play-scraper

What it is and what it does

play-scraper is a web scraper that extracts application metadata from Google Play Store listings. It parses HTML responses to retrieve app details (title, description, ratings, developer info, screenshots, version history), search results, developer catalogs, and category collections. The package wraps requests, beautifulsoup4, and lxml to handle HTTP requests and DOM parsing.

The scraper is designed for bulk data collection workflows—fetching app details by ID, searching for apps by query, listing trending or top-rated apps in categories, and discovering all apps from a specific developer. It supports language and region filtering via language and country codes. However, the package has been abandoned since mid-2022 and the repository is archived, meaning it receives no updates for Play Store structure changes or anti-scraping countermeasures.

Use it for:

• Collect metadata on a set of known Android app IDs for analysis, comparison, or archival.
• Search Play Store for apps matching keywords and extract basic info (title, developer, rating, price).
• Enumerate all apps published by a specific developer to track their portfolio or release history.
• Fetch trending or top-rated apps in a category for market research or competitive analysis.
• Build a local database snapshot of Play Store app listings at a point in time.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Scrapes application metadata and listings from the Google Play Store, parsing details like app descriptions, ratings, developer info, and install counts.

No, not recommended for new projects. The package is abandoned (last commit 2022-07-06, archived repository) and web scraping of Play Store is inherently brittle—HTML structure and anti-scraping measures change frequently. Without active maintenance, it will likely fail against the current Play Store. Use the official Google Play Developer API or a maintained alternative if available.

Install

play-scraper on PyPI

pip install play-scraper

uv add play-scraper

poetry add play-scraper

Installing play-scraper

Before you install

Low install friction with a pure-Python wheel distribution. However, the package is abandoned as of 2022-07-06 with no recent maintenance, and the repository is archived. Google Play Store scraping is fragile by nature due to HTML structure changes; expect breakage without active upkeep.

License in practice

MIT License permits free use, modification, and distribution with minimal restrictions, making it suitable for both open-source and commercial projects.

Quickstart

pip install play-scraper

import play_scraper
details = play_scraper.details('com.android.chrome')
print(details['title'], details['score'])

Google Play Store may block or alter responses to scrapers; no guarantee the package will work against current Play Store HTML/API structure.

Verify before relying

• Whether the scraper still functions against the current Google Play Store website structure and anti-scraping measures.
• Compatibility with Python versions beyond 3.7 (classifiers list only up to 3.7; current support unclear).
• Rate limiting or request throttling behavior when fetching large result sets or detailed app information.

Package facts

Evidence: play_scraper-0.6.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More WWW/HTTP packages