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Google Maps reviews API: 5 reviews per place, or every review as JSON

Google's Places API returns at most 5 reviews per place, at $25 per 1,000 calls. Get a place's public reviews as JSON, 20 per call, 1 credit each.

5 min read

Short answer

  • Google's Places API returns at most 5 reviews per place, sorted by relevance, at $25 per 1,000 calls. The Business Profile API returns all reviews, but only for verified locations your account manages.
  • Neither gives you the full review list of a place you don't manage.
  • ToolzerHub returns a place's public reviews as JSON, newest first, 20 per call for 1 credit: about $0.05 to $0.10 per 1,000 reviews. 100 free credits a month.
On this page

You want the reviews of a place on Google Maps as data: rating, text, date, owner reply. Maps shows all of them in a browser. Google's own APIs give you five, or all of them only for a business you manage.

What the official API gives you

Google has two APIs that return reviews.

The Places API (New) has a reviews field on Place Details. Google's reference says: "List of reviews about this place, sorted by relevance. A maximum of 5 reviews can be returned." Asking for that field bills the call at the Place Details Enterprise + Atmosphere SKU: $25.00 per 1,000 calls for the first 100,000, after 1,000 free calls a month.

The Business Profile API lists every review of a location, up to 50 per page, and lets you reply. The call runs under accounts/{accountId}/locations/{locationId} with the business.manage OAuth scope. Google says it "is only valid if the specified location is verified."

Where it stops

On Places, 5 reviews is the ceiling, in Google's order. A place with 1,782 reviews still returns 5. At $25.00 per 1,000 calls, that is at least $5.00 per 1,000 reviews. Google's policies also say "You must not pre-fetch, cache, or store Places API content beyond the allowed exceptions."

The Business Profile API covers only profiles your account manages. Google says these APIs "are not available to all users", and applicants must "Manage a Google Business Profile that is verified and active for 60+ days." A competitor's reviews are out of scope.

Get any place's reviews, 20 per request

ToolzerHub returns the public reviews shown on a Google Maps place as JSON. You need one API key. There is no Google Cloud project, no Google login and no scraper of your own to run.

bash
curl "https://api.toolzerhub.com/v1/google-maps/reviews?cid=0x808587fb77f5f64d:0x25d564f177f99946&count=20" \
  -H "x-api-key: $TOOLZERHUB_API_KEY"

cid is the place id from a /v1/google-maps/search result. A Google Maps URL that contains the id also works. We show the request only; the reviews reference lists every response field.

What comes back in data:

  • reviews: up to 20 per page, newest first. Each has review_id, rating (1 to 5), text, language, created_at_us, author, photos and owner_response.
  • text is null on star-only ratings. Maps counts those as reviews too. On two places we read in full, they were 27% and 40% of all reviews.
  • Timestamps are microseconds since the Unix epoch. Divide by 1,000,000 for seconds.
  • Pass the returned next_cursor value as the cursor query parameter, keeping the same cid, until has_more is false.

We tested the full walk on 2026-08-16 against the review count Maps displays. Four places returned 338 of 338, 1,722 of 1,723, 1,782 of 1,782 and 5,950 of 5,950 reviews, with no duplicate review ids.

Where we fall short. There is no sort parameter: Google's rating-sorted orders stopped at 143 of 338 reviews in our tests, so the API always reads newest first and you sort on your side. There is no "helpful" vote count; we did not find one in the data. After a quiet period, the first call can take about 35 seconds.

What it costs

  • Every call costs 1 credit and returns up to 20 reviews. 1,000 reviews is 50 calls, so 50 credits.
  • Plans start at $29 a month for 20,000 credits ($1.45 per 1,000) and go down to $0.99 per 1,000 on Business; one-time packs start at $19 for 10,000 credits and never expire. That is about $0.05 to $0.10 per 1,000 reviews.
  • A place with 5,950 reviews takes 298 calls: $0.30 to $0.57.
  • Every account gets 100 free credits a month, up to 2,000 reviews for testing.

Next step

Read the Google Maps API page for the search, place and reviews endpoints, or get a free API key and run the request above. To read reviews with a free script instead, see how to scrape Google Maps with Python.

Google's own APIs are the better pick in two cases:

  • The reviews are for your own business and you want to reply. The Business Profile API lists all of them and takes replies.
  • You show a few reviews next to a Google Map in your app. Use the Places API under Google's terms, with author attribution and Google Maps attribution.

Not affiliated with Google LLC.

Details

  • count accepts 1 to 20. A higher value is rejected with a 400 instead of returning an empty page.
  • A cursor belongs to its place. Sent with another cid, it returns a 400 that names the place it was issued for.
  • /v1/google-maps/place returns the business record by cid, without a reliable review count. Count reviews by reading the pages.
  • 503 errors can be retried with backoff. You are charged only for successful responses.
  • author carries the reviewer's public display name, profile link and avatar as Google shows them. Treat these as personal data and keep only what your use needs.
  • On Places, a call is billed at the highest SKU of any field you request. Google's policies require crediting the review author and a notice of how reviews are ordered and filtered.

Sources

Get this data from your own code

The Google Maps API returns it as JSON with one x-api-key header. 100 free credits monthly.

Get API key(opens in new tab)
See the Google Maps API

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