How to Scrape Google Maps

Type a search query, click Run, and in about ten seconds you have a structured dataset with 30-plus fields per business: name, category, full address, phone, website, rating, review count, opening hours, GPS coordinates, price range, and more. No code, no browser automation, no proxy setup. The NanoScrape Google Maps Scraper handles everything on Apify's infrastructure.

What you get

Every place the scraper returns comes with 30-plus structured fields. Here is an abbreviated example output (the actor's own documented example, showing the shape of a real result):

{
  "title": "Example Bistro",
  "category": "French restaurant",
  "address": "1 Example Street, 75000 Paris, France",
  "complete_address": {
    "street": "1 Example Street",
    "city": "Paris",
    "postal_code": "75000",
    "country": "France"
  },
  "phone": "+33 1 00 00 00 00",
  "website": "https://www.example.com/",
  "review_rating": 4.5,
  "review_count": 1823,
  "status": "OPERATIONAL",
  "price_range": "$$",
  "open_hours": {
    "Monday": ["12:00-14:30", "19:00-22:30"],
    "Friday": ["12:00-14:30", "19:00-23:00"]
  },
  "latitude": 48.8571,
  "longitude": 2.3007,
  "cid": "12345678901234567",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-24T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Beyond the basics, you can opt in to reviews, popular-times histograms, email addresses, social profiles (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, TikTok, YouTube), SSL inspection, WHOIS data, tech stack detection, and AI-powered contact extraction. Every enrichment is billed separately only when you enable it.

STEP 1

Create your free Apify account

1. Go to the Google Maps Scraper page on Apify.
2. Click Try for free. Sign up with Google or email. It takes about a minute.
3. You land in Apify Console with the actor's Input tab open and $5 of free credit ready to use.

Already have an Apify account? Skip to Step 2. If you want to use an existing account that belongs to an organization, make sure you have Actor run permissions on that workspace.

STEP 2

Set your search query

The scraper's Input tab has two ways to define what to search. The simplest is searchStrings: an array of plain text queries, each one sent directly to Google Maps.

{
  "searchStrings": [
    "coffee shops in Berlin",
    "dentists in New York",
    "law firms in London"
  ],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 20
}

A few tips that make a real difference:

• Include the location in the query string. Google Maps uses the whole string to rank results. "coffee shops Berlin" returns better results than "coffee shops" with a separate city filter.
• maxResultsPerQuery goes up to 120, which is Google Maps' page limit for a single query. For wider coverage, run multiple targeted queries instead.
• For non-English regions, set "language": "de" (or fr, es, ja, etc.) to get localized business names and category labels.
• If you want to pass your own reference ID alongside each query (for joining results back to your CRM), switch to the queries array instead of searchStrings and add a company_id field per query.

Structured queries with a company_id: if you are enriching an existing list, use the queries array instead. Pass a company_id per query and the scraper copies it into every result row, making it easy to join back to your source data without matching on name or address.

STEP 3

Run the scraper

Click Save and Run at the bottom of the Input tab. You land on the run detail page. The Log tab streams progress in real time, and the Dataset tab populates as each query finishes.

Speed depends on the number of queries and maxResultsPerQuery. A typical run of 3 queries at 20 results each finishes in 10 to 20 seconds. A run of 10 queries at 100 results each takes about two minutes.

If a run finishes but the dataset looks empty, click the Dataset tab and check that the view is not filtered. You can also open the Log tab and look for error lines. The most common causes are a search query that returns zero results (the location is misspelled or too specific) or a temporary proxy issue (re-running once usually clears it).

STEP 4

Export your data

Open the Dataset tab on the run detail page. Click Export at the top right. You can download as:

• JSON for use in code or APIs
• CSV for Excel, Google Sheets, or LibreOffice
• Excel (.xlsx) ready to open without any import steps
• JSON-L (one JSON object per line) for streaming or Spark pipelines

If you want to pull results into an automation tool like n8n, Make, or Zapier instead of downloading a file, skip to the API section below. Every dataset is also accessible by its URL from any Apify run, so you can poll it or pipe it directly into a downstream step.

Add emails, reviews, and more

The base scrape returns the 30-plus fields you saw above. These optional add-ons stack on top, each enabled by a single flag in the Input JSON.

Featured reviews

Set "includeReviews": true and each place gets a user_reviews array with author name, star rating, publication date, and review text. Sort options: most_relevant, newest, highest_rating, lowest_rating. To filter by date, add "reviewsNewerThan": "2026-01-01" and the scraper stops pulling once it passes that cutoff.

