I Built a Google Vacation Rentals Scraper That Runs Without a Browser

#api #webscraping #opensource #python

If you've ever tried to get vacation rental data out of Google Travel, you know the pain. There's no public API, the page data is buried in nested arrays with no field names, and the date and filter parameters are encoded into opaque URL strings.

I got tired of fighting it, so I built an Apify Actor that does it for me: Google Vacation Rentals Scraper.

Give it a destination and a date range, and it returns clean, structured JSON for every listing. It doesn't use a browser, so runs are fast and cheap.

What you get per listing

Pricing: nightly price and total price for your dates
Reviews: overall rating, review count and individual reviews
Property details: description, amenities, bedrooms, bathrooms, capacity, photos
Location: neighborhood, nearby restaurants and airports
Links: the Google Travel page and the original provider URL (Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, etc.)

Results paginate automatically until maxResults is reached or Google runs out of listings. Duplicates are removed, and Google's "Places that don't exactly match your search" suggestions are filtered out, so the dataset stays clean.

Quick start

Install the client:

pip install apify-client

Then run it:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("valie/google-vacation-rentals").call(run_input={
    "place": "Carthage",
    "checkin": "2026-11-29",
    "checkout": "2026-12-05",
    "currency": "USD",
    "minRating": "4.0+",
    "amenities": ["kitchen", "air-conditioned"],
    "maxResults": 50,
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["name"], item["nightly_price"]["raw"], item["reviews"]["rating"])

Prefer no code? Open the Actor page, fill in the form, click Start, and export as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.

Sample output

{
  "name": "Bleu Azur - Sidi Bou Saïd",
  "nightly_price": { "amount": 101.0, "currency_symbol": "$", "raw": "$101" },
  "total_price": { "amount": 406.0, "currency_symbol": "$", "raw": "$406 total" },
  "date_range": "Nov 29 – Dec 5",
  "reviews": { "rating": 4.8, "review_count": 34 },
  "amenities": { "amenities_list": ["Villa", "Sleeps 5", "3 bedrooms"] },
  "original_url": "https://www.example-provider.com/..."
}

Prices come back as both numbers and display strings, so you can sort and aggregate immediately.

Filters

You don't have to scrape everything and filter afterwards. The Actor supports:

Filter	Options
Price range	`minPrice`, `maxPrice` (nightly)
Rating	`any`, `3.5+`, `4.0+`, `4.5+`
Property type	apartments, houses, villas, cottages, cabins, other
Amenities	pool, kitchen, pet-friendly, hot tub, free wi-fi, air-conditioned and more
Size	minimum bedrooms and bathrooms
Market	`region` and `currency`, to see what Google shows travelers in different countries

What can you build with it?

A price tracker that runs daily and alerts you to drops
Market analysis comparing average rates across neighborhoods or seasons
A travel comparison feature for your app
Investment research on which property types and amenities earn the most
Cross-provider checks, since each result links back to its original listing

Because it runs on Apify, you can schedule runs, trigger webhooks, and connect the output to tools like Make, Zapier, Google Sheets or your own pipeline.

Pricing

It's pay-per-result, from $1.00 per 1,000 results. A new Apify account comes with free platform credits, so you can try it before paying anything.

Try it and tell me what's missing

The Actor is new, and I'd love feedback from people who actually use this kind of data. If there's a field you need, a filter that's missing, or a bug you hit, open an issue on the Actor page and I'll take a look.

👉 Try Google Vacation Rentals Scraper on Apify

Please scrape responsibly: respect the terms of service of Google and the booking providers, avoid personal data, and keep your request volume reasonable.

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