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Google Books API

Google's massive book index: search by keyword, title, author, or ISBN and get rich volume metadata, descriptions, categories, and preview links.

The Google Books API exposes volume search and lookup over Google's enormous book index. You get title, subtitle, authors, publisher, publishedDate, description, categories, page count, ISBN identifiers, ratings, thumbnails, and preview/info links. Keyless requests are effectively unusable in practice, so attach a free API key (created in Google Cloud Console, no billing required) which raises the limit to a generous daily quota. Strong fit for the most comprehensive metadata and rich descriptions.

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Free tier

Free. Default quota with an API key is 1,000 requests/day per project (raisable via the console); enabling the API does not require billing.

Rate limits

1,000 queries/day per project with a key. Without a key you get HTTP 429 'rateLimitExceeded' almost immediately (verified: the anonymous quota limit returns as 0); not usable for anything beyond a throwaway test.

Auth

API key

Base URL

https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1

What you'd build with it

Richest available book descriptions and category metadata
ISBN/title/author lookup with preview and 'buy' links
Auto-tag a personal library by subject/category
Fetch thumbnails and ratings for a book-recommendation skill

Key endpoints

GET/volumesSearch volumes; ?q= with operators like intitle:, inauthor:, isbn:, subject:; ?key=
GET/volumes/{volumeId}Fetch full metadata for a single volume by ID

Members

Members get the runnable recipe

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