How to Scrape Goodreads with Node.js: Book Search, Rating Distributions, Reviews, Author Lists, and a Ratings Tracker (2026)
Goodreads is still where most readers log what they read, so it's where the numbers are: how many people rated a book, how those ratings split across one to five stars, what the most-liked reviews say, and which of an author's books carry their reputation. If you build a reading app, do comp titles for a publisher, or just want to know whether a book you're about to pitch is growing, you'll want…
Goodreads remains a popular platform for readers to log their reading activities, providing valuable data such as how many people have rated a book, how those ratings are distributed across one to five stars, the most liked reviews, and which of an author's books hold their reputation. If you are developing a reading app, researching competitor titles, or simply want to gauge the growth of a particular book before pitching it, acquiring this data through scripting is essential.
When searching for a Goodreads API, you will find that it no longer exists. The post outlines official methods for accessing Goodreads data using Node.js and no additional dependencies, with six commands available: probe, search, book, reviews, author, and track. These commands were executed on November 13, 2026, using Node 24.22.1 on a rented Linux VM.
Goodreads' Terms of Use strictly forbid any collection and use of book listings, descriptions, reviews, or other material, as well as any data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools. Therefore, scraping Goodreads is against its terms, and readers are advised to read the terms themselves and consider the legal risks before running any scripts.
Reviews are personal writings by real people, and republishing them is discouraged; only necessary excerpts should be retained. The official API for Goodreads ceased issuing new developer keys in December 2020 and plans to retire the public API. While the API redirects to the homepage, old keys found in blog posts and GitHub repositories are no longer useful for new projects.
However, there are still alternative options for accessing Goodreads data without scraping: using your own library export, Open Library's open API with ISBN, work, and author lookups, and ratings (though limited compared to Goodreads), and the official route is now exhausted. The remainder of the post provides step-by-step instructions for executing the six commands, along with the raw output from a November 13, 2026 session on a rented Linux VM using Node 24.22.1.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
