Google Reviews API: How to Get Every Review, Not Just Five

There is no single “Google Reviews API.” Google offers two official routes, and they answer different questions. The Places API returns at most 5 reviews for any public place and bills per request. The Google Business Profile API returns every review — and lets you reply — but only for locations your Google account manages, and only after Google approves your project. If what you want is all the reviews for your own locations in a script, a spreadsheet or an AI assistant, the quickest path is often a review platform that has already done the Business Profile integration and exposes its own API.

Facts below are from Google’s developer documentation, checked September 27, 2026. Full disclosure: ReputeMap is one of those review platforms, and its API is described near the end.

The four ways to get Google review data

Route	Whose reviews	How many	Can reply?	Access	Cost
Places API (New)	Any public place	Up to 5, “sorted by relevance”	No	API key on a Google Cloud project with billing	Place Details Enterprise + Atmosphere SKU: 1,000 free events a month, then $25 per 1,000
Google Business Profile API	Only locations you manage	All of them, paginated	Yes — reply and delete reply	Approved access application + OAuth sign-in	No charge for registered users; the cost is approval and engineering
Scraping services	Any public place	Varies	No	Vendor account	Vendor pricing; not an official Google API
Review platform API (for example ReputeMap)	Locations you connected	Everything the platform syncs	Via the platform	API key from the platform	Included in the platform’s plan

The mistake most people make is starting with the Places API because it is the one they already have a key for, then discovering the 5-review ceiling. If you manage the business, the Business Profile API is the right official route.

Route 1: the Places API — five reviews for any place

The Places API is built to display a place: name, address, rating, hours and a handful of reviews. Google’s reference for the reviews field says it is a “list of reviews about this place, sorted by relevance. A maximum of 5 reviews can be returned.” There is no page token for more. Newer responses can also include reviewSummary, an AI-generated summary of what reviewers say.

curl "https://places.googleapis.com/v1/places/YOUR_PLACE_ID" \
  -H "X-Goog-Api-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "X-Goog-FieldMask: rating,userRatingCount,reviews"

Asking for reviews puts the request in the Place Details Enterprise + Atmosphere SKU, which Google prices at 1,000 free billable events a month and $25 per 1,000 after that (first volume tier). Good for: showing a rating and a few reviews on a website, checking a competitor’s headline numbers. Not good for: exporting, monitoring every new review or replying. If you only need the Place ID, our review link generator finds it without an API key.

Route 2: the Business Profile API — every review, for your locations

This is the API Google provides to owners, managers and the agencies that work for them. The endpoints that matter:

• GET /v4/accounts/{accountId}/locations/{locationId}/reviews — list a location’s reviews, with pageSize, pageToken and orderBy; the response also carries averageRating and totalReviewCount.
• POST /v4/accounts/{accountId}/locations:batchGetReviews — reviews for several locations in one call.
• PUT …/reviews/{reviewId}/reply and DELETE …/reviews/{reviewId}/reply — post, edit or remove your public reply.

The catch is access. Google’s prerequisites require you to apply for Basic API Access, and to qualify you must “manage a Google Business Profile that is verified and active for 60+ days” and have a website representing the business. Until approval, your project’s quota shows 0 queries per minute; once approved it is 300 QPM.

Steps to build it yourself

1. Create a Google Cloud project and apply for Business Profile API access through Google’s contact form.
2. Wait for approval — the quota moving from 0 to 300 QPM is the signal.
3. Enable the Business Profile APIs and set up OAuth with the business.manage scope.
4. Have the profile owner or manager sign in; list their accounts, then their locations.
5. Call the reviews endpoint per location and follow nextPageToken until it runs out.
6. Store reviews with their IDs, re-sync on a schedule and update edited reviews and replies.
7. For near-real-time updates, subscribe to Google’s new-review notifications through Cloud Pub/Sub rather than polling.

None of it is exotic, but steps 4–6 are where the maintenance lives: expired tokens, managers who lose access, locations added and removed, and reviews that are edited after you stored them.

Route 3: scraping services

Several vendors sell “Google Maps reviews” endpoints that collect reviews from Google’s public pages for any business. They fill the gap the Places API leaves for competitor research. They are not official Google APIs, so their reliability depends on the vendor, and you should read their terms and your own obligations before building on them. For your own locations there is no reason to scrape: the official API gives you everything.

Route 4: a review platform’s API

If you manage one to a few hundred locations and want the data without building steps 1–7, connect the profiles to a review platform once and use its API. ReputeMap’s works like this:

• Connect with Google sign-in. The profile owner or a manager connects in a couple of minutes; you don’t need your own Cloud project or API approval.
• Read everything synced. GET /api/v1/reviews returns reviews across all locations or one, filterable by star range, unanswered only and the last N days, with the published reply, sentiment and topics included. GET /api/v1/stats returns totals, averages, the 1–5 breakdown and unanswered counts per location.
• Trigger review requests. POST /api/v1/review-requests sends an honest review-request email from your CRM or a “job completed” event, respecting unsubscribes.

# unanswered 1–2 star reviews from the last 7 days, all locations
curl "https://api.reputemap.com/api/v1/reviews?has_reply=false&rating_max=2&since_days=7" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer rmk_YOUR_KEY"

The API is included in every paid plan and works during the 14-day trial: 1,000 credits a month per organization, 60 requests a minute. Full reference in the API docs. If you’d rather ask questions of your reviews than write code, the same data is available to Claude or Cursor through the ReputeMap MCP server, and the Zapier guide shows the no-code version of review requests.

What it doesn’t do: it only covers locations you have connected, it doesn’t return other businesses’ reviews, and the REST API reads reviews and sends requests — replying happens in the app, where AI drafts wait for your approval unless you switch on Auto-reply for new 4–5★ reviews (paid plans).

Which route should you use?

• Show a rating and a few reviews on a site → Places API.
• Research competitors’ headline numbers → Places API (rating, count, 5 reviews).
• Your own reviews, one location, and you enjoy building → Business Profile API.
• Your own reviews across many locations, or client locations as an agency → Business Profile API if you have the engineering time; a platform API if you want it working this week. Agencies should also look at white-label review reports — often the thing the data was wanted for.
• Just want to know when a new review lands → you may not need an API at all; see Google review notifications.

ReputeMap is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Google.