Popular times histogram

Set "includePopularTimes": true and each result gets a popular_times object with visitor-traffic scores (0 to 100) broken down by weekday and hour. Adds about 1.5 seconds per place. Included in the base $1 per 1,000 place price.

"popular_times": {
  "Monday": { "9": 38, "10": 52, "11": 70, "12": 81, "13": 79 },
  "Saturday": { "10": 60, "11": 88, "12": 95, "13": 90 }
}

Email addresses and social profiles

Set "enableEmailExtraction": true and the scraper visits every business website it found and pulls out email addresses, phone numbers, and social profile URLs (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, YouTube) using a regex extractor. No LLM key needed.

AI-powered contact extraction

Set "enableContactExtraction": true and provide a geminiApiKey (free tier available at Google AI Studio). The scraper visits each business website and extracts structured contacts: name, position, email, phone, department. Results merge into the same dataset row as the Maps data.

{
  "searchStrings": ["IT companies in Munich"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 20,
  "enableContactExtraction": true,
  "enableEmailExtraction": true,
  "geminiApiKey": "your-gemini-api-key",
  "waitForAddOns": true
}

Automate with the API

Every actor on Apify can be called from your code or an automation platform. The simplest path is a synchronous HTTP call: POST your input JSON and the API blocks until the run completes, then returns the dataset.

curl -s -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/santamaria-automations~google-maps-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "searchStrings": ["plumbers in Chicago"],
    "maxResultsPerQuery": 50
  }'

The response is a JSON array of place objects, ready to pipe into your database, spreadsheet, or downstream API. Get your personal API token from Apify Console › Settings › Integrations.

For long-running jobs (thousands of places, many queries), use the async variant instead: POST to start a run, get back a runId, then poll /v2/actor-runs/{runId}/dataset/items until the run status is SUCCEEDED. The actor README has code examples in JavaScript, Python, and cURL.

Use via n8n, Make, or Zapier

If you prefer a no-code automation platform, all three support Apify natively. For n8n specifically, there is a step-by-step tutorial that walks you through connecting the scraper to a Google Sheet: How to Scrape Google Maps with n8n.

Connect to an AI agent via MCP

The scraper also ships an MCP server. Paste this URL into your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, or any LangChain / LlamaIndex agent):

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=santamaria-automations/google-maps-scraper

Once connected, you can prompt the agent directly: "Find pediatric dentists in Zurich and put them in a table." The agent discovers the input schema automatically and runs the actor on your behalf.

What it costs

• Base places: $1.00 per 1,000 places on the Free plan. Down to $0.75 per 1,000 on Business Gold. Every place comes with 30-plus fields including popular times, GPS, category, hours, price range, and all other base data.
• Reviews: $0.30 per 1,000 reviews, billed separately only when you set includeReviews: true. Not included in the base place price.
• Contact and social enrichment add-ons: each has its own per-result rate, shown on the individual add-on actor pages. All are opt-in and skip cleanly for places with no website, no phone, or no social URL.
• Apify platform: the free tier gives you $5 of credit every month, enough for around 5,000 place results. You only pay if you go over.

A practical estimate: scraping 500 places across ten queries takes about 2 minutes and costs $0.50. Adding reviews at 10 per place adds another $0.15. Contact extraction via the AI add-on adds a small per-place cost on top, depending on which LLM provider you use (Gemini's free tier handles most jobs without a paid plan).

Common use cases

Lead generation

Search for businesses in a specific category and city, add email extraction, and export to your CRM or cold-email tool. Filter by review_count, review_rating, or status: OPERATIONAL to focus on active businesses.

Market research

Map every competitor in a region. The local_rank field (automatic when two or more places share the same category and city) shows each place's position in its cohort by review count, plus how many reviews separate it from position 3.

SEO and reputation monitoring

Pull reviews on a schedule with reviewsNewerThan set to last week's date. If the review_intel_math block (automatic when includeReviews is on) shows rating_trend: "declining", flag the account for review.

Data enrichment for existing lists

Use the queries array instead of searchStrings. Pass your internal company_id alongside each query. The scraper copies it into every result row, making it trivial to join the enriched data back to your source list without matching on name or address.

FAQ

Related resources

• Google Maps Scraper on Apify: full documentation, all input parameters, and the complete field reference.
• Scrape Google Maps with n8n: step-by-step guide for sending results straight into a Google Sheet using a free n8n workflow template.
• Google Maps Reviews Scraper: focused guide on extracting and filtering customer reviews from Google Maps.