How to scrape Google Maps
Build a browser scraper, or make one API call. Real code for both.
Why scraping Google Maps yourself is hard
Google Maps looks easy to scrape. The names, phones, and websites are right there on a public page. Then you try it, and you hit four walls in roughly this order:
| The wall | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| The data is not in the HTML | Google Maps is a JavaScript app. A plain HTTP GET returns a shell full of scripts, and the listings render later in the browser. So you need Puppeteer, Playwright, or Selenium, plus a machine with enough RAM to keep Chrome instances alive. |
| One search caps out | The results list stops loading after a few scrolls. In our own test, one "dentists in Miami" search returned about 100 businesses. The metro has over 1,000. Covering a full city means a full-area sweep that returns every business, deduplicated. |
| Google blocks bot IPs | Run a headless browser from a datacenter IP and you get CAPTCHAs and empty pages fast. Clean IPs cost real money, and a burned IP stays burned for a while. |
| The markup shifts under you | Class names in the page are machine-generated strings, and they rotate. Your selectors break without warning, and the scraper fails quietly until someone notices the empty spreadsheet. |
None of this is impossible; it is an engineering project with ongoing upkeep, proxy bills, and 3 a.m. selector fixes. What matters is what you are after: the craft, or the data.
Your three options, compared
There are three real ways to get Google Maps business data: build the scraper, pay Google's official Places API, or use a scraper API that does the collection for you.
| Build it yourself | Official Places API | CrustAPI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | Days of code, then upkeep forever | An afternoon | One HTTP request |
| Cost | Proxies + servers + your hours | $35 per 1,000 requests at the tier that includes phone, website, and hours | $1.96 per 1,000 businesses at standard prices |
| Results per search | ~100 before the list stops loading | 60 max across 3 billed pages | Up to 100 in one request |
| Keeping the data | You store what you scrape | Storing prohibited beyond place IDs | No storage limits |
| When it breaks | Your problem, at 3 a.m. | Google's problem | Our problem, and failed queries cost nothing |
Official Places figures from Google Maps Platform pricing and the Text Search docs, checked July 12, 2026. Full worked math on our Places API alternative page.
How do you get started?
No browser, no proxies, no selectors. You make one HTTPS request and get JSON back. Here is the whole tutorial:
Get a free API key
Sign up and your key is on the dashboard. Every account gets a free plan, no card. Maps bills per business returned, and searches that return nothing are free.
Make one request
Any search you would type into the Google Maps box works as the q parameter. Set limit up to 100.
Read the results
This is the actual response from that request, pulled August 4, 2026, in about a second. One record shown, trimmed, phone masked for this page. Here it is as CSV, the way it lands in a spreadsheet:
And the same record as raw JSON:
The same call in Python, if curl is not your thing:
Every record carries the full field set: name, address, phone, website, rating, review count, price level, categories, hours, lat/lng, rank position, photo thumbnail, and booking links. The breakdown lives on the Google Maps scraper API page, and the playground runs the same searches in the browser.
What data do you get?
The first three businesses from that Boise search, as they land in a spreadsheet. Phones are masked here on the page; the API returns them in full, formatted and E.164.
| Business | Category | Rating | Reviews | Phone | Website |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Express Plumbing Heating & Air | Plumber | 4.8 | 1,928 | (208) 3••-••09 | expressplumbingidaho.com |
| Perfect Plumbing Heating & Air | Plumber | 4.8 | 5,604 | (208) 2••-••31 | perfectplumbingheatingair.com |
| Beacon Plumbing, Heating, Air-Conditioning, and Electrical, Inc | Plumber | 5 | 1,822 | (208) 5••-••61 | beaconplumbing.com |
Cover a whole city, then pull the reviews
One search caps at 100 businesses. CrustAPI sweeps the whole metro for you and returns every business past that cap, deduplicated, from a single call, no stitching searches together on your end.
