Google Reviews API to Pull Google Maps Reviews for Any Business as JSON
Google's own APIs give you 5 reviews for any place, or every review only for locations you manage. WebScrap reads the public reviews on Google Maps for any business, newest first, and returns rating, text, date and owner reply as JSON. About 0.10 USD per 1,000 reviews on Starter.
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This console sends a real request and shows you the real response. Five live fetches per session, and the sample targets run as often as you like.
Why Google's review APIs stop where agencies need them
There is no official Google API that lists every review of any business. The Places API returns at most 5 reviews per place, picked by relevance, and the Business Profile API returns all of them only for verified locations your account manages. Everything else on the market reads the public Google Maps page.
That gap is where most of the paying demand sits. A reputation agency pitching a new 40 location dental group needs the group's full review history before it has manager access. A franchise brand wants every franchisee's reviews in one database, including the owners who never added head office as a manager. A competitive intelligence team wants to read what customers say about the three rivals on the same street.
None of those are possible with 5 relevance sorted reviews, and none of them involve locations you own. So the teams that sell review monitoring, review analytics or local SEO end up reading Google Maps directly, the same way a person scrolls the reviews panel, only for thousands of places a day.
Google reviews API options compared
Published rates, checked on Google's developer pages and serpapi.com on October 1, 2026. Cost per 1,000 reviews assumes you want the full review list, not a sample.
| Option | Which businesses | Reviews you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Places API, Place Details | Any place | 5 per place, sorted by relevance | Enterprise + Atmosphere SKU, 25 USD per 1,000 calls after 1,000 free a month |
| Business Profile API | Only verified locations you manage, after approval | All, 50 per page | No usage fee, but the approval needs a profile active 60+ days |
| SerpApi Google Maps Reviews API | Any place | All, 8 on the first page, up to 20 per page after | About 1.25 USD per 1,000 reviews on the 25 USD plan, 0.36 on the 725 USD plan |
| WebScrap | Any place | All, newest first, about 10 per request | About 0.10 USD per 1,000 reviews on Starter, 0.06 on Growth, 0.03 on Scale |
To be fair to the official routes: if you only need reviews for profiles you already manage, the Business Profile API is free and lets you reply to reviews too, which no scraping API can do. Use it for your own replies and use a scraping API for everything you cannot manage. SerpApi gives you a ready made reviews schema; the numbers behind its plans are in our SerpApi pricing breakdown.
What review monitoring costs per month
A daily newest first check is one request per location. A backfill is about one request per 10 reviews. Monthly billing, 30 day months.
| Job | Requests per month | WebScrap plan | Places API, for comparison |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backfill 500 locations with 400 reviews each | about 20,000, once | 49 USD, Starter | not possible, 5 reviews per place |
| 300 client locations checked daily | 9,000 | 49 USD, Starter | 200 USD, and only 5 relevance sorted reviews |
| 2,000 locations daily plus 6,000 competitor places weekly | about 86,000 | 149 USD, Growth | about 2,100 USD |
| 25,000 places checked daily | 750,000 | 499 USD, Scale | about 18,700 USD |
The Places API column uses its first tier rate of 25 USD per 1,000 calls after the free 1,000, and Google lowers that rate at higher volume, so treat it as an upper bound. It still never returns more than 5 reviews per place, which is the real reason teams that sell review monitoring do not build on it.
How to pull Google reviews as JSON in four steps
01
Find the place
Start from a Google Maps place URL or a place ID. If you only have names and cities, the Google Maps scraper API turns a search into a list of places first.
02
Sort by newest
Open the reviews sorted by newest, not by relevance. For a daily check the first batch is all you need. For a backfill, keep requesting the next batch until the dates pass your cutoff.
03
Name your fields
Rating, text, date, reviewer, photos, likes, owner reply and reply date. Rendering is on and the request leaves from a US address, so you see what a local customer sees.
04
Schedule it
Growth and Scale run the check as a saved job every morning and post new reviews to your webhook, ready for an alert on any 1 or 2 star review.
Who buys a Google reviews API and what they run on it
Reputation agencies
Pull a prospect's full review history for the sales audit before you have access, then keep watching every client location daily for new low ratings.
