TVMaze TV Show Scraper

TV Show Scraper: TVMaze shows, people and episodes, no key

Type a show name and get rows back with the rating, genres, network, country, status, premiere date, IMDb id, plain-text summary and poster. Switch modes and the same run searches TVMaze's people directory by name, or lists every episode of one show, unaired ones included.

Show search is fuzzy, and that cuts both ways. A vague query comes back with loosely related shows, and those rows are charged like any other, so keep maxItems small while you work out the wording.

🔍 What TV Show Scraper does

One run does one of three jobs, picked with mode.

Shows searches TVMaze by title. Each row carries the rating, genre list, status, runtime, first and last air dates, country, IMDb id and the poster URL. network holds the broadcaster, and for a streaming-only show it holds the streaming service instead, so you never have to read two fields. Turn on includeCast and each show row also lists its main cast: actor, character and TVMaze person id.

People searches the people directory by name and returns id, country, birthday, gender and photo. It is a name lookup, not a cast list. Asking it "who was in Breaking Bad" gets you people called Breaking Bad, which is nobody. For a show's cast, use shows mode with includeCast.

Episodes takes one numeric TVMaze show id and returns the whole run: season, episode number, title, air date, runtime, rating and summary. Episodes with a future air date are included, which is what makes it useful for a release calendar.

Summaries arrive with the HTML tags already stripped out.

📥 What you give it

{
  "mode": "shows",
  "query": "breaking bad",
  "maxItems": 10
}

showId is TVMaze's own id, not IMDb's. Breaking Bad is 169 on TVMaze and tt0903747 on IMDb, and putting one where the other belongs gets you a NOT_FOUND row.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a recent run, with the summary cut short here for length:

{
  "ok": true,
  "id": 169,
  "name": "Breaking Bad",
  "type": "Scripted",
  "language": "English",
  "genres": ["Drama", "Crime", "Thriller"],
  "status": "Ended",
  "runtime": 60,
  "premiered": "2008-01-20",
  "ended": "2019-10-11",
  "rating": 9.2,
  "network": "AMC",
  "country": "United States",
  "imdb": "tt0903747",
  "officialSite": "http://www.amc.com/shows/breaking-bad",
  "summary": "Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White, a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife and teenage son...",
  "image": "https://static.tvmaze.com/uploads/images/original_untouched/501/1253519.jpg",
  "url": "https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/169/breaking-bad"
}

People rows carry id, name, country, birthday, gender, image and url. Episode rows carry showId, episodeId, name, season, number, airdate, runtime, rating, summary and url.

🧾 Reading the output

Every real row has ok: true. A row that could not be filled has ok: false plus an errorCode, and those are never charged.

Anything else that goes wrong lands as one diagnostic row carrying its own code, and the run still finishes rather than failing.

One thing to know about the Console's Overview table: it shows a narrow set of columns and drops season and episode number, so an episode list reads as titles with no numbers, and diagnostic rows render blank. Everything is present in the JSON, CSV and Excel exports. Switch the table to all fields, or download the dataset.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open TV Show Scraper and click Try for free. 2. Pick a Mode. 3. Type the show or person into Search query, or put the numeric id into Show id for episodes mode. 4. Set Max items. Ten is plenty while you check the output shape. 5. Click Start, then download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML.

💰 How much does it cost?

$2.00 per 1,000 rows. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers. Shows, people and episodes all cost the same, and a show row with its cast costs the same as one without.

Duplicate rows, rows past your maxItems cap and every diagnostic row are not charged. A search that finds nothing returns one uncharged row.

💡 What people use it for

• Backfilling a media library that only has titles. Run each one through shows mode and you come

out with genres, network, premiere date, poster and an IMDb id to join on.

• Building a release calendar. episodes mode returns the whole run, so filtering airdate to

future dates gives you what is still to come.

• Checking whether a show is over. status and a null ended answer it in one row.
• Tagging a back catalogue by genre and country without paying for a licensed film database.

🚧 What it does not do

• The cast is the main cast only, as TVMaze lists it: no guest stars, no crew, nothing per

episode. People mode is a name search and cannot answer "who was in this show".

• One showId per run in episodes mode. Several shows means several runs.
• Search reads one page of TVMaze matches, so raising maxItems past that page does nothing in

shows and people modes. The cap earns its keep in episodes mode.

• rating is often null where the vote count is too low to publish an average.
• No box office, no streaming availability, no ticket links. TVMaze is a schedule and metadata

source, and this returns what it holds.

• Rows are a snapshot. Ratings move and a running show gains episodes. Re-run for fresh numbers.

🧭 Which catalogue scraper do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need a TVMaze account or key? No. Nothing to apply for.

How do I find a show id? Run shows mode with the title and read id off the row. That number goes straight into showId.

Why did my episode list come back with no episode numbers? The Console's Overview table hides those columns. The numbers are in the data. Download it or switch the table to all fields.

Can I get a show's cast? Yes. Run shows mode with includeCast on and each show row lists its main cast.

Can I get upcoming episodes? Yes. Episodes mode includes unaired ones, so filter airdate forward from today.

Why did I get shows I did not ask for? Fuzzy search. A short or vague query pulls in loose matches, and you pay for the rows. Add more of the title.

Is this legal? TVMaze publishes this data through an open API meant to be read. It is show metadata, not personal data, apart from the public credits in people mode. Apify's write-up on scraping and the law is a good starting point, and we are not lawyers.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the input you used and the run id. The errorCode on the diagnostic row usually names the problem by itself.