Want the actual review text for any of those places? Swap to type=reviews with the placeId you already have. Reviews respond in about 0.3 seconds, with rating, text, author, date, sorting, and pagination. More on the Google Reviews API page.
Google Maps data does not include email addresses. Not from us, and not from anyone scraping Maps, because the listings themselves do not show one. You get name, address, phone, website, rating, reviews, categories, and hours. Verified emails come from a different source: our LinkedIn people search (beta) returns public profiles with verified emails attached.
How much does scraping Google Maps cost?
You pay the Maps rate for each business a search returns. Forty businesses cost $0.0784 at standard Maps prices. Empty searches are free, so you can try a query without paying for a zero-result response.
| Deposit | Google Search / 1,000 requests | Maps / 1,000 businesses | LinkedIn reads / 1,000 requests | People, Jobs, Refresh / 1,000 units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10+ | $1.00 | $1.96 | $6.00 | $1.96 |
| $149+ | $0.76 | $1.49 | $4.50 | $1.49 |
| $549+ | $0.56 | $1.10 | $3.30 | $1.10 |
| $1,999+ | $0.41 | $0.80 | $2.45 | $0.80 |
| $6,500+ | $0.33 | $0.65 | $1.95 | $0.65 |
| $27,500+ | $0.28 | $0.55 | $1.65 | $0.55 |
| $50,000+ | $0.26 | $0.50 | $1.50 | $0.50 |
| $100,000+ | $0.20 | $0.40 | $1.50 | $0.40 |
Every eligible account gets $6 of free usage monthly. Each deposit keeps its prices until spent; paid funds never expire. People and Jobs bill per successful search, Refresh per accessible profile. Full profiles in People use the read rate per full profile. See all billing details.
Larger deposits unlock lower endpoint prices. Each deposit keeps its prices until spent. See the full deposit table on the pricing page. Prices in USD, ex-tax.
Funds are prepaid and never expire, so an unused pack is still yours next year.
Who scrapes Google Maps?
- Lead gen teams. Pull every business in a niche with phone and website, and start outreach the same day.
- Marketing and SEO agencies. See every competitor around a client: map rank, rating, and review count per city.
- Sales teams. Filter the export for businesses with no website; that column is a ready-made prospect list.
- Researchers and analysts. Count a whole market: totals, average rating, and which categories are growing.
When you should not use us: for live location features inside an app (map views, place lookups, autocomplete), Google's official Places API is the right tool, with an SLA behind it. If you want to learn browser automation, building your own Playwright scraper is a good project. This API is for when you need the data without the upkeep.
Common questions
Logged-out, public-only collection has repeatedly defeated computer-fraud and contract claims. We handle the collection on our side; what you receive is business data that is public on the map for anyone to see.
No, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. Google Maps listings do not show email addresses, so no Maps scraper can return them. Records include name, address, phone, website, rating, reviews, categories, and hours. For verified emails, our LinkedIn people search (beta) returns public profiles with a verified email attached.
Not with the API. You make one HTTPS request with your key and get JSON back in about a second. The collection is our side of the deal. If you build a DIY scraper instead, yes, you will need both.
Up to 100 with the limit parameter, billed at the Maps rate per business actually returned. To cover a whole city, CrustAPI sweeps the whole metro for you and returns every business, deduplicated, so you make one call instead of stitching searches together. Empty searches cost nothing.
Yes. The playground at /app runs the same searches in the browser, and the API plugs into Clay, n8n, LangChain, CrewAI, and MCP if you work in those tools.
Maps costs $1.96 per 1,000 businesses at standard prices, down to $0.40 for the largest deposit. Empty and failed searches are free. Every eligible account gets $6 of free usage monthly. Paid funds never expire.
Related: Google Maps Scraper API · Google Reviews API · Google Search API
Clay
Try it on your own city
The free plan covers a real lead list. Run one search and look at the JSON that comes back.
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