Multi location brands
Franchises, clinics, dealerships and restaurant groups see every branch in one table, including the locations where head office was never added as a manager.
Review analytics SaaS
Feed sentiment, topic and response time dashboards with full review text. The owner reply date gives you response time per location for free.
Competitive and local SEO teams
Compare review velocity and ratings against the rivals in the local pack, next to the positions from the rank tracking API.
Four mistakes that make a review feed wrong
Trusting relevance order. Google's default sort is relevance, and the Places API only ever gives you that order. A 1 star review posted this morning can sit below twenty older ones. Monitoring has to read newest first or it misses the reviews that need an answer today.
Using the review count as a delta. The total on the listing goes down as well as up when Google filters or removes reviews. Compare review IDs or dates against what you already stored, not the headline number, or your new reviews alert fires on deletions.
Storing translated text as the original. Google shows some reviews translated into the viewer's language. Ask for the original text field, or your sentiment model reads Google's translation, not the customer's words.
Polling from one server. Thousands of place requests a day from one address get challenged quickly, and a challenged page can look like a place with no reviews. A managed API rotates the exit address through a proxy pool and treats an empty or blocked page as a failed fetch, which is never billed.
Google Reviews API questions
Does Google have an API for reviews?
Two, and both are narrow. The Places API returns at most 5 reviews per place, chosen by relevance. The Business Profile API returns all reviews, but only for locations you own or manage, after Google approves your project. There is no official API that lists every review of any business.
How do I get more than 5 Google reviews from the API?
Not through the Places API, which caps the reviews field at 5 per place no matter what you pay. For your own locations, the Business Profile API pages through all reviews 50 at a time. For any other business, read the public reviews on Google Maps through a scraping API and page through them sorted by newest.
Is the Google Reviews API free?
The Business Profile API has no usage fee, but it only covers profiles you manage. Reviews through the Places API bill as Place Details Enterprise + Atmosphere, 25 USD per 1,000 calls after 1,000 free a month, and each call still returns 5 reviews at most.
Can I get Google reviews for a business I do not own?
Not through the Business Profile API, which only lists reviews for verified locations your account manages. The Places API returns 5 for any place. For the full list on a competitor or a client you do not manage yet, collect the public reviews from Google Maps with a scraping API.
How much does a Google reviews API cost per 1,000 reviews?
On WebScrap one request returns one loaded batch of about 10 reviews, so 1,000 reviews take about 100 requests: roughly 0.10 USD on Starter, 0.06 on Growth and 0.03 on Scale. SerpApi's Google Maps Reviews API runs about 0.36 to 1.25 USD per 1,000 reviews across its 25 to 725 USD plans.
What data does a Google review include?
Reviewer name and profile link, star rating, review text, relative and absolute date, number of photos, the reviewer's review count, likes, and the owner's reply with its date when there is one. You name the fields you want and get them back as typed JSON.
How do I get the newest Google reviews first?
Ask for the reviews sorted by newest rather than by relevance, which is Google's default. The Places API cannot do this, because it only returns its 5 most relevant. With newest first, a daily check only needs the first batch per location to catch everything posted since yesterday.
Do I need the Google Business Profile API approval?
Only for the official route to your own reviews. Google asks for a profile verified and active for 60 days or more, a website for the business, and an application from an owner or manager email. Until it is approved, your project quota stays at 0 requests per minute.
How often can I check Google reviews?
As often as your plan allows. Most reputation teams check every location once a day, newest first, which is one request per location. Growth and Scale run the checks as scheduled jobs and post new reviews to your webhook, so nobody has to run a cron server.
Is it legal to collect Google reviews?
Reading public reviews for analysis is common practice in reputation management, but reviews carry reviewer names, so privacy law applies to what you store. Keep only the fields you need, do not republish full reviews as your own content, and check Google's terms and your counsel before building a product that displays them.
Get every Google review for every location you track
Send a Google Maps place and the fields you want, get the reviews newest first as JSON. About 0.10 USD per 1,000 reviews on Starter, failed fetches never billed.