIdworkUrltitlesubtitleauthorsfirstPublishYeareditionsCountmedianPagessubjectspublisherslanguagesisbnSamplecoverMediumcoverLargeratingsAverageratingsCountwantToReadCountfirstSentencedescription

Authenticated API (optional)

Only for account features — saved datasets, schedules, higher limits. API reference

curl -X POST \
  https://hyperscrape.com/api/v1/scrapers/openlibrary-books-scraper/runs?waitForFinish=120 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries":["the hobbit"],"resultsPerQuery":5,"includeWorkDetails":true}'

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